Five Innovations Reshaping Construction

A personal note from Brad: Adrian Bet Hargreaves was born on Friday, July 5th. He and my wife Amanda are doing great, and big brothers Julian (7) and Milan (6) are already smitten. Given the new addition, Thesis Driven will be featuring a great lineup of guest contributors over the next four weeks.

Five Innovations Reshaping Construction

Today’s Thesis Driven is a guest letter from Bhragan Paramanantham, a civil engineer at AECOM and the author of the Last Week in ConTech newsletter.

The construction industry is massive and inefficient. While it comprises 13% of global GDP and employs over 100 million people, the construction industry has seen minimal real productivity growth over the past 50 years.

One major reason for this is the industry’s slow embrace of new technologies. Unlike in other industries, technology has yet to meaningfully penetrate and “disrupt” construction. The construction industry has a complex ecosystem of decision-makers, suppliers, contractors and workers, all operating in a highly regulated environment which has been historically run by older professionals. 

However, that is poised to change as a generation of technology native professionals are entering the industry and embracing the opportunity to innovate–on this planet and beyond.

In this letter we’ll cover five major innovations coming to the industry, including:

• A primer on how the construction industry works today;
• Reimagining supply chains;
• The rise of robotic workers & autonomous equipment;
• Digital twins of construction sites;
• Use cases for augmented reality on site;

Outer space construction.