Innovative Construction Technology

“Some of the most useful improvements happen when individuals are bold enough to talk their truth and hear other people speak theirs.” ~Kenneth Blanchard, Collaboration Starts With You

On Tuesday, March 22nd in Bay Area, Aconex and Turner & Townsend started the very first construction technology “Project Innovation Forum”.

With professionals from Bing, MWH, PG&E, Swinerton, Turner & Townsend also project experts present, the target ended up being simple: collaboration – industry leaders sharing their particular challenges and successes with the use of procedures and innovative technology solutions for construction and engineering project administration.

Just what exactly revelations appeared when these construction technology innovators arrived together? Browse below to find the five main points talked about and interact the discussion by commenting here!

The Proper Tech

The group initially discussed the causes for deploying technology on tasks. This means, why are we all here?

Obviously, technology has actually tremendous capacity to deal with nearly all today’s challenges. But this rapidly escalated into an even more essential conversation: suitable technology.

Together participant revealed, “I’ve seen Excel spreadsheets used on far too many technology jobs. Certain, that’s technology, but it’s obviously not the proper technology.”

The whole team echoed an equivalent sentiment, nevertheless witnessing the pervading usage of antiquated technology on big projects.

These older technologies couldn't address the main issues of attendees: simplification of tasks, performance and productivity improvements, paid down fragmentation, danger administration, cost benefits, paid down delivery time, task handover, enhanced task communications, and document delivery.

The ROI of Construction Tech

Innovative technologies are priced at both time and money, in the beginning. But the goal of all innovation will be make procedures and services and products more efficient with long-term costs savings.

Being mindful of this, the idea of demonstrated price ended up being talked about. How do we quickly determine and take advantage of the value supplied by these brand-new technologies?

To phrase it differently, what's the profits on return (ROI)?

ROI can really only be accurately calculated once a project is complete. Before that point, ROI should be determined centered on presumptions, assumptions which can be produced by making comparisons to similarly-sized endeavors.

But because of the decreased exposure (see below) of innovative solutions, task leaders often are isolated and as a consequence struggling to obviously articulate the worthiness among these innovative technologies.

The Question of Accountability

Attendees in the venture Innovation Forum collectively brought a large number of many years of knowledge on room, and all sorts of had a viewpoint about where in actuality the duty of finding task value should lay.

Who is responsible for leading the discussion about the value of applying revolutionary technologies for a task? Who the research and shares findings utilizing the entire business? May be the owner business on a project accountable or should the technology vendors and specialists lead the trail?

Or, together attendee pointed out, “Brilliant thoughts and concentrated people can certainly make the real difference, ” meaning the greatest minds to do the job must certanly be assigned within every company, without encumbering one entity using whole burden.

Proactive vs Reactive Innovation

The originator associated with phrase “timing is everything” is not known, nevertheless the concept ended up being most certainly not unidentified to the market of building and technology innovators.

Choosing the proper time – or in fact discover time – to innovate ended up being an interest of good interest.

Although it’s common to respond to outright task failure by innovating for a preventative solution, everybody knows this process just isn't ideal. It’s reactive.

So do we apply technology ahead of the curve and before it appears become required? Or do we await an issue to “hatch”? Do other industries, like Nuclear, have the best concept – by innovating for a “no exclusions” preventative maintenance plan?

BIM emerged as a vintage exemplory instance of the time of technology development. Our selection of members has seen BIM implemented both reactively and proactively. In the first situation, many have seen BIM implemented haphazardly as a quick-fix option. Inside second, much more forward-thinking situation, our attendees have observed businesses require the usage BIM technology to recapture all center data within the design and building stages, and make use of the information captured completely center functions – for a long time ahead.

The difficulties of Innovation

Interestingly, since the group discussed the challenges of technology innovation in building and administration, these people were dealing with one of the biggest challenges while they spoke: exposure.

What is visibility within context? It is seeing and reading how other people in the market target the demands of managing huge projects with revolutionary, technology-based solutions.