Nowadays in Thailand, everything is all about 4.0 and every industry contains the word ‘Tech’ at its end. The word ‘Tech’ indicates the use of technology in changing and improving that particular industry. The majority of large company has transformed themselves into ‘Digital Transformation’ ranging from banking industry, real estate company to retail business by referring themselves as FinTech, PropTech, UrbanTech and more. Thus, for construction industry, is there any possible chance to transform itself into something high-Tech like ConstructionTech?
Yes of course there is, ‘construction innovation’. It is now time for our construction sector to adapt and transform into such technological generation even though it might be a bit later than other sectors. From 2017 onward, there will be a huge change in construction technology since people are much more familiar with the use of technology and the the cost of technology has become cheaper. In addition to this, today’s construction managers also have a better understanding in technological environment and due to the lack of labour, the cost of labour has increased and the problem related to environment has become worse, it is time to fix and improve the construction industry by adopting the technological revolution….. the construction sector is moving its huge step.
I and together with thai construction teams have recently joined the CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2017 event in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2017 between 7-11 March . It was a huge exhibition event in North America that is usually organised once every 3 years. (the next round would be scheduled in 2020)
It was extremely a huge construction fair that you have to pay for a ticket at the price of US$195 or approximately about 7000 thai Baht in order to visit those 2500 construction machinery manufacturers that were being displayed in the 250,000 square meters space.
“The Tech Experience” area in CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2017 was arranged in domes outside the main building with the concept of What’s Next?. The future of construction industry was categorised into 4 zones such as;
WHAT’S NEXT: INFRASTRUCTURE
WHAT’S NEXT: JOBSITE
WHAT’S NEXT: WORKFORCE
WHAT’S NEXT: DRONE ZONE
The infrastructure zone displayed several innovations ranging from the of concept of Hyperloop (a new transport system that is said to be faster than a plane) to the new paving materials that is self-rechargeable.
The JOBSITE zone showed the future job site that helps to increase productivity by having IoT(internet of things) that is said to be the next generation high-tech construction machineries such as driverless excavators, dozers, and remote controlled cranes these innovations are not that far from reality. Furthermore, the hottest product that attracted plenty of audiences in this zone would definitely be Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) that are can be used in construction industry and they are often called “ Mixed Reality”. The Mixed Reality is used through the use of helmet and glasses to observe the site.This technology can also be referred as the next chapter of Building Information Modelling.
In the event, i have experienced “Microsoft HoloLens” that was developed by Trimble. I personally think that the product wasn’t that impressive to me as firstly, it was quite difficult to use, secondly it seems inconvenient to adopt this in the real worksite and thirdly the price is extremely high. in my own definition, a good innovation must be usable in reality, effective and attract a large group of audiences.
In my point of view, the innovation that seems to be useful and useable in reality is VR products which can be used in safety training and this is pretty realistic.
In the zone of WORKFORCE, they have introduced some interesting technologies that helps in health&safety for construction workers for instances, a Smart Helmet which has a sensor alert and a costume like Iron Man that can boost energy for workers to lift heavier items.
and the highlight of this project was PROJECT AME: Excavator (blackhole) that was printed by 3D printer. This shows a massive progress in designing and material technology of 3D printer that is able to print and produce models.
Last but not least, DRONE ZONE which i was a bit disappointed as i wanted to see the use of drone in real-work construction but it was turned out to be typical drone show.
After a long walk at THE TECH EXPERIENCE, i spent the rest of my time walking around the building zone especially focusing on software products that insist in construction management, i also had a chat and sharing session with many software producers about the technological trend in the future. These valuable experiences could definitely contribute something to BUILK in the future. Moving to the technological trend in America, the popular Construction Tech would obviously be IBM, Collaboration, Computer Vision / Image Processing, Data Analytics and Machine Learning. These provide various interesting softwares raging from designing process, price estimation,planing, purchasing, accounting,monitoring and building management. However, none of them are free to use like BUILK.
I spent exactly one full-day in this exhibition and interestingly i could only covered 40% of the event.. it was huge. I was too tired i could not manage to see more machineries since the event was located in the middle of dessert, in the heart of Las Vegas the weather was very humid thus i decided to leave. This event at ConstructionTech has my eyes opened and it was amazing to see the construction tech at the booming stage. Hopefully, in the next 3 years at the event, i would definitely see a much more changed contructiontech.
See you again in CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2020!
