8/10/2019 Jethanandani TMH Construction

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JethanandaniTMHMobile collaboration in construction

Summary: Productivity growth is possible even in construction with mobile collaboration

Reconstructing for productivity growth

By Kishore Jethanandani

The construction industry was dealt a double whammy when the go-go days of the long

construction boom ended in 2007. Business revenue growth as well as productivity growth

collapsed. A white paper written by theStevens Construction Institutereports a precipitous fall in

productivity by 2011 to levels below those of 1997!

The industry has a shot at rebirth with new digital technologies for collaboration between the field

and design offices. Much of the productivity loss in the construction industry is due to absence of

real-time and interactive communications between the onsite and offsite staff. Most large

construction sites are a labyrinth and project delays occur as members of the staff struggle to

communicate with their design offices and their scattered suppliers. Mid-course corrections areroutine when progress is compared with plans and project managers reassess the means to achieve

the project goals. When changes are made, synchronization of action across functional groups is a

challenge because most construction workers are mobile. Mobile technologies enable team

members to keep abreast of the flow of activity on the project in real-time and collaborate with

their team members.

Business Information Model (BIM) provides a toolset for communication of design information and

project status to bridge the communication gap between design offices and the field staff. These

models go beyond the two-dimensional geometric information that CAD models provide. BIM

models also include data on cost, including material use, and time. These models show the inter-

dependencies of dimensions, cost, time and material. Players can visualize and simulate in 3Dalternative courses of action if construction managers feel the need to make mid-course

corrections.

While BIM is a powerful decision-making and communication tool, it has achieved modest

productivity improvements. A recentsurveyfound that three-quarters of respondents had achieved

less than 5% growth in productivity (half of them no change in productivity growth or were worse

off) and the rest more than 5% growth. BIM only increases the volumes of that need to be

processed and the effort to reconcile data and designs. In the absence of real-time communications,

the productivity gains are modest. According to McGraw-Hill Construction, the absence of real-time

communications accounts for3%of building costs.

Recent acquisitions in the construction industry are an effort to improve the accuracy and speed of

communications with field staff. Gehry Technologies, known for its 3D collaboration software

GTeam, acquired Bimshare to integrate mobile cloud communication capabilities. The mobile

communications will make BIM accessible to field staff. Similarly, Autodesk acquired Horizontal

Systems to integrate mobile cloud communications with Autodesk 360 for BIM which is software

for collaboration among construction teams.

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