APRIL 2023CONSTRUCTIONBUSINESSREVIEW.COM8IN MYOPINIONTHE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRYBy Todd Mercer, Senior Vice President, WebcorTechnology touches virtually every facet of construction. From Building Information Modeling (BIM) software to 3D printing, from drones and crane cameras to mobile apps, hardly anyone working in construction today isn't using some form of digital technology. Yet failing to adopt new technologies poses a substantial risk to the industry.Emerging construction technologies offer the potential for a radical shift in how we build and the performance of the buildings we deliver. We must find ways to overcome the multiple obstacles that stand in the way of achieving that potential.First, the margins just aren't there that would allow builders to experiment with new tools like other industries. Many different industries are able to invest heavily in new technologies because their profit margins are as high as 20 per cent, making it easy to just move on if they don't meet expectations or deliver value. According to the North American Industry Classification System, the average profit margin for commercial and industrial building construction is 2.1 per cent. That leaves little room to experiment with costly technology that may or may not prove effective. When we try new technology, it needs to (in most cases) be inexpensive, it must demonstrably add value immediately, be easy to use without training (or nobody will use it), and with luck, it must be able to replicate that value over the long-term across multiple one-off projects.A robot that automates the drywall finishing process provides an excellent example of the struggle to adopt new technology. Finding tools like this is important as the construction labor market shrinks. The technology is positioned to change the way we finish drywall across all of our projects and likely throughout the industry. We would like to incorporate this tool into our technology tool stack; however, cost remains a barrier. With that said, there will no doubt be an inflexion point where it pencils in the near future. The question is, how much can we afford to invest in getting ahead of the curve while we wait for that inflexion point?On the other hand, Smart sheet hit all the right buttons for us immediately. This feature-rich, easy-to-learn cloud-based spreadsheet came to our attention when one employee on a project started using it. Others found it to be really useful, and it started getting adopted organically throughout the company. We found it was making everyone more productive and removing pain points immediately, so we evaluated whether we could scale it companywide. When we validated it could scale, we did.Technologies are coming at us faster and faster, promising to revolutionize the industry, but few of them ever do. The first technology imperative is sifting through all that noise while committing the least number of resources to identify those tools that provide immediate value and have the potential to disrupt construction. If we don't search out, test, and adopt technologies that add value, others will, and we will be left behind. Yet construction margins do not support being on that leading edge, and it quickly becomes the bleeding edge.There are other serious roadblocks our industry faces in the use of technology. For example, most technological tools do not share information with one another out of the box. How much more efficient could we be if these platforms exchanged data seamlessly, right out of the box, such that we can use the best tool for the job Todd Mercer
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