Q. How are we preparing our students to enter this new age?
The new age of engineering and construction technology
By Jose Luis Blanco, Andrew Mullin, Kaustubh Pandya, and Mukund Sridhar
New technologies are transforming all stages of the engineering and construction process. Here's what companies need to know about the evolving landscape.
The engineering and construction (E&C) industry is at the cusp of a new era, with technology start-ups creating new applications and tools that are changing how companies design, plan, and execute projects. By providing advanced software, construction-focused hardware, and analytics capabilities, these innovative start-ups are eliminating many of the problems that have dogged the E&C sector for decades, including difficulties compiling and sharing project information. Such improvements could not come at a better time, since construction projects are becoming increasingly complex and expensive, putting managers under greater pressure to improve costs, timelines, and efficiency.
The technological transformation at engineering and construction firms
Construction-technology start-ups have garnered $10 billion in investment funding from 2011 through early 2017. To gain a more detailed view of this strong market and its evolution, we first identified all tools and solutions that construction technology start-ups have developed. We then determined how each tool addressed or eliminated problems throughout the course of E&C projects-looking at both the phase in which they are used and the particular problem they solve (Exhibit 1).
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William Hayden Ph.D., P.E., CP, F.ASCE
Adjunct Asst. Professor
Management Quality By Design, Inc.
Amherst NY
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