Author: Laura Black

Welcome to Construction Inclusion Week, where the objective is to build awareness of the need to improve DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) in the construction industry by providing content and resources. The intent is to foster conversations that create alignment and to change the industry’s culture to be truly inclusive. Quite the undertaking—but an admirable one at that. Last year was the inaugural event with participation from construction companies across the country. Many held jobsite and online events, educational meetings, goal-setting sessions, and social media campaigns—all aimed at adopting best practices for hiring more women and minority employers, as well…

The past two years have thrown businesses into an upheaval—but the truth is we have needed to evolve the workforce long before the COVID-19 pandemic. With the advent of new technologies comes new opportunities to minimize more manual, tedious tasks—but it also brings the need to be a bit more tech-savvy than workers of the past. In other words, we need to reskill and upskill our workers. At its core, upskilling is focusing on helping employees become more knowledgeable and develop new competencies that relate to their current position. Simply, it focuses on adding to an existing skill set within…

Welcome to a new era of technology, one where digital transformation will drive new processes and procedures in commercial construction, homebuilding, and infrastructure markets. Fortune Business Insights suggests the digital transformation market size was $737.88 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $3.5 trillion by 2028, exhibiting a growth rate of 22.1% during the forecast period. The opportunities with digital transformation, the IoT (Internet of Things), and AI (artificial intelligence) are vast, offering companies the ability to save time, money, and resources, in a currently cost-constrained economy. For the construction industry specifically, homebuilders and contractors need solutions to manage…

For the past few months, we have been embarking on a blog series, looking at both emerging technologies—digital twin, metaverse, AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality), and more—and core construction processes that are enabled by technology such as estimating, project management, accounting/job costing, and more. Today, let’s wrap up with final thoughts on the overall technology market, amid changing economic conditions. Perhaps it is best to start this conversation by noting a confluence of factors are creating a perfect storm that are necessitating the use of technology in construction today. We have a labor shortage, supply-chain crisis, material shortages,…

For more than two decades, BIM (building information modeling) has proliferated the headlines in the construction industry. If done right, the process can save both time and money on construction projects, and construction professionals are more often turning to it. But where exactly are we now with BIM? Let’s dig in. Allied Market Research suggests the global building information modeling market size was valued at $5.2 billion in 2019, and is projected to reach $15.8 billion by 2027, which is a 15.2% growth from during the time period. The key drivers for this process are the need for enhanced data…

Continuing on with our blog series, today let’s look at the construction estimating software market and how it is evolving. Today, there is an increasing need for cloud-based applications and mobile access, which is driving advancements in the construction estimating software market. In fact, Persistence Market Research suggests the global construction estimating software market is expected to grow from $340 million in 2021 to $357.4 million in 2022. Looking forward, it will grow to $556 million, showing a 4.5% growth rate from 2022-2032. Integration is one big estimating trend to watch in the construction industry. As one example, in January,…

We are embarking on a blog series where we identify how technology are enabling business processes in construction such as project management. Up next: accounting and job costing. In construction, accounting is complex, but critical to business operations to ensure the company can operate on tight margins. Construction job costing tracks the company’s progress to help the business make informed decisions. If done well, the company will be able to create quotes that are low enough to compete, but still high enough to turn a profit. It is certainly a fine line. In this day and age, technology—more specifically data—is…

For the second half of our blog series on hot construction technology, we are looking at how technology can enable process, procedures, and business practices. Things like collaboration, project management, scheduling, accounting, estimating, and more. All of these have existed in construction before the dawn of technology but are now being enabled by technology in new and interesting ways. Last week we dove into the topic of project management and discovered AI (artificial intelligence) is playing a bigger role than ever before, as technology providers are also aiming to created integrated project management platforms for construction. Today, let’s look at…

“Operations keeps the lights on, strategy provides a light at the end of the tunnel, but project management is the train engine that moves the organization forward.” Joy Gumz once so astutely said these words, and they are so apropos for construction where project managers are tasked with managing time, cost, and quality of often billion-dollar projects. If project management is done well, then the project is often a success, but if even so much as one ball is dropped, then time, cost, or quality could be sacrificed. There is perhaps no greater area of a construction business that technology…

Collaboration is a buzzword that has been used in the construction industry for more than a decade, but what exactly does it mean for project teams—particularly as it relates to technology? We have some thoughts. The dictionary defines collaboration as the action of working with someone to produce or create something. At its core, collaboration isn’t new. It has been part of the construction industry since the dawn of time. However, when applied in the context of technology, it means tools and systems designed to better facilitate that group work. In the first half of this blog series, we looked…