Arguing that bumping productivity using steeply priced technology harms budgets is arguing against the unshakeable truth about the future of business—tech-enabled jobsites unlocking competitive growth.
Growth in jobsite performance is the cumulative result of technological and skilled labour intervention. One can’t exist without the other, unless human clones are configured seamlessly with smart technology—and that’s highly unlikely as human accuracy and judgment remain irreplaceable considering the enormously dynamic nature of construction projects.
Running a jobsite without micro-supervision needs doing something different than enforcing worker overtime—you must assess areas of work whose daily output can be optimized through technology integration at scale.
Within a decade, construction experts believe these technologies will transform jobsites, seeming nothing like how they function today.
Virtual Reality
Harnessing the power of hyper-connectivity, virtual reality brings architects, project managers, and other stakeholders closer for creative visualizations of constructions. It presents opportunities to businesses that gainfully help collaborate anywhere, with any number of people. Imagine a planning session with four contractor teams alongside your own field team. You’re about to chalk out a design sheet for a duplex building in a prime area. All members can key in their inputs by tracking each section of the specs sheet while showing what exactly they plan to accomplish in each construction phase. Involving stakeholders throughout a project’s lifecycle doesn’t have to be a drain on your schedule when you’re able to collaborate by crowdsourcing inputs through VR.
Complementing VR, augmented reality (AR) aids on-site activities. One of the most critical routines is assessing safety levels across a job site. Workers tend to avoid certain inspections either due to high exposure to danger or inaccessible zones preventing fair assessment—AR goggles pop accurate images to a display fitted on a smart hard hat helping site workers perform tasks safely. As a result, managers can oversee site activity as closely as the worker doing it.
Smart Mobile Technology
Smartphone usage extends beyond sharing text updates; they support high-intensity real-time information sharing on projects whether you’re on site or in office.
Jobsites are a raging whirlpool of workers executing last-minute adjustments. Just the idea of performing sudden changes takes precious time away from planning tasks and aligning teams—but no longer with mobile apps that make impromptu communication effortless without leading to much downtime and yet keeping everyone in the loop. Users can sync notes, modify designs, add audio files, and respond to requests for inquiries/proposals which can be freely accessed by everyone. This source captures how best to leverage RFIs.
Predictive Analysis
Predictive analytics mines historical data, models ideas, and actively learns new industry affairs to make savvy predictions for a given project. They eliminate the prospect of human bias tampering with the integrity of a project model. If construction project managers could reduce statistical errors in building designs, they’d save billions in reworks. Predictive models read large datasets in the context of key project drivers such as local spending patterns, finances, purchase order history—a set of probable outcomes are shown for teams to evaluate project viability and reorganize efforts away from under-performing activities.
Autonomous Heavy Equipment
Autonomous construction vehicles will soon take over jobsites as the industry struggles with labour productivity. Future technology will automate most functions of common heavy equipment, lending workers the much-needed time to improve quality on high-level tasks.
While some companies have outfitted their construction fleets with diagnostic sensors for maximized efficiency, many are yet to realize the potential of driverless heavy equipment. One of the main attributes of driverless equipment is telematics; it leverages GPS and smart sensors that help supervise vehicle performance—operators will need to ensure they’re keying in the right inputs to optimize these machines to grades specified for a site, say, they’re tasked with excavating and grading a site: a skilled operator would match fuel-horsepower levels to align task efficiency with precision.
Once the task and machine alignment is set at an optimal level, companies can save a vast sum of money going into hiring labour—a positive sign amid the industry’s perennial shortage of skilled labour.
Site Sensors
Site sensors are chiefly used for monitoring site safety, optimizing assets, and enhancing labour performance. Internet-connected sensory devices are a valuable data source about the environment, worker behaviour, and task achievement.
Sensors can fit anywhere—from worker’s safety gear to walls close to danger zones. With workers, sensors can detect injuries, possible accidents, bodily functions, and exposure to high-risk materials keeping them from harm’s way. They inform on indoor site temperatures such as humidity upticks, smoke thickness, water infiltration, and other temperature changes likely to cause health and property damage risks. Through real-time data collection, sites can proactively address issues without lag times involved in executing solutions and save high costs in maintaining equipment, worker, and site safety.
Sensors are invaluable devices that gauge the entire supply chain’s efficiency, allowing construction businesses to improve their capability to comply with timelines, OSHA guidelines, and client requirements. Sensors are predicted to increase project lifecycle productivity within a decade, if firms are willing to cut down site-wide risks—equipment breakdowns, worker accidents, and schedule overruns—through promoting smart upkeep of their assets.
Incoming technologies are pushing multi-figure growth for construction companies. Such a growth will reap efficiency for companies willing to move fast in their journey to upgrading jobsites with tech-enabled equipment and operators.
Are you using smart technology on your jobsite?
Author Bio: Gagandeep Bimbh
Gagandeep Bimbh is a digital content strategist invested in weaving context-rich stories intuited on the changing needs of diverse audiences. His words are guided by strategic writing principles acquired over the last four years working with communications firms and digital marketing agencies.
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