Digital-Age Construction – Manufacturing Convergence

Abstract

Construction, the largest industry in the world, contributes 13% of the global GDP and is responsible for the infrastructure that supports the whole economy. It is troubling that this great industry faces decades of stagnant productivity and an alarming level of delays and budget overruns in the delivery of projects. Construction faced decades of growing construction-manufacturing gap in business performance. It all comes to one significant difference that explains this condition, the level of supply chain integration along the whole project process. Advanced digital technologies enabled an extraordinary level of business process integration. Construction continues to be the least digitized industry; its digitization level is a little above hunting and agriculture. The dominance of the project-centric approach to business is the main obstacle to construction business transformation. This document is about the way to overcome this obstacle.