Construction in a post-Covid world

The past 18 have been par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult for the con­struc­tion indus­try, large­ly because of the uncer­tain­ty caused by the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. Although work con­tin­ued on many con­struc­tion sites in the UK, the US and oth­er indus­tri­alised economies, social dis­tanc­ing guide­lines, PPE equip­ment and the shift to home-work­ing in the back office have com­pli­cat­ed mat­ters. Con­trac­tors have also faced mate­r­i­al and labour short­ages, increased costs and project deliv­ery chal­lenges, while asset own­ers have strug­gled with reduced rev­enue and dis­rupt­ed demand. So how can we ensure the con­struc­tion indus­try is more resilient in future?

Let’s start with the shift to home-work­ing in the back-office, which Asite has helped to sup­port. Our cloud-based col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­form is designed to man­age work­flows and com­mu­ni­ca­tion across all stake­hold­ers involved in a con­struc­tion project, regard­less of their loca­tion. It allows for full auditabil­i­ty across a project’s life­cy­cle, real-time shar­ing of 3D asset mod­els and inte­grates with tools like Microsoft Teams and Zoom.

We’ve always known that these col­lab­o­ra­tive tech­nolo­gies can deliv­er time and effi­cien­cy sav­ings for the con­struc­tion indus­try, as well as envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits due to reduced trav­el. But over the past eigh­teen months they’ve proven that in spades, and they’re bound to remain part of the con­struc­tion land­scape even as the threat posed by Covid-19 recedes. 

Securing supply chains

The reliance of nation­al indus­try in the UK, US and West­ern Europe on pro­duc­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing in Asia — par­tic­u­lar­ly Chi­na — is all well and good when the glob­al sup­ply chain and the ship­ping indus­try func­tions per­fect­ly. But the pan­dem­ic has exposed this sys­tem to severe stress­es and strains. Just look at ship­ping: capac­i­ty has gone down but the cost has gone through the roof, which is cre­at­ing major sup­ply issues for every­thing from bricks to tim­ber.

As such, we’re like­ly to see a shift to more localised and region­al man­u­fac­tur­ing in future, which may well be health­i­er for many economies. Con­trac­tors are also look­ing at how they can order con­struc­tion mate­ri­als more effi­cient­ly, man­age scarce resources more accu­rate­ly and main­tain cash flow dur­ing uncer­tain times — and here, again, tech­nol­o­gy has much to offer.

Think about the kind of rapid deliv­ery that Ama­zon spe­cialis­es in, which allows cus­tomers to order some­thing and receive it the next — or even the very same — day. Now imag­ine that phi­los­o­phy applied to the con­struc­tion indus­try.

This isn’t a new idea. Just-in-time deliv­ery, which reduces the num­ber of items that need to be stored on-site, has been a dis­cus­sion top­ic in the con­struc­tion indus­try for many years. At Asite, it’s always been our goal to dig­i­tal­ly con­nect the con­struc­tion sup­ply chain and make it more effi­cient, so our plat­form allows buy­ers to browse a supplier’s online prod­uct cat­a­logue on-site, order some­thing direct­ly, and have it deliv­ered right away. This not only stream­lines pro­cure­ment process­es but also ensures you have a sin­gle source of truth for project spend across the entire sup­ply chain.

That sin­gle source of truth can also help to address pay­ment prob­lems. The com­pli­cat­ed flow of funds from fun­ders to project own­ers, and from them to the gen­er­al con­trac­tor, and then on down the chain to var­i­ous sub­con­trac­tors and oth­er trades, often means it takes a long time for the peo­ple at the bot­tom to get paid. In the mean­time, they have to fund every­thing out of their own cash flow, which is dif­fi­cult for a small busi­ness.

The UK gov­ern­ment has put in place a prompt pay­ment code, but this is only real­ly enforce­able for gov­ern­ment projects. What our tech­nol­o­gy can do is pro­vide every­body in the sup­ply chain with vis­i­bil­i­ty of what work has been com­plet­ed, when, and where the funds for it cur­rent­ly are. This trans­paren­cy can encour­age pay­ments to be made in a prompt and time­ly man­ner.

New jobs and technologies

Sus­tain­able economies need more blue-col­lar and pro­duc­tion ori­en­tat­ed jobs — not just knowl­edge-based white-col­lar ones. These jobs are need­ed in every town and city across the US, and in many cas­es they’re well paid too. For instance, con­struc­tion is the only indus­try in the US where you can get a $60,000, $70,000 or $80,000 job with­out a col­lege degree. 

Biden’s infra­struc­ture plan, which is cur­rent­ly expect­ed to pro­vide rough­ly $1tn of invest­ment, should help to cre­ate more of these jobs while address­ing prob­lems with the US’s age­ing infra­struc­ture. This will undoubt­ed­ly be a net pos­i­tive for the con­struc­tion indus­try.

The intro­duc­tion of new tech­nolo­gies like on-site AR, which can help to dig­i­tal­ly iden­ti­fy issues with a project before they become major prob­lems, is also help­ing to make these jobs more excit­ing and attrac­tive to grad­u­ates. Mod­ern Meth­ods of Con­struc­tion (MMC) is also now being embraced by a grow­ing num­ber of com­pa­nies. For instance, Berke­ley Homes auto­mat­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty in North­fleet, Kent, will pro­duce mod­u­lar hous­ing prod­ucts that roll straight off the assem­bly line onto trucks, which will deliv­er them straight to site.

All this comes at a time when asset own­ers are look­ing to future-proof their assets. But keep­ing track of all the changes we face today, from fluc­tu­at­ing demand for cer­tain types of real estate to labour short­ages, can seem like an almost insur­mount­able task. It’s a chal­lenge that Asite can help to solve, how­ev­er, by ensur­ing that all the cru­cial infor­ma­tion relat­ing to an asset, from draw­ings and mod­els to cer­tifi­cates and invoic­es, is read­i­ly avail­able to asset man­agers across the asset’s entire life­cy­cle. That means no more time-con­sum­ing and expen­sive audits, and a bet­ter abil­i­ty to exe­cute the right strat­e­gy for an asset at the right time.

Speak­ing of the right strat­e­gy, it’s now clear that many busi­ness­es in the con­struc­tion sec­tor feel, like us, that empow­er­ing peo­ple to work togeth­er vir­tu­al­ly, sup­port­ed by the right data and rich col­lab­o­ra­tion tools, is a step in the right direc­tion. So while the past 18 months have been tough for our indus­try, the future looks a whole lot brighter.