In our previous article, we explored Which Industries Are The Most Digital, And Why? — highlighting how Construction stands out as an industry that is amongst the least digitized in the world — second only to Agriculture and Hunting, according to research by McKinsey:
The unsurprising result of this lack of digitization is that productivity in the Construction industry has remained flat for the past 2 decades, whereas productivity in manufacturing has nearly doubled:
Why is productivity in construction so poor?
Research by PlanGrid, featured in their book Construction Disconnected, sheds some light on why productivity is so poor in construction: On average, construction professionals spend 35% of their time on non-optimal activities, and only 65% on optimal activities:
Where is time being wasted in Construction?
If we look at the reasons why time is being wasted on non-optimal activities, it becomes clear that digital tools could substantially improve productivity in the construction industry — for example, construction professionals spend 5.5 hours per week on average looking for project data and information:
Some Construction companies are moving in a new direction: The good news is that PlanGrid has found that 18% of Engineering & Constructions firms reported consistently using mobile apps to access project data and collaborate, and 8% have what they call real-time, full project management information systems that allow for dashboard reporting:
The tip of the iceberg
Clearly, only a fairly small percentage of Engineering & Construction companies have started to harness the benefits of digitization.
In Shaping the Future of Construction, the World Economic Forum found that within 10 years, full-scale digitization of Construction could lead to savings of between $0.7-1.2 trillion (13-21%) in the Design & Engineering and Construction phases of projects, and savings of between $0.3-0.5 trillion (10-17%) in the Operations phase.
Data and analytics are the core
Adopting digital tools can help Construction companies better utilize data and analytics to harness several benefits, such as:
- Empowering their workforces to be more productive
- Achieving better project execution accuracy
- Achieving better cross-team collaboration
- Achieving more proactive decision making through central visibility on project data
It’s a new way of thinking
One of the paradigm shifts in digitization, better data and analytics in construction is to start Turning Projects into Databases.
Digitizing field execution is a great place to start, focusing on areas such as:
- Project Progress Recording
- Asset Utilization
- Productivity Tracking
- Incident Reporting
- Site Walkdowns
That’s why we built JourneyApps
JourneyApps offers the most powerful Connected Worker App Platform to help Engineering & Construction companies with digitizing field execution and moving towards turning their projects into digital databases.
Contact us today to learn how JourneyApps can help you with harnessing the true benefits of digitization in your engineering & construction business.
