According to experts, the construction industry will be decisive to fulfilling the demands and goals of North America’s future. Construction has been transforming and evolving rapidly during the past two decades, and its dynamic approaches will continue. One can say that a successful contractor in the future will work quite differently than today.
Few technology trends shaping the future of construction arena include:
- Data — Accumulating, using and distributing data in real time gives contractors the advantages of enabling their machines to communicate with each other. Through connected devices, contractors can remotely control progress, interact with the operator, diagnose and fix problems, track machine area and provide assistance. Data collected can confirm quality results and help with bidding on future similar projects. There will be the time when a job site or highway can tell how it should be built through instant data, seamless conversation, exact material expenses.
- Construction engineering — Automating of the digital construction method through surveying, engineering design, constructible model construction, and as-built data collection within a connected data environment to develop construction execution and reduce project costs. It is the production of collaborative systems to produce all the data into digital models that can be seamlessly shared with machines, supervisors, operators, civil engineers and project owners. Unmanned aerial vehicles or drones are an example of the type of data that will be collected. Drones can accommodate virtual reality perspective and data about job sites too complicated or dangerous to reach.
- Smart roads — Roadways will do more than moving traffic in the future. As solar collector ribbons, they may very well be contributing to fueling the vehicles of the future. Or implanted wireless technology could maintain an electric car’s charge. Metal street name signs will convert nostalgic artifacts of times past since the self-driving pods will be recognized by the road what street it is on. Roads will mend themselves as cracks form since the cement or asphalt mix will be installed with tiny capsules of sodium silicate. When a crack forms, the capsules burst and release a gel-like refreshing agent that will fix to fill the void.
- Overcoming the skills gap — Technology can assist with the labor shortfall and fill the experiences gap of new employees. Take a quick, inexperienced mechanic and place them in the cab of a dozer or motor grader supervised by GPS machine control with a 3D site plan illustrated and with proper training they will display productive. Technology has not only demonstrated to save time and increase accuracy, but its influence on productivity has been significant. As technology penetrates the construction industry, there is a growing need for academy and technology school graduate technicians.
- IoT — The Internet of Things (IoT) indicates the communication connectedness of machines and things through sensors by online. Think of IoT as the data collection and gathering going into a central depository where reasonable decisions can be performed based on what has been accumulated in real-time. Workers can be traced in the field and guarantee that they are guarded from or at least aware of job site dangers and other tolerable injuries. Equipment sensors can control whether machinery is being fruitful or in need of replacement or preventive maintenance.
