Smart construction and industry 4.0 challenges and opportunities : a strategic and operational framework to unlock digital transformation

Abstract

The construction industry is always fragmented, labour-intensive, and has slow technology adoption and low-profit margins. Nevertheless, with the development of different global sectors, improvement becomes mandated, especially given the complexity, tight budgets, and squeezed time frames. Rethinking the delivery of construction projects became vital to planning, operating, delivering, and measuring success as the world witnessed a historically unprecedented industrial disruption. This revolution entails transforming humankind. Unlike any predecessor with a linear pace of expansion, Industry 4.0 is spreading exponentially, renovating all traditional strategies and aiming to transform business models across countries, governments, companies, industries, and societies. Like other industries, the construction industry has struggled to take advantage of technology significantly. A fourth industrial revolution and its subsequent "Industry 4.0 and construction 4.0" terminology are invading advanced industries, calling for fully integrated digitalised value chains across ecosystems. The Internet of Things (IoT), digitalisation and offsite construction became the essence of overcoming industry pitfalls. Construction is moving from a Resource-based industry to a knowledge-based sector, considering the borderless boundaries between different sectors by adapting the cross-industry cooperation concept. The research investigates industry 4.0 opportunities and their potential impact on the construction industry throughout the project life cycles from inception to asset management. It seeks to improve physical site delivery by reviewing related concepts, technologies, and supply chains. Emerging technology priority areas are identified, implementation mandates are explored, and challenges and enablers are distinguished. A framework and Roadmap for incorporating industry 4.0 concepts and technologies are proposed. A triangulation approach was adopted throughout the research to integrate results from a literature review and other field works. Focus group workshops helped to understand industry issues and were a key input towards questionnaire design. Survey questionnaires highlighted industry drawbacks and expected improvement of emerging technology implementation, concentrating on linking potential technology and industry inefficient practices. Interviews with industry experts were crucial in associating the findings with corporate strategic objectives and initiating the roadmap. The fieldwork was conducted to satisfy pre-defined research objectives and Initiate/validate the proposed framework for successful implementation at both operational and strategic levels. The primary outcome of the research is a framework and roadmap for digital transformation initiatives with a concentration on the main contractors operating in the GCC area to empower the utilisation of industry 4.0 technologies; both were developed from the field/desk works and validated with different stakeholders operating in the construction industry as the pandemic situation of COVID-19 enforced the need for more technology utilisation and enhanced industry professional awareness and willingness to adapt and change the conventional methods of entire project delivery.