In general, theconstruction industryhas been
reluctant to embrace the benefits of IT. However, builders are now
beginning to be dragged into the 21st century by the need to
collaborate more closely with their more IT-savvy colleagues, the
architects and engineers responsible for the ideas behind their
work.
Consequently, laptops are gradually making an incongruous
appearance alongside the hard hats, mud and mayhem of the building
site. So, is this just a case of keeping up with the times or are
there other issues driving the industry from bricks to bytes?
Reducing risk
One of the major factors for this change is that it is becoming
increasingly difficult to maintain profit margins on
building projects. For example, housebuilders are seeing a
shift to mixed-use sites with fewer family homes and more flats, so
multiplying the risk factor inherent in investing in building land.
Mindful of high-profile project delivery delays, many commercial or
public sector clients have introduced financial penalty clauses in
case deadlines are missed. And on top of that, there are skill
shortages combined with increased competition for land.
Yet often, profits are eaten away by practical issues - delays
in receiving drawings, use of outdated data, inaccuracies caused by
human error. These are compounded by the rise of the global project
- where an architect in London is liaising with contractors across
Europe to build a new hotel in Dubai, for example.
As a result, the whole of the architecture, engineering and
construction industry is looking for ways to reduce risk and
maintain its bottom line. On a day-to-day level it is also
struggling with the need to communicate and review project drawings
and share proliferating number of associated documents that are
usually too large to send by e-mail.
Available on-demand
The answer is obviously a project management tool - yet with
such a diverse selection of people needing to use it (from planners
to plumbers) many on the market are just too enterprise-based and
complex to be suitable. Therefore, many in the industry are opting
for straightforward online
project collaboration tools. Designed to keep projects on
schedule and to budget, these tools allow project drawings and
other documents to be made available online whenever they are
needed, to whoever needs them, wherever they happen to be.
Communication with subcontractors is vastly improved, becoming
more instantaneous, reliable and trackable. Integration with design
software means builders can easily update and publish drawings and
make them available to their subcontractors, resulting in a largely
paperless process. The need to share with contractors who do not
use Cad is addressed by the use of DWF files, which enable sharing
and viewing of 2D and 3D files without their native programs.
Here to stay
Underneath these more general issues, there is a technology
sub-text. The growing take up of digital 3D design and a process
known as Building Information Modelling (BIM). This is the creation
and use of co-ordinated, consistent, computable information about a
building project in design held in a single 3D digital model.
This move towards BIM will only accelerate the need for
collaborative tools. It looks like builders need to find a
permanent home for computers in the site office from now on.
James Witty is EMEA collaboration solutions manager at
Autodesk