Digital transformation in the construction industry, starting with business automation with AI can digitize operations across every department. Machine Learning in business can help track and evaluate progress. Robotics in the construction industry can ease the heavy lifting work or tasks that are considered hazard prone. Why? Automation in construction can solve problems even without inventing complex solutions which itself becomes a problem to deal with. Leaders adopting artificial intelligence in construction early on are said to experience the most impact on their company’s various needs.
How we design, build, and operate assets is what drives the digital transformation that is going on in the construction industry now, often termed Construction 4.0. It amplifies the bond between technology and people, which can lead to success through an effective management of organizational digital change. An enhanced leadership approach can help navigate it by implementing appropriate digital transformation strategies. The success of making construction 4.0 happens through exceptional digital leadership capabilities.
Digital Transformation in the Construction Industry is Just as Important to Any Industry
Having to adopt digital technologies in a construction business will be determined by how well a leader executes its digital transformation. As digital transformation is dawning upon every industry today, the construction industry is no exception. There is a lot of communication involved in the construction among vendors, customers, subcontractors and a host of other parties on a regular basis.
“Construction is a complex industry where stakeholders have to coordinate closely together, come to the same table to make decisions. There are decisions to be made even in the pre-construction level at the designing stage. It requires people’s coordination either on the construction site or remotely and with pure automation alone can prove to be very helpful here”, said Pratyush Havelia, Co-Founder & CTO, Parspec in a recent interaction with CEO Insights India magazine.
Responsibility of the Leader to Derive Success Out of Digital Transformation
Digital transformation, for its part, helps improve how companies do what they do by enhancing operations and management. But steering the organization towards its success weighs on the leader’s shoulders to utilize those advantages brought forth by digital transformation and innovation.
Leading an Objective’s Success by Utilizing Technology
This involves thinking out of the box to roll out a clear vision and encourage cross-border collaboration. It is thanks to their strategic approach that it helps steer the executives’ focus on the main objectives of the business. This explains why digital leadership expands beyond deploying digital tools. Rather, it’s about using technology to expand on those goals and build a more empowered, connected and productive workforce which results in increasing the customer value and facilitating corporate growth. To others, this kind of leader appears as an inspiration, invoking their ability to think differently and get explorative with ideas.
Distribute the Transformation Team Across All Divisions
Working together as one team may not fall true for every case in the construction business, especially when it is undergoing a major digital shift. For a transformation to work, the leader should distribute the team throughout every business division.
Cross-Functional Transformation
Placing a specialist in technology or AI in particular across each functional area or division is important for cross-functional transformation. These specialists are well-endowed with their departments and possess a diverse range of industry skill sets which solves the hiccups faced by those divisions. They help identify obstacles in the adoption stage and take the right action before letting anything go haywire in the transformation process.
“So of course it helps to have somebody in the team who is always up to date with the latest developments, but they should also have a very good idea of how to implement them and how to convert the theory into a model that can be used or that can be deployed to production”, Havelia added.
However, Havelia also stressed, “AI should not be the beginning of a discussion, it should be treated as a solution where I think it provides maximum value”.
Blend Internal and External Expertise
While leaders create an internal for digital transformation forms one part, the other is to leverage expertise from the outside. This can be considered to having the best of both worlds. While your internal team knows the in and out of your company, bringing in an advisor could mean incorporating external knowledge of the construction sector. Since advisors possess knowledge about the sector, they know what transformation power can be derived by using the needed technology, technique and digital workflows when applied effectively.
Support from C-Suite Executives
Support from a company's C-suite is essential for the successful implementation of a digital transformation plan for the construction sector. Executive leadership commitment is frequently the first step toward change, and it spreads to all organizational levels and divisions. Actually, that entails assigning a digital leader to the C-suite level of executives. The person in question should ideally have prior building industry expertise, but more importantly, they must be able to communicate with both traditionalists and digital transformers. They will guarantee support across the board for the company by doing this.
Figure Out the Problem
Here, it is expected of leaders to anticipate a problem or two, particularly when the team members are used to using traditional procedures and equipment. One way to deal with it is to communicate the advantages of digital transformation that could happen for the company as a whole. Particularly how it can improve the team member’s task and output. In case of stumbling upon deficiencies or inadequate digital skills or experience with latest technologies, it may sound convenient to solve the problem by hiring new candidates. But experts believe that it’s better to invest in training programs that can upskill the existing team members.
Often Times it Involves Making Sense Out of the Huge Information You Have
Every construction site becomes a possible AI data source. A pool of information can be created from data produced by security sensors, mobile device photos, drone footage, building information modeling (BIM), and other sources. Leaders in the sector as well as clients have the chance to examine and profit from the insights derived from the data with the aid of AI and machine learning systems.
According to Havelia’s observations, “It is true that a lot of pain points that potential customers have in the construction industry, especially in the product procurement supply chain, are related to either the lack of uniformly available data or the lack of comprehensive data or unstructured data. You might have a lot of information but it’s very hard to make sense of it.
Find Ways to Solve it
According to Havelia, the first step is to be able to figure out what the problem is or what problems people are facing and then verify it. Then you have to start thinking about solutions or paths to solve that problem. When you are thinking about these potential ways to find a solution, especially when you’re with data, it’s crucial to have AI as one of those solutions as it offers less time consuming solutions.
For example if a building is getting constructed, generally there are large sets of plans in the blueprints, showing what the building design would look like. In these building designs, there’s a lot of information that’s been crammed into these pdf pages, this is where AI is very helpful.
“You can develop targeted AI-based algorithms to extract the right information from these blueprints and immediately present them to the right stakeholder to take a decision on”, highlighted Havelia.