Lei Hou
Hung-Lin Chi
Yongtao Tan- 1RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- 2Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
Editorial on the Research Topic
Digital technologies for construction management
The growth of the construction sector means an ever-growing demand for job opportunities, economic growth, and the growth of other industries by laying the foundations for infrastructure. However, in recent years the construction industry faced several challenges such as lagging productivity and safety, financial pressure, sustainability and so on. Digital Construction, defined as utilising digital technologies to construct more efficiently with higher quality, could provide an answer. But, when we look at IT investments, the sector has historically underinvested in technology. Still, we believe that digitalization presents a significant opportunity to not only deal with these challenges, but to use them to thrive.
The objectives of this Research Topic are to document the state-of-the-art in the adoption of various digital technologies in construction management, to compare various perspectives on these digital technologies, and to identify the future directions of research and development. This Research Topic has explored the potential of implementation of these technical paradigms in a real-life project context, including approaches which have been undertaken by academia and industry in dealing with issues, such as the lack of productivity and safety in the construction industry. The published papers to this Research Topic have well archived the unique features out of the developed platforms that address construction site safety (Luo et al.), production and process management (Nassereddine et al.), assets and facilities management (Duong and Lin), and a wider range of technological use-cases (Nassereddine et al.). Besides, these works define and implement best practice construction workflows, and establish the paradigms that every incumbent can be on the same page at the same time and make better decisions faster. It simply means that resources can be optimised, risks are mitigated, and rework is avoided. It also means that teams spend more time working on value-added tasks. Ultimately, construction technology is helping firms to deliver projects more efficiently, safely, and profitably.
We would like to thank all the reviewers for taking the time and effort to review the manuscripts. We sincerely appreciate all valuable comments and suggestions, which helped us to improve the quality of the manuscripts.
Author contributions
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Keywords: digital technologies, augmented (virtual) reality, bim, digital twin, smart and intelligent technologies, construction safety, construction productivity
Citation: Hou L, Chi H-L and Tan Y (2022) Editorial: Digital technologies for construction management. Front. Built Environ. 8:1017547. doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2022.1017547
Received: 12 August 2022; Accepted: 20 September 2022;
Published: 04 October 2022.
Edited and reviewed by:
Zhen Chen, University of Strathclyde, United KingdomCopyright © 2022 Hou, Chi and Tan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Lei Hou, lei.hou@rmit.edu.au