Technology Dependency

Master cleansing and lifestyle simplification is generally a good thing for improved health, lower stress and overall better focus. A “fast” from technology might have the same short term benefits, but can be crippling long-term.

My dinosaur (read 4 yr old) desktop crashed last week, and the laptop was still on order. For about two days, I read books, pondered a lot, and – ironically – attended a whole host of mini-seminars in technology tools which universities offer nowadays. Tools which were unavailable to me, in my techno challenged condition.

What about the construction industry? Are we techno savy? I’ll venture an opinion based on a measly random sampling and severely skewed observation – but I would say: “it depends.” There are some available tools, like Revit 3+D modeling, with its accompany team of estimating, scheduling, and project management software. But the real world acceptance has been slow – stating reasons of high learning curve, etc.

And then there are a few versions emerging of cloud computing for team projects, shared documentation. This would require hardware support, but jobsites are full of contractors busy texting and sending photos on their phones – so they could be used to send job info as well. The IPad opened the door for cost effective tablets – so it is conceivable that we could be sending installation details to a tablet on the jobsite, or marking up drawings with as-built corrections. The tools are there - will we use them?

The underlying premise for technology to work is team cooperation. And yet, research has shown that much of communication is non-verbal, i.e. body language, facial expressions, and eye contact. Studies have also identified that much of the construction knowledge which the field crew can offer is tacit – which means they don’t write this down, and only offer it when prompted in a group situation.

So it seems that job site trailer coffee meetings first thing in the morning serves a valid function, but perhaps can also be leveraged to develop relationships of trust and understanding which will allow for subsequent messages to be delivered via Tweets, trainings posted on YouTube sites, or even jobsite challenges discussed on forums.

And now, back to formatting my new computer. Send me a post if you know of any new construction related software or blogsites. I’ll be testing out a lot of energy modeling software, and project delivery tools. Let me know if there anything you’d like me to check into.