How Technology in Construction is Changing Things

As I cast my mind back, a couple of historical construction technological changes made a terrific difference in construction! I say “historical” because I’m pretty certain many readers have been used to them all their working lives! The two came about in the same era; AutoCAD and the mobile phone!

AutoCAD made drawing production a lot quicker and easier while the mobile phone, the mobile phone! That saved hours day! No more wandering for miles around a big site, or up and down hundreds of stairs, looking for the guy you needed to speak to!

Then we got computers on site with internet connections! That meant that revised drawings could be sent to us instantly without having to wait days for the post to arrive. Forward thinking contractors forked out £800 for a plotter on site so we could print off our own copies to hand around!

That’s where we stuck for, I suppose, a couple of decades. Certainly our techie gear got better but had the drawback of costing us money to keep up-grading it. But now? The times they are a changing!

Someone invented The Cloud! – (could have done a better job of it because the dam**d thing is pouring down rain here!) That went along with a huge increase in the data capacity of the servers. They both went along with another huge increase in the capacity that fibre optics could handle! – and we got Wi-Fi.

Now technology is in the process of really changing things in construction! The techies are at it and are banging out software and Apps for our specific use! The best of these, by a long, long way, is GenieBelt! In today’s world everyone from the Clients’ Project Managers to the site labourers have smart phones. What this means is that absolutely everyone who has to know anything will immediately have the latest information in their hand! All they have to do is look at their mobile phone! Obviously that information is also available on tablets, laptops and desktop computers.

What this instant transfer of information will mean for construction has vast implications for us. It will savage the time on things that have to be re-worked because it currently takes information a few days to come through and get disseminated. That time will be saved, which will cut down Claims and a lot of argument. It will accelerate projects at the same time because little or no re-work required. Far easier to finish by due date! All that is what I’ve blogged about before: time costs money. The other thing saved is paperwork! The only things that will require bits of paper to change hands, and then get filed, are those with commercially confidential information on them!  There is another sneaky thing that technology will change, too, and a very important one!

Because everyone involved knows everything, which includes requests for action by other parties to the project, nobody wants to look like an ineffectual Plonker! They will be focussed on doing what is requested of them p.d.q.!!! Actually, they’ll perhaps even be grateful for being asked! Because their GB App is saving them hours a day handling paperwork they might be bored at work!