What's the real story around digital technologies in construction management?

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Authors
Puolitaival, Taija
Kestle, Linda
Kähkönen, K.
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Date
2018-09
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Conference Contribution - Paper in Published Proceedings
Ngā Upoko Tukutuku (Māori subject headings)
Keyword
building construction industry
construction management (CM)
digital technologies (DT)
literature reviews
longitudinal analysis
Citation
Puolitaival, T., Kestle, L., & Kähkönen, K. (2018). What's the real story around digital technologies in construction management?. In Do, K., Sutrisna, M., Hammad, A. & Ramanayaka (Ed.), 42nd Australasian Universities Building Education Association (AUBEA) Conference: Educating building professionals for the future in the globalised world , Vol. 2: Technology (pp. 251-260).
Abstract
The highly fragmented project nature of the construction industry, small companies and shortterm thinking has made the construction industry traditionally slow in adopting new methods and technology, and the least digitalised of all the industry sectors. However, there are strong signs: Building Information Modelling, mobile and cloud computing to name a few, that digitalisation has finally reached the construction industry. Continuous change is affecting construction management processes through the changes in construction technology, manufacturing technology, technology on site, and the technology for project management and communication. Although ‘digital’, ‘digitisation’, ‘digitalisation’ and even ‘information technology’ have been clearly defined in the literature, ‘digital technology’ has been poorly defined in general and there is no agreement as to what ‘digital technologies’ means in the construction management context. In addition, there is no clear understanding about the scale and pace of the technological change. This research explores what the term ‘digital technology’ means and what it means in the construction management context, and analyses the scale and pace of the ongoing change using a literature review with longitudinal analysis. This is necessary to assist further analysis of the digital technologies themselves, but more specifically to understand the impact of the change in the construction industry.
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Curtin University (Bentley, Western Australia)
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© Copyright in individual articles contained in the Proceedings of the AUBEA Conference 2018 is vested in each of the author(s). Copyright for these proceedings is vested in Curtin University on behalf of AUBEA.
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