The Impact Of IoT On Construction Industry: Opportunities And Possibilities

IoT Applications in the Construction Process

The growth of IOT has influenced several sectors including the construction industry. IOT applications enables remote operation, supply replenishment, Construction Tools and Equipment Tracking, Equipment Servicing and Repair, Remote Usage Monitoring, Power and Fuel Savings, Augmented Reality and Building Information Modeling. In the construction business, the total cost of ownership is one of the main factor to consider along with the fuel consumption and life cycle (Riggins & Wamba, 2016). Enhanced technologies can assist the construction industry to monitor such aspects carefully so they will be able to take precise decision in order to maximize the work schedule effectiveness. Nowadays, multiple construction organization adopt the IOT technologies in order to achieve better productivity and avoid causalities in large scale projects (Rifkin, 2014). Technologies such as RFID tags are implemented in the Supplies in order to count the requirement and availability of such supplies. Experts believes, the future of IOT in the construction industry will be defiantly an area to keep an eye on.  

IOT application can provide multiple support in various construction process which will surely make things easier for the constructors and other associates. These applications can enable automation which will be the biggest branch mark in the construction industry. In the current state, the development of IOT applications and the adoption of such technologies offers multiple opportunities which will directly impact the construction industry and stakeholders associated with the industry (Dave et al., 2016). Some of the possibilities are followed:

Supply Replenishment:  Every project requires certain resources which are necessary to construct projects. Generally, constructors collect some of the supplies and wait until the supplies are used and then order or collect new supplies (Oesterreich & Teuteberg, 2016). Supplies can be comprised with a RFID tags to count the supplies and understand the requirement of supplies as well. The projects will have better chances to complete in time and company does not need to buy in significantly more supplies.  

Remote usage monitoring: IOT applications can also be used to monitor the whole work process and prevent worker fatigue and possible accidents (Ashworth & Perera, 2018). Certain construction process along with the hour, taken to complete can be logged automatically. This will surely assist the construction industry to maximize their productivity.

Equipment tracking and construction tools:   It will help reduce the time lost looking for mislaid items as well as the cost of purchasing replacements. GPS data is already being used to monitor vehicle fleet locations.

Supply Replenishment

In construction site, the availability of supply unit is essential or the whole project will stay at put for uncertain amount of time and in worst case, it could leads to project failure. In order to properly monitor such units, In order to adopt this approach, there are certain aspects needs to be focused on.

• All stakeholders must approve these approach in order to make it possible. Their support is essential to monitor and respond to the RFID alerts.
• Constructor executives must adopt such technology widely as it will trigger more production and development of technologies.
• RFID tags manufacturer must consider the supply types of construction industry. For a proper construction, several type of resources are essential. Typical tags cannot be connected with every unit of supply and the measurement process is also differ (Zhong et al., 2017).
• The central system must be accessible from different location. Manufacturer must offer several way to access the central system with proper authentication and functionality.

This scenario is involved with the supply and resupply event on a construction site. Resources availability count is need to be monitored frequently as lack of required resources can lead to project late completion. The below diagrams describes the events with certain decision points. The supply count and collection process contains several activities includes get supply, use resources, check existing supply unit, alert central system and resupply. The key decision point occur when the availability of resources is counted. The optimal result identified as, RFID tags are capable of notifying the low availability of the resources to the construction executives.

Above figures describes the typical resupply procedures without utilizing any kind of technology. Generally, constructors stores supplies for a short amount of time. The total estimation of the supplies cannot be conducted precisely due to several uncertainty. Contractors collect some supply which will be used for a short amount of time and reorder or collect supply again when necessary. The supply needs to be constantly monitored in order to count the resources manually which is a time consuming process. If they are unable to calculate the supplies count properly, construction process can stay at put if supplies are over.

This typical process can be altered by utilizing the RFID tags on the supplies. RFID tags can be useful to count the supplies and notify the executives about the supply shortage at appropriate time. RFID tags can count the supply units and update the unit status as it decreases.

References:

Ashworth, A., & Perera, S. (2018). Contractual procedures in the construction industry. Routledge.

Dave, B., Kubler, S., Främling, K., & Koskela, L. (2016). Opportunities for enhanced lean construction management using Internet of Things standards. Automation in construction, 61, 86-97.

Oesterreich, T. D., & Teuteberg, F. (2016). Understanding the implications of digitisation and automation in the context of Industry 4.0: A triangulation approach and elements of a research agenda for the construction industry. Computers in Industry, 83, 121-139.

Rifkin, J. (2014). The zero marginal cost society: The internet of things, the collaborative commons, and the eclipse of capitalism. St. Martin’s Press.

Riggins, F. J., & Wamba, S. F. (2015, January). Research directions on the adoption, usage, and impact of the internet of things through the use of big data analytics. In System Sciences (HICSS), 2015 48th Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 1531-1540). IEEE.

Zhong, R. Y., Peng, Y., Xue, F., Fang, J., Zou, W., Luo, H., … & Huang, G. Q. (2017). Prefabricated construction enabled by the Internet-of-Things. Automation in Construction, 76, 59-70.

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