4 Ways New Technology Will Help Lead the UK Into Recovery

With UK builders reporting in summer the strongest rise in activity for almost five years, the construction sector carries a hefty burden as the Government looks to it as the lead to driving financial recovery amidst the ongoing health crisis.

Heeding this challenge, there are a vast array of other well-known pain points for construction firms including budgeting, communication, productivity, risk management and client satisfaction.

Despite this, there are exciting new technology solutions ready to use now which will overcome these problem-areas and empower your team with new insights and vision to work smartly, efficiently and deliver a project which meets and exceeds your client’s expectations. 

AR/VR

Currently under-utilised because of cost and complexity, the use of AR and VR in the business workplace will see an expected 5 fold growth within the next 3 years according to CNBC. This is further supported by the consequence of the health pandemic of working from home, fall in price of current technology such as the Oculus headset, and inclusion of LiDAR in Apple products.

Using AR/VR in the early lifecycle of a project could potentially flag up flaws, if which left undiscovered, would be costly to overcome at late stages without significant cost or time-delays, even worse changing the scope of the project entirely.

Where this technology provides major benefits though is the ability to visualise a whole project with detail by providing full immersion to the client and stakeholders which isn’t possible with 2D or CAD, as well as the benefit of making quick project amends, measuring the impact and approval process shortened, reducing cost and improving agility to give you as a Project Manager, a significant competitive advantage.

Generative Design - Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

Imagine when designing a solution in your next project, that a piece of software can look back to hundreds of other projects similar to yours to learn from previous mistakes and help create a better solution. This is Generative Design and it’s already being used by some of the world’s leading companies.

This insightful blog post from New Equipment Digest talks through an Airbus case study where this approach reduced 30kg off the weight of just one single part for an airplane, resulting in large cost benefits in materials and resources.

Project Management Software

According to a study by KPMG, just 31% of construction projects came within 10% of the budget and 53% of respondents suffered underperforming projects.

Professional project management software such as CORE has been specially designed and built from the ground up by a team of experienced construction project management professionals which smartly manages project data from both clients and the project teams and presents this in easy to understand visual reports and dashboards, measuring key project metrics with built-in early warning notifications to help keep a project on track.  For a limited time, try CORE for free.

Drones

Not commonly known, Unmanned Air Vehicles (UVA) have been in use since 1916 and have significantly evolved into fully-featured palm-sized varieties which can reach inaccessible areas, hazardous areas and conditions and collect highly-accurate real-time information quickly, reducing the cost and hazards involved for a person to do the same task.

We have seen how new technology is key to helping construction firms overcoming both well known and new challenges, and it can also give project managers and Director’s a competitive edge; which is vital for it to deliver a successful project on time, on budget and to client approval.

Without adopting such new technology, construction firms may struggle under the pressure to lead the UK into the positive shoots of recovery.