Once the technology started to thrive, it started to change the world radically, disrupting many industries and the borders in all aspects. Technology not only changed the way we are doing things, but changed the things we are doing. Humans demanded more and technology offered more, technology offered more, and humans demanded more, at last this became a vicious circle, and yet no one knows what will happen in the end. We are living a life we have never imagined; we have got used to enjoying the opportunities technology offered and also suffering with the losses technology took from us.

Technology also started to change the constructed area around us. Though proptechs (property technologies) started to change the real-estate issues excessively, the construction industry still harbors huge potential to thrive with contechs (construction technologies).

As construction companies are too busy with the work under their commitments and striving to overcome the obstacles of their traditional way of delivering the projects, they have no time and energy to enhance the industry. So, productivity in the construction industry is decreasing day by day. On the other hand, some global innovative entrepreneurs, such as Elon Musk owning “The Boring Company”, started to enter the industry in their borderless and courageous way to build their own construction projects, because they have no time and money to waste with the traditional construction companies.

The construction industry is accountable for building shelters and infrastructure to make the world proper for human beings, however it is also attributed for most of the climate and other environmental issues.

Image: Future of Construction, World Economic Forum, The Boston Consulting Group

According to World Economic Forum’s (WEF) report: “Shaping the Future of Construction”; for the next decades the future of construction will be impacted by six global megatrends listed below:

• Energy and climate change
• Urbanization and housing crisis
• Huge infrastructure gap
• Resource scarcity
• Demand shift to emerging countries
• Talent gap

And again according to the above mentioned report the industry has to deal with 6 challenges to deliver the building needs of humanity:

• Project Delivery (time-quality and cost performance)
• Lifecycle Performance
• Sustainability
• Affordability
• Disaster resilience
• Flexibility / Livebility / Well-being.

To overcome these obstacles and to prevent things from getting worse, the construction industry must change the way it works rapidly, benefiting from the tech revolution, and management mindset. 

The fragmented structure of the industry prevents holistic view and to benefit from common sense. Each party runs after its own profit and benefits. However, technology, with the help of an agile mindset, provides an opportunity of collecting a number of professions and sectors on a shared platform to enhance transparency to perform together. With the help of contechs the industry may be more transparent in between fragments of parties and the client. This will have a great impact on creating value and eliminating waste.

Tech revolution of the construction industry is at the door.

Traditional companies of other industries have started to transform to technology companies creating value depending on technology. So, the construction companies should stop considering themselves as masonry-man only putting one stone over another, they should transform to companies developing technologies and enhance the way they are responding customer’s shelter and infrastructure requirements.

Though the BIM (Building Information Modeling) technologies are considered as the main kind of Contechs, there are other technologies improving and redesigning processes from idea phase through operation phase till demolishing phase. The main issue is the communication and collaboration of these technologies to form transparency, trust and common sense between all parties.

The construction projects are exposed to excessive numbers of peripheral risks because of their long project time, mostly performed outside with incapable and uncoordinated construction teams. So technologies such as UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), AI (Artificial Intelligence), VR (Virtual Reality), AR (Augmented Reality), IOT (Internet of Things), 3D printing systems, 3D scanning Systems, advanced materials, big data analytics, cloud technologies and real time collaboration tools offer a wide variety of solutions to thrive the industry.

Image: Future of Construction, World Economic Forum, The Boston Consulting Group

The fragmented structure, uncontrolled site conditions, incapable one time construction teams obstruct the industry. So, using all of the above-mentioned technologies modulation and prefabrication of building elements with agile management approaches is also promising to thrive the industry by shortening the time and minimizing the cost while enhancing the quality.

To meet the demands of the 21st Century, construction industry requires a tech and management revolution. To rebuild the world we need to redesign the construction industry.

Let's start rebuilding world with contechs.

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