How to improve your construction skills

Digital technologies and methodologies are changing how construction professionals work. Earlier this year, Marzia Bolpagni of Mace introduced five key concepts that those in the industry need to master to stay relevant and competitive in the future.

We’ll cover those five concepts and leave you with some resources to start sharpening your construction skills for Industry 4.0.

5 key building and construction skills to master in 2022

Below, we present the concepts that construction professionals should focus on in 2022 and discuss how to learn the construction skills necessary to be successful in the changing industry.

1. Soft skills for construction leadership

The need for soft skills isn’t going away even with the increased adoption of technology in the construction industry. If anything, they are becoming more important as high levels of automation and efficiency improvements become the new normal.

While all soft skills are crucial for construction professionals, let’s focus on the top three:

• Communication—both verbal and nonverbal—is an essential skill for anyone in the construction industry. In the best case, miscommunication can cause mistakes and delays, but in the worst case, it can cause accidents and injuries on the job site.
• Critical thinking is another must-have construction skill for professionals, even more so as AI and robotics take over more tasks in the industry. And with the number of subcontractors participating in a single project, being able to quickly adapt to changes is a critical construction skill.
• Conflict management earned its spot in the top three soft skills for construction professionals for good reason: No project ever runs perfectly. Knowing how to make the right decisions on the fly can mean the difference between a successfully completed project and a disaster.

2. Lean and agile construction job skills for project managers

As construction professionals, we must embrace and adapt to the new technologies and approaches being taken to project management. As many construction sites move more towards the manufacturing side of things, we have to understand and adopt the lean and agile methodologies being introduced into the construction world.

You might’ve heard of lean and agile in terms of software development, but what do they mean for the construction industry?

Lean construction skills consist of these basic concepts: planning, designing, and scheduling your work incrementally and reducing construction waste. Learn more here.

Free eBook: Quick guide to Lean practices for construction professionals

Agile construction management is about clearly defining goals, breaking down each project into smaller tasks, and understanding when each task begins and ends. Learn more here.

3. Modern methods of construction and building skills

With the innovative techniques of modern methods of construction (MMC) turning to alternative construction methods, industry professionals must learn new sets of construction skills. Those skills include learning how to efficiently work with modular construction practices, construction robotics, offsite manufacturing strategies, etc.

Basically, MMC focuses on developing new techniques in the sector to minimise labour costs, improve the overall quality of construction, and accelerate the delivery of projects. Learning these construction skills is necessary for every construction professional moving forward.

Modern methods of construction: Who’s doing what? is a great resource published by the NHBC Foundation if you want to learn more about and improve on this construction job skill.

4. Reality capture as a construction skill

As the industry develops new ways to capture real-time information through technologies like drones and laser scanners, learning how to use these tools is a crucial construction job skill for the future. Other than using reality capture to obtain information about project sites, construction professionals need the skills to act upon that data.

Further reading: Where to Find Commercial Construction Leads

Reality capture goes hand-in-hand with the final skill on our list (BIM), as we can feed the information we obtain directly into our models to help stick to design plans, verify data accuracy, and ensure the validity of ongoing construction processes.

This report is an excellent read for any construction executive or project manager who wants to learn more about how to turn reality capture into a useful construction skill.

5. Building information modelling (BIM) construction skills

BIM has become something of a buzzword in the construction industry over the past few years, but it’s time we realise that it means much more than 3D modelling. The future of construction is driven by data, and to get that data, we need to make improvements in our information management—and BIM is the enabling factor.

When it comes to mastering new construction skills in 2022, adopting BIM-driven processes is one of the best ways to improve your information management and allow every project stakeholder to share and act on their data in real-time.

Learn how to choose, use, and implement the right BIM software for your construction organisation here.

By integrating your 3D modelling software and information management with BIM software, your construction company can see benefits like:

• Increased multidisciplinary coordination
• Faster delivery and better time management
• Optimised quality of project deliverables
• Improved productivity and efficiency
• Fewer errors and delays and less information loss
• Higher ROI and reduced project costs

Learn more about how using LetsBuild can help you start improving your construction skills with your free demo of LetsBuild.