Shop NRCA has the industry resources you need
News Dec. 14, 2021

Report explores obstacles regarding construction and digital tools

An October 2021 survey from Dodge Construction Network shows 95% of the 648 office- and field-level construction industry respondents are ready to take on new digital tools, according to www.constructiondive.com. Another 95% of field workers said they would be willing to use digital tools to combine or streamline parts of their work.

Still, construction generally has been slow to adopt technology. Only 15% of respondents have implemented a digital transformation strategy, and 38% of respondents said they have not built out a strategy or it is not a priority.

Dan McCarthy, CEO of Dodge Construction Network, said the industry’s desire for accurate data is a good sign. However, employing a digital transformation comes with challenges.

Of the 49% of office workers who had issues implementing a digital strategy, 42% reported hardware and software issues slowed or stopped a project. Thirty-nine percent of those respondents said such issues made the project more expensive overall, and 19% said staff failure to adopt the new strategy stalled the project and resulted in no improvement in their work.

“What's really behind the challenges is that it’s hard to organize data and deploy it in a way that it can create value for companies,” McCarthy said.

In September, Autodesk released a report showing bad data was costing the construction industry $1.8 trillion annually. It also found 30% of the report’s respondents said more than half their data was “bad” and unusable in their work. Autodesk encouraged companies to employ formal data strategies to make the best use of data collected.

Advertisement

Subscribe for Updates Join 25,000+ roofing professionals following NRCA

Subscribe to NRCA