Once upon a time – we’ll call it the 1900’s – everything was built using bricks, mortar, timber and slate. Add a little plate glass (and some ironwork if you could afford it, fancy man!) and that was more or less the extent of the materials involved in construction of a home.
From 1917 to 2017
A hundred years ago, electricity had barely been invented, heating was an open fire or a decent coat, and interior plumbing was not standard – truly, those were the glory days of simple construction.
Things have moved on: these days, external and internal walls are multiple layers of framing, riddled with wiring for electrics, sound systems and something called the Internet. The roof on your average one-off house has more valleys than Wales & Scotland combined. Floors are chock-full of pipes going left, right and upside-down for everything from gas to underfloor heating, hot water, cold water, grey water, wastewater—
You get the picture. There’s a lot more going on in your average construction site than there was even twenty years ago.
Spot the Difference
Yet, despite all of these new features, the technology used by the project team has hardly changed:
–Drawings using CAD vs Drawing board.
–Email-camera-telephone vs Fax-camera-telephone.
–Skype meeting with 20 people vs Real meeting with 4.
All of these technologies are progress, but none of these changes has really made construction easier; they’ve just made it faster. That simply puts more pressure on the project team.
On top of that, the project team is more fragmented. Why? Many reasons, including:
1. The design team is both larger and less stable (from project to project) than in the past;
2. Employees change jobs more often;
3. General Contractors have a much leaner workforce and work with a greater churn of Sub-Contractors.
So overall,the effort to coordinate all the disciplines has increased enormously, with little to simplify it.
Okay, enough problems – I want solutions!
They say that acknowledging you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery:
“My name is the Construction Industry, and I have a technology problem.”
Good job!