Innovation and management of IT in Construction Industry

Innovation and Management of IT in Construction Industry

1.0 Introduction

Construction Industry has a history of more than 3000 years, from the primitive civilizations up until now. When compare it with a young industry such as IT, one might consider the poor technology growth and innovation in construction industry. The construction industry has not been changed dramatically during the last decades, one might pin point the steel or concrete era in the last century but away from that noting of a great value has been changed. The parties, procurement approaches and many other parameters of construction Industry now is somehow the same as it was in 19^th century. Why is that? The author can think of two main reasons:

A.    Construction Industry Players are pessimistic towards new things and innovations

B.    Construction Industry Players are reluctant to change

When something new is introduced to construction Industry, most of the people in this Industry take a negative approach towards it, “I don’t think this works”, “this has lots of loose ends, this might not work”, “I rather do it my way, at least I know the risks”, “there is no school like old school”. These are common sentences among Construction Industry players when facing some new methods or materials.

Nowadays, IT is a non separable element of people’s life and with its day to day progress it plays more and more important and effective roles in forming people’s lifestyle, there are too few people who was not forced to work with computers in performing their jobs. Nowadays we come across lots of services starting with “E”, E-banking, E-tendering, E-business and so on. 

One thing is for sure, information technology has changed the way things used to work and be, some argue that IT made life easier while others are concerned about growing dependency on it.

2.0 IT in Construction Industry

Construction Industry is a fierce competitive industry in which a single discount in procuring a material can make one company win the tender, given the fact that the numbers in this industry are usually over million, wining a tender normally means gaining lots of money. In such a fierce industry, every player tries to deliver and present its services and goods in the best way possible or gaining some competitive advantage which other competitors don’t have or is very costly for them to imitate,  these advantages are mainly in line with client’s requirements where players understood that money can only been gained trough clients satisfaction.

Client’s requirements can generally be interpreted as time certainty, quality assurance and budgeted cost, this is where Information Technology comes in. There are lots of soft-wares that enable architects and engineers as well as quantity surveyors to deliver their services in the best quality available. There was time that a group of mathematicians come together to calculate the stresses and strains in a building structures using the most complex equations, but now all that engineers should do, is modeling the building structure and run as many simulations as they want and changing as many elements as they like to gaining the most economic yet safe structure design for the building. The story of architects and quantity surveyors is not much different, nowadays there is hardly any architect who actually use the old ways of using rulers and pen and paper, today, thanks to IT, all that the architect needs is a computer with AUTOCAD software installed on and a printer plugged in. technical and specific soft-wares made it possible to deliver the most accurate designs, while management soft-wares made it possible for managers to track, monitor and control every step of a construction project from inception to hand over and make sure that the project delivers all the deliverables in accordance to these main client’s requirements.

IT application in construction industry is not limited to technical and specific soft-ware usage, the internet epidemy, and its penetration rate introduced a new way of effective communication among players in the industry. E-Tendering which is a concept newly introduced to the Malaysian Construction Industry is mainly rest on the basis of internet communications.

The question is: how IT can bring about competitive advantage to the firms in Construction Industry, given the fact that everyone can use it and it is not costly to obtain? When every engineer can use a design soft-ware and every firm can provide precise Bill of Quantities and shop drawings using technical soft-wares how this IT can make any competitive advantage?

These questions rise mainly when one forget about the human factor involving in using the IT, and the characteristics of IT. IT is a fast changing technology which literally every day we witness a new more advanced technology being introduced to the market. Using IT to its full, requires changing at the same pace with the technology itself, it is where IT can be used as a competitive edge. Human factor involved in using the IT should not been under estimated. Although technical soft-wares made it easier to design a structure it cannot make sure that there is no mistakes in designing the structure or there is no better alternative for the being design.

Another thing which contribute to rising the above question is forgetting about innovation and IT management and their effects on the business. Everyone knows about internet but there is one alibaba group, one e-bay, one google, one yahoo, and so on. The thing that makes these distinguished companies different from others is that they never forget about innovation. They innovated and managed that innovation into forming a competitive advantage.

3.0 Conclusion

The story of Construction Industry can be something of the same. Competitive advantages coming from Information Technology is not in form of soft-wares but in form of how to use IT and its flexible characteristics together or in other words, IT management. Those who understand the capability of the IT are those who can use it to their advantage and make a competitive advantage. Almost everyone in construction industry can access to internet and therefore to alibaba group, but those who can use alibaba suppliers in their supply chain are those who used IT to their advantage. Everyone can install an internal computer network in his firm, but those who can use integrated information system are those who can make a competitive advantage.

To sum it all, IT brings lots of advantages in performing the timely and costly jobs in more accurate and time and cost saving manner, but in order for it to bring competitive advantages for party involved in construction industry, it should be combined with innovation and management. IT is a mean, how you use this mean will indicate your competitive advantage. 

Farsad Afroogh  2009724731