I was privileged to be invited to RSA Scotland to present an online talk on this subject recently. It was wonderful to have such mixed audience of construction and non-construction people. The topic generated a great discussion about some of the benefits of and barriers to digital adoption within the industry.

Rather than posting the transcript in its raw form, I’ve summarised it in this blog post which I hope you’ll find interesting. If you’d prefer listen to the talk, the 15-minute audio is here:

Digital Construction Skills have been awarded £290k in funding from CITB, with further contributions worth £140k from our 40 fabulous project partners , for the Digital Transformation through Leaders project. The aim of the project is to give construction industry leaders and managers the skills they need to drive digital transformation in their organisations.

The project involves:

The project is focussed in Scotland and aims to:

There’s a slight technicality in that CITB have unfortunately had to suspend the funding for at least a year, so we’re busy trying to find a different model to make this work.

So let give me give a bit of wider context about why the project will benefit not just in the construction industry, but everybody.

Would you class yourself as a direct stakeholder in the NHS? Most people will answer ‘Yes!’ to this question.

Would you class yourself as a direct stakeholder in the education system? Again, most people, even if they are not a child at school or a parent of a child, will see how they are affected by the education system.

But would you class yourself as a direct stakeholder in the construction industry? Unless you work in the industry or are a direct client or supplier to the industry, the answer is probably ‘No’.

Why is that many of us don’t feel invested in the construction industry in the same way we do in other things like health, transport and the welfare system?

Why is it that we don’t weigh-in on the debate the way we do with other issues?  When was the last time you were putting the world to rights with a friend over a coffee or a beer and you found yourselves thrashing out your views on what’s gone wrong with the construction industry and how it should be done instead? Unless you work in the construction industry, the answer’s likely never.

But what if I was to tell you that:

Do you still feel it’s none of your business? Do you still feel it’s not your debate or that you’re not qualified to comment? That it’s ‘not your counter’?

I’m not going to use this blog to tell you about all the advanced technology and how it’s revolutionising the industry. There’s no doubt some amazing things are happening but, on the flip side of the coin, I don’t think we can be patting ourselves on the back so soon. A recent report by McKinsey showed that the construction industry is the least digitised industry after only hunting and agriculture.

What I’m going to focus on here is how digital transformation in the construction industry has the potential to impact not the workers and companies who operate directly within it, but how it impacts on society and the economy and why it’s everybody’s business to get involved.

Here are eight different ways that better use of digital technology could have a wider impact.

If all processes are digitalised, from site diaries to risk assessments, method statements, to snagging, then it makes job-sharing much more feasible. That makes the industry more accessible to parents who don’t want to – or don’t have the option to – work 60 hours a week on site.

Technology such as immersive photography means a whole site can be captured in 3D reality, and can be navigated remotely in the same way you use Google Streetview. That means you don’t need to be physically present on the site. That means less travel time and fewer nights away from home. This makes a career in construction more family-friendly and also makes construction sites accessible to those who are mobility-impaired.

Digital tools can be used for:

Digital design and management tools have been shown to offer a 15% reduction in materials and up to a 50% reduction in carbon.

Considering that £30 billion pounds of public money is spent on construction, don’t we want to know that every penny of that is being used efficiently?

There’s a strong link between a construction company being digitally enabled and its competitiveness and resilience. Any construction company that allows itself to be vulnerable and puts itself at risk of collapse because of failure to modernise is putting its employees’ stability at risk. When a construction company collapses or has to make job cuts, a significant proportion of those impacted are low paid workers.

There are dozens of ways digital tools can improve safety; here are just a few examples:

Digitalising processes means less time is wasted on time-consuming, mundane paperwork, freeing up site managers to do more thinking ahead and planning. As well as alleviating short-term stress, this leads to better engagement and job satisfaction.

Mental health management software can help provide coping skills or give workers resources to help them with specific issues that they might not necessarily want to discuss with a colleague or a manager.  They can also help employers make sure they’re doing right by their workers as well as keeping on the right side of the law.

Competency-mapping software can help a company or a project understand any skill or competency gaps at an individual level and an organisational level. This means workers can reach their potential and organisations can recruit the right people.

Using this software, employers can help to develop their employees so they are more valuable and therefore have better job security.

We need to use digital tools to help us prepare for the future of work. We need to make it part of our plan, rather than something we are forced into when we no longer have an option.

This arguably is the most important one of all. Digital tools can help us collect vital data as an industry. We can collect information about:

This is how, as an industry, we can make ourselves accountable and transparent. That’s how we can start to build trust and engagement with the public.

There are many reasons why the construction industry is so far behind the times, and plenty of barriers to be overcome, and I’m not going to go into them all now.

I do want to mention one important barrier, though, and it’s to do with the direction of motivation . The prevalent mindset in the construction industry is ‘away from’ thinking rather than ‘toward’ thinking. In other words, we’re driven by avoiding bad things happening rather than working towards good things happening. This mindset has come about as a necessity; there has been a need for survival. But it’s become out of balance – to the detriment of the industry.

We need to be thinking in the opposite direction. We need to be asking:

Most of all , we need to be asking ‘What have we got to gain by inviting the outside world in? By making ourselves transparent? By making ourselves accountable? By showing the public that they can trust us – that they can have access to the data and see how we’re doing?’

We should be happy to collect and share that data – not because it’s going to make us look good, because we know that, at first, it might not. But, until we reach that basecamp, we can’t begin to climb the mountain. The construction industry needs to be more open to working with other sectors to learn from and invite help from other industries.

If you’re a stakeholder in the construction industry (which by now I hope everyone feels they are), and if you want to make it your business to get into the nuts and bolts of this formidable industry and help us navigate the landscape and be a force for good, get in touch. Let’s work out a plan together.

The post What is the wider impact of digital transformation in the construction industry? appeared first on Digital Construction Skills.