There is a considerable shortfall in the number of dwellings available in the UK in which puts developers under indisputable pressure to deliver upward 250,000 units per annum to meet the increasing demand. For the past 10 years, an average of 134,000 houses were built per year. Nevertheless, the supply of housing has been declining since 2007 from 188,450 to 114,670. The experience of the last 2 decades suggesting that the level of demand for new houses over the next 10 years will not be met by piecemeal incremental developments.
The housing sector comprise of a large number of supply chain characterised with high level of fragmentation. Around 70% to 90% of construction work is subcontracted to small and specialist firms. And almost 90% of construction work value is distributed among different subcontractors with less attention paid to the nature of the supply chain. The heterogenous character of housing supply chain has exacerbated the levels of fragmentation among different contributors. This has resulted in high level of rework occurrence and affected time and schedule of projects.
Housing construction is one of the major sectors worldwide that is commonly recognised as having high level of “rework”. Rework has been recognised as a symptom which has adversely affecting the workflow of process, the cost of production and productivity of the UK housing industry. The elimination of rework is a key driver for improvement in manufacturing industries such as automobile manufacturing – despite its achievements it has been prevalent in the production of housing.
Usually, subcontractors perceived the main contractor as their “costumer” and showed little concern for other subcontractors that are working at the same time in construction site. The lack of collaboration among subcontractors results in rework occurrence and unfinished tasks often left behind unnoticed – until they appear in snagging list and multiplying the cost, and schedule overrun. Problems as described are often generated particularly in one part of the process, however, these issues are not identified until at near the end of projects tending to multiply the impact of the problem.
Collaboration and co-operation lie at the heart of social organisation and forges the basis of which human civilisation has itself long been established. Desmond Morris famously said, “ if we did not carry in us the basic biological urge to cooperate with our fellow men, we would never have survived as a species”. Although, we are yet, to comprehend fully the society, and particularly Construction industry, in which will emerge from our current predicament, we should be mindful of. An attitude of collaboration among supply chain participants drives an agenda of pausing and find a remedy for the problem in the process before moving to next stage
The majority of construction practitioners agreed with the acceleration of construction transformation due to unforeseen outbreak of Covid-19.
The current construction industry’s investment in emerging technologies reached just above 1% - smaller proportion in compare to other industries; likes of financial industry and particularly, manufacturing. Construction industry is the least digitised industry, and still heavily relies on manual data. Investing in the right tools and capabilities for data collection and processing, such as, advanced analytics – can significantly help the industry to deploy AI to prevent rework occurrence and enhance decision making among contributors. Without undertaking a sustainable effort of digitisation, AI cannot be used effectively. Researches showed that those who advanced digitisation within their organisations is 60% more likely to enjoy the profit from applying AI and digital tools.
AI can help to predict project risks, constructability, and the structural stability of various technical solutions, providing insight during the decision-making phase and that can significantly reduce the cost of construction.
Neural networks (NNs)can, for instance; assess drone - compare collected photos to construction rework against the original of drawings. Applying NNs to deploying drone-generated images and laser generated data can capture project progress. AI can be taught how to create digital twin that can be match BIM generated models. This can significantly reduce decision-making cycles in monthly or daily basis in construction projects and result in reduction of rework in construction projects.
Subcontractors on construction sites can employ a recommender system approach where uses cluster behaviour production to identify the important data necessary for making a recommendation. This can help designers to optimise a specific design for instance; curtain walls vs window walls for receiving the highest level of light inside the units – based on various criteria and inputs such as timeline of completion, likelihood of rework occurrence, and the total cost of construction. This enables developers and owner to make an informed decision making based on the gathered data.
Aforementioned issues considered totally inevitable. Arguably they are the direct consequence of the roll-back neoliberal system that now underpins global economics, which does not apply for mutually beneficial relationships, nor the harmonious production of something that fundamentally requires the collaboration and cooperation of many.
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