There are very few times in your life that you can pause, take a moment, and say to yourself, ‘I am living through something incredible…..right now.’ Something that, years from now, history will reveal as an era that shaped our industry forever. The next decade will most certainly prove to be one of those times; so here are three reasons you may want to keep your head on a swivel for the next 10 years.
1) Massive opportunity.
The construction industry might be one of the last traditional frontiers for technological advancement. I throw in the word ‘traditional’ because entirely new spaces are being created every year now, but of the already established industries, construction might have the farthest to go. That is certainly not to say that we haven’t come a long way in recent years, but an industry worth upwards of $8.5 trillion will surely attract some more big players in the very near future. My mind could be playing tricks on me, but I’m envisioning something like the California gold rush effect here.
2) Big data.
Speaking from a global perspective for just a moment, did you know that 90% of all the data that exists on planet earth was collected in the last two years? Yeah, that’s right… for every 10 pieces of data, one of them was collected in the last several thousand years, and nine of them were collected in the last two years! The construction industry is no exception to that statistic, and with that much information to analyze, you can bet that companies will be offered solutions to problems they didn’t even know they had (seriously).
3) Connectivity.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is here to stay, and gaining momentum like a runaway freight train. It’ll be integrated into job sites faster than me running for ice cream at Coldstone (guilty pleasure), and what that means for construction companies is… well… more data actually. But what you can do with that data will blow your mind. You’ll be preventing injuries before they happen, avoiding delays you never thought about, appeasing clients faster than they complain, heck even winning projects you once thought unthinkable. Bottom line, you’ll be monitoring your job sites real-time, all the time, and still trying to figure out how to utilize all of the information you’re collecting. You can file that in the ‘good problems to have’ category.
This is only the tip of the iceberg in changes coming our way, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on the future of our industry! Feel free to drop me a line, I promise I’ll respond! Also, if you’re a member of MBI, and haven’t already made the decision to join the Technology & Innovation Committee, it’s a great opportunity to spend time with forward thinkers in our industry, we frequently discuss what’s on the horizon for commercial construction. Contact us for that as well!
