A sold-out audience of construction professionals, venture capitalists and technologists at ENR’s recent FutureTech conference in San Francisco were repeatedly warned that the construction industry still is plagued by inefficiency and a lack of technology adoption, but they also were shown many hopeful signs of change, including several examples of the advantages gained from new levels of sharing and managing data.
In order to counter the effects of a shrinking workforce while meeting growing demands for connected, sustainable buildings, construction professionals must learn to capitalize on the troves of data accumulated from digital processes and increase the adoption of building information modeling and design and project collaboration, the presenters stressed.