June-August, 2020CONSTRUCTIONBUSINESSREVIEW.COM85 PRINCIPLES TO HELP NAVIGATE THE RAPIDLY CHANGING CONSTRUCTION TECH LANDSCAPEBy Ryan Hale, CIO and Director of Strategic Initiatives, Lithko Contracting, Inc.Ryan HaleThe technology landscape of the construction industry is changing and changing quickly. This rapid change is happening in a 1.1 trillion-dollar industry that has historically been viewed as a late-adopter of technology. Moreover, the Financial Crisis of 2007 and the Great Recession between 2008 and 2012 slammed the construction industry, making it hard to justify funds for new technology when the more pressing worry was keeping your crews busy and making payroll for the week. The combination of these items made an industry known for being a late-adopter of technology, a no-adopter of technology. But as the sting of the recession subsided and new construction started to rebound, software vendors viewed the construction market as a target-rich environment with a renewed flow of capital and few firmly established technology giants to compete against. In addition, construction companies were facing a labor shortage, due to the workforce flocking to other industries to survive the recession, so they knew they needed to become more efficient. In parallel, the proliferation of mobile devices, advances in cloud computing, and the growing promises of big data analytics was moving from an idea to mainstream usage. When you combine these inputs, you had a perfect recipe to put timely decision-making information in the cost-conscience hands of those standing on a construction site. For the past 6 years, this target-rich environment has seen handfuls of new software solutions present themselves and older software solutions get facelifts. The majority of these software packages are offering point solutions targeted at solving a particular business need. These point solutions have all of the items you would want a modern technology solution to have: web-based, configurable, user-friendly, and flexible reporting. However, the selection of the best point solution is often extremely difficult. Many of these solutions have not been implemented long enough to prove that the software can deliver on the promises made during the sales process. Additionally, many are still trying to procure additional rounds of investment funding to sustain themselves in the long run. IN MYOPINION
< Page 7 | Page 9 >