We spoke to 100+ Construction Leaders in-person last week.
Here are the top 5 learnings.
Recently, CONSTRA was chosen as one of the top 50 ConstructionTech Startups in the world, to exhibit at The Big5, Dubai World Trade Centre (Dec 4-7, 2022). This industry event, perhaps the best of its kind, brought together 55,000 people from 150 countries.
It was great to meet leaders from across the world, hear their diverse experiences and unique perspectives. We learnt first-hand, what the industry and the construction leaders expect with changing times. Exchanging ideas and notes with global leaders was both enriching and insightful.
We spoke to 100+ construction leaders in person, and asked them one question, “What do you expect from construction technology?”
We heard a lot of interesting perspectives and expectations. Even in the diverse responses, there were FIVE distinct learnings.
- Beyond brick-and-mortar
- Remote management is just as effective
- Senior leaders deeply care about finer details
- Collaboration and interoperability
- Prioritise great execution over the breadth of solution
Read on, to understand what these mean.
1. Beyond brick and mortar
Technology in construction has become mainstream. Modern construction leaders are actively adopting various technology tools all across the lifecycle of the project. A large percentage of these tools are delivering good ROI too.
A senior architect of a large construction group (based out of Saudi Arabia) said, “We are using SaaS tools to design the detailed architecture plan, identify building materials, and even estimate project costs”. She even confided that there are other software tools that help them with procurement, vendor and contract management as well.
It was also widely agreed that as the project complexity increases, the role of technology becomes even more important.
2. Remote management is just as effective
Construction leaders, at any given time, will be supervising at least half a dozen ongoing projects spread across the country or even beyond. It is not practical to conduct frequent site visits to all the sites. The new-age visual technologies have been proven effective in mitigating this issue.
The CEO of a tier-1 Real Estate development company said, “We conduct virtual walkthroughs to monitor sites and progress. It’s easier to visualize all updates on a single dashboard, drive scheduling and compliance remotely. I now visit the sites only when needed”.
3. Finer details matter
Planning a project is a tedious and long process. But ensuring that the actual construction process ensures every last detail of the plan is a challenging task. In a typical work breakdown structure (WBS) of a construction project, there could be multiple layers and hierarchies of tasks along with a lot of dependencies.
What we learnt is that most senior leaders care deeply about the finer-details!
And they are curious to see if the on-site team is building every last detail, just as meticulously as it was conceived during the planning.
This insight made us realize that leaders demand finer details, and they aspire to remotely and accurately monitor, measure and report the progress over every single/minute aspect of the project.
4. Collaboration, interoperability, and compatibility
A complaint that we consistently heard is the lack of collaboration among the different technology solutions. This is creating project-silos, redundant tasks, and processes inefficiencies, leading to costly reworks.
The industry badly demands that popular technology solutions talk to each other, to ensure collaboration, interoperability, and compatibility. This will encourage construction leaders to adopt new solutions faster and with confidence.
5. Great execution more important than breadth of solution
One of the construction leaders (based in the USA) told us of a time when he tried to solve multiple problems with a single and complex solution. He did not succeed, in spite of spending a lot of money and time. Today, he emphatically told us, “There isn’t a silver bullet. I don’t believe there is a one solution of all”. His suggestion is to start small, focusing on a single problem before moving to the next one. And also that he prefers the technology solution that promises a few things and delivers ROI faster over large organization-wide transformations.
Now, those were the 5 key insights for us. Hope these resonate with you.
Are you curious to know, how CONSTRA is helping construction leaders?
Click here to watch CONSTRA in action.
