What's the real story around digital technologies in construction management?

Abstract

The highly fragmented project nature of the construction industry, small companies and shortterm thinking has made the construction industry traditionally slow in adopting new methods and technology, and the least digitalised of all the industry sectors. However, there are strong signs: Building Information Modelling, mobile and cloud computing to name a few, that digitalisation has finally reached the construction industry. Continuous change is affecting construction management processes through the changes in construction technology, manufacturing technology, technology on site, and the technology for project management and communication. Although ‘digital’, ‘digitisation’, ‘digitalisation’ and even ‘information technology’ have been clearly defined in the literature, ‘digital technology’ has been poorly defined in general and there is no agreement as to what ‘digital technologies’ means in the construction management context. In addition, there is no clear understanding about the scale and pace of the technological change. This research explores what the term ‘digital technology’ means and what it means in the construction management context, and analyses the scale and pace of the ongoing change using a literature review with longitudinal analysis. This is necessary to assist further analysis of the digital technologies themselves, but more specifically to understand the impact of the change in the construction industry.