Construction companies manage technology stacks including a dizzying array of construction software, hardware, on the cloud, on-premises, and proprietary systems. These involve every part of the enterprise from engineering and design, field management, materials management, estimating and tendering, document control, cost control, and payroll, to finance, invoicing, and administration.
New Technology
When we also consider emerging trends and new technology such as drones and wearables, robots, sensors, and IoT, the applications being managed by any construction firm are likely to increase in the hundreds. The new research available at https://intelvision.pro/blog/how-to-make-construction-data-management-a-competitive-advantage-in-the-industry/ for construction data management is huge as is the effort to manage them.
Technology Applications
All these technology applications should be making our lives easier; however, they risk incurring technical debt. Disparate software solutions and hundreds of applications increase software entropy, which pushes against the construction industry’s lean and agile endeavors for project delivery.
How Many Applications a Company Should Adopt?
Construction companies are increasingly adopting and managing hundreds of software applications that risk incurring significant technical debt. It’s worth taking a step back and looking at where this data comes from. Many large construction projects demand client-mandated applications for technical files, collaboration, project management, project controls, scheduling, and handover.
Site Management Tools
In the field, site management tools such as safety, quality, and environment are also generally within the control of the business. These systems need to comply with local construction standards. No construction company’s technology stack can sit in isolation from the clients they serve nor the requirements of local regulations. Equally, it is clear that no one software solution can replace or bundle all the functionalities of a construction business.
The Rise of Digital Platforms
How do construction companies remain lean and agile and bring order to avoid software entropy with so many software solutions and disparate applications? There are logical clusters that group the data management and functionalities within the construction industry.
Task Management and Scheduling
In the field, there are tech solutions for safety, quality, task management, scheduling, or timesheets. When isolated as point-to-point solutions, their utility is limited. Operators in the field need to manage half a dozen applications the context shifting and complexity switching between systems are cumbersome. Equally, construction data management is of limited value when it is not shared in real time.
Integrating Big Data
That’s where platforms come in integrating big data, multiple data sets, data formats, and applications into a single software environment. Seeing the opportunity to deliver customers greater service along the value chain, tech vendors have clustered their solutions into platforms offering end-to-end services.
Digital Platforms
Digital platforms have a network effect offering greater value to the user than the sum of their parts. So, is there a magic number for managing a construction technology stack? Six, seven, eight platforms? The answer is, ‘it depends.