Construction 4.0 Book

 

CONSTRUCTION 4.0

An Innovation Platform for the Built Environment

Edited by Anil Sawhney, Mike Riley and Javier Irizarry

 

 

 A new book on Construction 4 from Routledge. As the table of contents below show, it is a comprehensive  review of the state of play as the technologies of industry 4 get adapted and adopted to construction. The book is good evidence that the built environment industries can (should? will?) be a leading sector for application of these technologies. From the book's introduction:

Modelled on the concept of Industry 4.0, the idea of Construction 4.0 is based on a confluence of trends and technologies that promise to reshape the way built environment assets are designed, constructed, and operated. With the pervasive use of Building Information Modelling (BIM), lean principles, digital technologies, and offsite construction, the industry is at the cusp of this transformation. The critical challenge is the fragmented state of teaching, research, and professional practice in the built environment sector. This handbook aims to overcome this fragmentation by describing Construction 4.0 in the context of its current state, emerging trends and technologies, and the people and process issues that surround the coming transformation.

Construction 4.0 is a framework that is a confluence and convergence of the following broad themes discussed in this book:

• Industrial production (prefabrication, 3D printing and assembly, offsite manufacture)

• Cyber-physical systems (actuators, sensors, IoT, robots, cobots, drones)

• Digital and computing technologies (BIM, video and laser scanning, AI and cloud computing,

big data and data analytics, reality capture, Blockchain, simulation, augmented

reality, data standards and interoperability, and vertical and horizontal integration)

 

The book has 28 chapters. Part 1 has 4 chapters discussing the idea of cyber-physical systems. Part 3 has 4 case studies. The core of the book is Part 2 where the elements of C4.0 are identified and current developments explained. These chapters are:

Potential of cyber-physical systems in architecture and construction

Lauren Vasey and Achim Menges

Applications of cyber-physical systems in construction

Abiola A. Akanmu and Chimay J. Anumba

A review of mixed-reality applications in Construction 4.0

Aseel Hussien, Atif Waraich, and Daniel Paes

Overview of optoelectronic technology in Construction 4.0

Erika A. Pärn

The potential for additive manufacturing to transform the construction industry

Seyed Hamidreza Ghaffar, Jorge Corker, and Paul Mullett

Digital fabrication in the construction sector

Keith Kaseman and Konrad Graser

Using BIM for multi-trade prefabrication in construction

Mehrdad Arashpour and Ron Wakefield

Data standards and data exchange for Construction 4.0

Dennis R. Shelden, Pieter Pauwels, Pardis Pishdad-Bozorgi, and Shu Tang

Visual and virtual progress monitoring in Construction 4.0

Jacob J. Lin and Mani Golparvar-Fard

Unmanned Aerial System applications in construction

Masoud Gheisari, Dayana Bastos Costa, and Javier Irizarry

Future of robotics and automation in construction

Borja Garcia de Soto and Miroslaw J. Skibniewski

Robots in indoor and outdoor environments

Bharadwaj R. K. Mantha, Borja Garcia de Soto, Carol C. Menassa, and Vineet R. Kamat

Domain-knowledge enriched BIM in Construction 4.0: design-for-safety and crane safety cases

Md. Aslam Hossain, Justin K. W. Yeoh, Ernest L. S. Abbott, and David K. H. Chua

Internet of things (IoT) and internet enabled physical devices for Construction 4.0

Yu-Cheng Lin and Weng-Fong Cheung

Cloud-based collaboration and project management

Kalyan Vaidyanathan, Koshy Varghese, and Ganesh Devkar

Use of blockchain for enabling Construction 4.0

Abel Maciel

 

Construction as a technological system of production: A life cycle approach

 Innovation and industry evolution

The stages in the life cycle of an industry typically start with first applications of a new invention by technology leaders, followed by development and refinement of products and services, before becoming a mature industry with well-understood products and practices. Mature industries are past the early growth phase, their culture of technology has stabilised and the shape of industrial structure and processes has emerged. In many cases these industries are oligopolistic, with a few specialised firms dominating market niches in the supply chain. Consolidation leads to concentration. 

The new technology that starts a cycle of industry development can be a general purpose technology (GPT) that becomes the basis of a new system of industrial production. The key feature of a GPT is ‘pervasiveness’, how it is used by other sectors in the economy and leads to ‘complementary investments and technical change in the user sections’ (Helpman and Trajtenberg 1998: 86).  The examples originally used by David (1990), and broadly followed since, were steam, electricity and information technology.  Lipsey, Carlaw and Bekar  (2005) include two organizational GPTs in their list of two dozen since 9000BCE: mass production and the factory system; and lean production and the Toyota system. It is widely believed AI is a new GPT.

Thinking about the construction industry and the production of the built environment as an evolving ‘system of production’ provides a new perspective on the context and direction of innovation and its evolution since the first industrial revolution. Hughes’ (1987) life cycle model had seven phases: invention, development, innovation, transfer, growth, competition, and consolidation. Within those seven phases of the life-cycle are two interior cycles that divide an industry’s evolution into two stages: Cycle 1 is invention, development, innovation, and transfer, Cycle 2 is growth, competition, and consolidation.

Cycle 2 focuses on innovation in production and organization, when mature technological systems emerge and construction materials like cement, concrete and glass, and components like building management systems, interior walls, plumbing fixtures, lifts and elevators have become oligopolistic industries in a mature supply chain. A mature industry produces a specific culture of technology, embodied in the firms and social institutions of the system of production, and creates the tendency for an industry to develop along defined technological trajectories unless or until deflected or disrupted by a powerful external force.

A diverse cluster of industries with deep layers of specialised firms in a dense network of producers, suppliers and materials is a ‘technological system’ (Hughes 1987: 47). Electricity grids and railways have networks, telecommunications and air traffic use interconnected nodes, postal systems use existing networks, some are geographically large, some are local, some are narrow, some broad.  

Construction innovation has been narrowly focused because construction is a mature technological system, but this is changing. With a technological trajectory based on AI and associated emerging production technologies, the commercial contracting part of the industry will adopt these technologies as they become viable. The organization and structure of the industry will then change in response to changes in relative costs as the economies of scale of digitized production technologies are realized.

AI as a new GPT may be the start of a new life cycle in building and construction technology, and may be as disruptive as steam power was in the nineteenth century to the master builders and craftsmen of the day. The organization of construction is currently centred on project managers and incremental innovation, but a transformed industry would be focused on integrators who combine site preparation with production and assembly of digitally designed and fabricated components and modules.

 

 

David, P. A. 1990, The Dynamo and the Computer: An Historical Perspective on the Modern Productivity Paradox‟, American Economic Review, Vol. 80, pp. 355 - 361.

Helpman. E. and Trajtenberg, J. 1998. Diffusion of General Purpose Technologies, in Helpman, E. (ed.), General Purpose Technologies and Economic Growth, Cambridge: MIT Press. 85-119.

Hughes, T. P. 1987. The evolution of large technological systems, in The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes, and T. J. Pinch (eds.), Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Hughes, T. P. 1989. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870-1970, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

Lipsey, R. G., Carlaw, K. I. and Bekar, C. T. 2005. Economic Transformations: General Purpose Technologies and Long-term Economic Growth, Oxford: Oxford University Press.