Over the past few years, the construction industry has entered an entirely new era through its convergence with technology—the era of "ConTech." Born from the meeting of Construction and Technology, this innovation has brought tremendous change across the industry. Investment in ConTech startups is growing rapidly around the world, and the valuations of these companies are rising noticeably as well.
So which technologies play a key role in these rising ConTech companies? In this post, we'll take a look at the technology trends that make up ConTech.
One of the most prominent technologies in ConTech is still BIM (Building Information Modeling). In fact, more than 73% of U.S. contractors actively use BIM, gaining clear benefits such as improving design accuracy and reducing the cost and time incurred during construction.
BIM is a leading digital technology that creates and manages a wide range of information across the planning, design, construction, and maintenance phases. The information accumulated in this way becomes a reliable basis for decision-making throughout a building's entire life cycle.
The main benefits of BIM include more efficient design, better coordinate information, and savings in both time and cost. Moreover, the advancement of BIM plays an important role in the development of digital twin technology as well.
The digital twin, one of the latest trends in the construction industry, is a technology that converts physical objects into digital models to analyze and manage them. This makes it possible to predict and identify potential problems early and to prepare the necessary responses.
Digital twins deliver significant time and cost savings and offer a range of strategic benefits, including automated progress monitoring, more efficient facility management, building 3D databases of virtual assets, and collecting data and storing records for AI.
The U.S. company GE (General Electric) could be considered the most advanced company when it comes to applying digital twins. It invested around one billion dollars in research and, in 2016, released Predix, the world's first industrial cloud-based open platform. Predix specialized in the benefits of industrial digital twins and was used in the aircraft engine management system of GE Aviation, a GE subsidiary.
The last construction technology we'll introduce is data collection and management using drones. Drones can fly on their own without an onboard pilot and are used at various stages, from building design to construction work. They can collect and capture data faster and more accurately than people, and the information gathered this way is combined with the BIM mentioned earlier to convert two-dimensional data into three dimensions.
This technology makes it possible to supervise work progress at a construction site in real time, and in the event of an accident, the drone is already capturing the site from the air—a great help in quickly identifying and rescuing the injured.
Meissa is bringing the digitalization of construction sites to life with drones. It converts the two-dimensional data collected by drones into three dimensions, stores the information needed across every stage of construction on its platform, and makes it available to view at any time.
Digital transformation in the construction industry is now a necessity rather than a choice. Rapidly evolving technologies—BIM, drones, and even IoT—are making sites safer and more efficient. Amid these changes, the Meissa platform aims to help accelerate your smart construction even further. For safer and more efficient construction, Meissa will be right there with you.
