Global Digital Transformation on the Building and Construction Sector, Forecast to 2025

Digitalization, Analytics, Smart Assets, and Materials Key Toward Smart Construction

Digital transformation journey has to be adopted in order to stay competitive. The building and construction industry productivity in general is largely left behind, compared to other industries, due to the slow digital transformation movement. Poor planning, lack of automation, insufficient communication, inadequate risk management, and unsophisticated supply chain practices are the major factors hampering productivity and causing significant cost and time overruns. The need to boost productivity, coupled with the need to minimize project overruns and the reliance on unskilled labor, is the top driver for IT adoption in the construction industry. In addition, the combination of new mega trends like urbanization, connectivity & convergence, smart is the new green, artificial intelligence, and other social trends are driving transformational changes in the industry. Ultimately, the move toward digital transformation will be inevitable for the building and construction industry.

Research Highlights

Digital transformation in the construction industry focuses on three key areas: i) Big data: management of bulk data, allowing information sharing on transparent and accountable platforms and processes, encouraging a collaborative and inclusive decision-making process, as well as better analysis and prediction; ii) Automation: facilitates competitiveness, reduces unpredictability that contributes to time and cost overruns, and improves resiliency to threats and interruptions; and iii) Standardization: leads to efficient resource management, simplifies operations and supply chain, minimizes waste and boost efficiency, and facilitates innovation and sustainability.

Despite the increasing availability of digital solutions, the industry has to overcome the challenge of rolling out technology across multiple sites, subsectors, and stakeholders. The way forward will be a platform that promotes interoperability. The regulatory framework has to be strengthened as well and the overall perception of industry stakeholders has to be debunked to enhance awareness and the willingness to invest in this digital transformation journey.

This analysis on current building and construction industry journey towards digital transformation shows the fundamental issues in the industry and identify achievable digital transformation opportunities. Case studies and examples of current digital transformation implementations are provided to showcase possible applications.

Key Issues Addressed

• What are the industry challenges that can to be solved with digital transformation?
• What will happen to companies that cannot keep up with digital transformation? Who will win? Who will be threatened by them?
• What are the customer values by adopting digital transformation in the building and construction sector?
• What are the growth opportunities? Who are the key providers of digital transformation within the building and construction sector?
• Why must digital transformation be a part of the company's corporate strategy? What are the innovative business models that can be mirrored?