The potential of digital technology to improve construction productivity

Despite increasing adoption of digital technology in construction, productivity reports have remained disappointing. To develop insights into the reasons of this contradiction, the present paper suggests drawing on organisational competitiveness literature considering that the factors-affecting-productivity are conveniently captured within that literature. Through a questionnaire survey, the paper analyses the views of managers in the UK construction industry regarding the effect of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Big Data Analytics (BDA) on organisational competitiveness. The results are then traced back to the factors affecting-productivity for discussion. It is concluded that digitalisation enables performance improvements that can be tied to productivity gains, but this relies on the presence of certain skills and knowledge, which require training. It is also concluded that the lack of impact of digitalisation on some of the factors-affecting-productivity may be limiting the impact of digitalisation on the overall productivity, thus leading to a stagnating productivity.

The original paper was first published by ARCOM as part of the Conference Proceedings