Question

What are the main issues of the construction industry, including its economics, statistics, technological advances and challenges?

Answer 1

Working in any industry presents a number of challenges, such as maintaining employee productivity, overcoming financial hardships, and dealing with industry-specific struggles. The construction industry comes with a unique set of obstacles to overcome.

Worker Productivity:-

Within the construction industry, a high level of employee productivity is critical for completing high-quality projects in a timely manner. The labor shortage the construction industry faces is a direct cause of falling productivity levels. As the older generation begins to retire, leaving the workforce, the younger, less experienced generation takes their place. With construction projects becoming more complex and demand for projects remaining high, finding and retaining skilled workers is essential, not only for the safety of your employees and others but for your company, too.

Safety:-

Maintaining safety and ensuring proper precautions are in place are ongoing challenges within the construction industry. Putting up homes or buildings requires a variety of complex tools and heavy machinery, making construction sites hazardous. Lack of safety training can be a major problem for construction companies. If your employees aren’t trained to operate certain machinery or tools in the proper way, those oversights can lead to injury–or even death in some cases.

Technological advances:-

Advancing technology has a major impact on all industries, but the construction industry has been slow to adopt technological changes. Whether your company uses certain programs or software will not necessarily mean your subcontractors will utilize them. This can make it difficult to navigate around those differences in technological capability at times.

Introducing new technology can provide a number of benefits when it comes to running your business and managing projects. Adopting certain technologies and practices, such as the use of drones for monitoring workers, can help keep employees safe and the project running smoothly. Those companies that are evolving and adopting smart changes will have a major competitive edge over those that aren’t progressing at the same speed.

Rising Materials Cost:-

One of the last major challenges facing modern construction companies is the rising cost of materials. The pricing of land and raw materials is always changing, and those fluctuating costs can be a major issue for smaller construction companies. Contractors and companies who depend on individual projects don’t have as much leverage and are greatly affected by the costs of a project, while larger companies are able to look beyond the current costs to other or future projects. On top of that, natural disasters can affect supply lines and cause a higher demand for materials, naturally making the prices go up.

Labor Shortage:-

Construction is one of those industries that is constantly in motion. There are always time-sensitive projects progressing at a rapid pace, new buildings going up, and new roads to be paved. If there aren’t enough employees to handle these projects, construction companies can find themselves stretched too thin. A major problem like labor shortages challenges these companies with several additional hurdles, such as added costs and a lengthened project timeline. In short, lack of quality talent makes it hard for companies to provide quality work.

AI & Machine Learning:-

Construction firms are now using data to make better decisions, increase productivity, improve jobsite safety, and reduce risks. With artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning systems, firms can turn the mountains of data they have collected over the years on projects to predict future outcomes on projects and gain a competitive advantage when estimating and bidding on construction projects.

AI can improve worker productivity by reducing the amount of time wasted moving about the construction site to retrieve tools, materials, and equipment to perform certain tasks. Workers are tracked throughout the day using smartphones or wearables.

but the implementation of AI & Machine Learning is a challenge in construction field

BIM:-

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a process that incorporates digital representations of buildings in 3D models to facilitate better collaboration among all stakeholders on a project. This can lead to better design and construction of buildings.

Changes to the BIM model occur in real time, so any changes or updates to the model are instantly communicated to all team members when they access the model. Everyone is working with the most up-to-date information at all times. Because the schedule can be simulated, a visual representation of the construction process allows team members to plan out each phase of construction.

The type of immersive visualization made possible by VR paired with BIM will lead to better collaboration and communication. Virtual reality will also lead to greater acceptance and implementation of BIM. Most virtual reality applications being developed for the AEC industry are using BIM models as the basis to create virtual environments.

Sustainability concerns:-

The construction industry is the top global consumer of raw materials. The industry generates between 25 to 40 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. This volume of natural resource utilization is not sustainable and could compromise the environment for the sake of growth. Climate change and water management are two environmental issues that pose a growing challenge to the construction industry. Achieving targets for global carbon dioxide emissions reduction will be a major challenge for the construction energy in rapidly developing countries like India and China. Smart planning and sustainable design could reduce energy consumption and pollution, but require a new approach to project management– an approach that the construction industry on a whole is not yet prepared to undertake.

Key areas requiring modernisation :-----

Construction industry is aware and recognises the need to modernise in order to tackle the severe problems encountering it. Some of the key areas are:

Profitability: The industry has low and unreliable rate of profitability. Margins are too low to sustain healthy development. Companies who serve well must make better returns.

Research and Development: Little investment in research and development and in capital. It is damaging industry’s capability to keep abreast of innovation in technology and process.

Training: Crisis in training. There exists an increasing concern about shortage of skills in the industry. Fewer people are being trained to replace the aging skilled workforce. Too few are acquiring the technical and managerial skills required to get full value from developing techniques and technologies. The industry also lacks a proper career structure to develop and sustain supervisory and management skills.

Price and cost: Clients still equate price with cost and they are undiscriminating. Selection of designers and contractors are almost exclusively done on the basis of fee bidding and tendered price – one of the greatest barriers to improvement. Public sector interprets accountability in a rather narrow sense. The industry needs to educate and assist its clients and users to distinguish between best value and lowest price.