A Review Of ICT Technology In Construction

Ehab J.Adwan1 and Ali Al-Soufi2 1&2Department of Information Systems, University of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bahrain 

ABSTRACT 

A growing awareness in the construction industry has emerged to pay a sharp attention to ICT as a catalyst that would mitigate the deficiencies characterized by this industry. In comparison with other cited review articles, this paper is aimed to 1) compile the research published on “ICT Technologies” in correspondence to “Construction Tasks” in the construction industry over the past two decades (1996- 2016), 2) demonstrate the trends and patterns in the use of different types of ICT Technologies 3) discuss the correspondence of the identified ICT Technologies to the identified Construction Tasks and 4) exhibit the construction needs of ICT. By the employment of a five phases profiling methodology, a set of 68 out of 202 articles and papers indexed by Elsevier’s Scopus database was considered relevant for the current review paper. This research is targeting the beginning researchers and practitioners in the field of ICT in construction. 

KEYWORDS 

Construction industry, Information, Technology, Ict, Construction Tasks, Article review. 

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 RESEARCH GAP AND ORIGINALITY 

Despite the capabilities and effects of ICT, several scholarly review research endeavours have been proposed to investigate the ICT in construction industries. However, a rigorous review of ICT Technologies applied in the construction industry is missing. Most of those attempts were performed differently in terms of research intentions, objectives, purposes, types of ICT, duration of review, quality of review’s methodological and analytical findings and review’s implications. In this research paper, based on the applied profiling methodology, Elsevier Scopus database returned 9 indexed review articles. For example, [1] reviewed the advances in ICT in the UK virtual construction industry in terms of legal contractual issues basis to govern the electronic exchange of information. Similarly, [2] explored the use and prioritized needs of ICT in the Turkish construction industry in 2001 aiming to set an agenda for future developments and directions. Moreover, in Canada, [3] discussed the use, development and potential of ICT for the construction industry in terms of the implementation of sustainable design standards aiming to optimize the use of resources without negatively impacting the environment. However, [4] discussed the digital models; BIMs (Building Information Models) aiming to share rich semantic building information across different disciplines and related software applications. Similarly, [5] presented a future scenario-planning research aiming to find the future of construction industry being influenced by ICT changes in terms of the societal, economic, environmental and political  

factors. Very specifically, [6] reviewed the ICT applications in the field of earthquake bridge engineering, particularly the seismic design, construction and assessment of bridges. Similarly, [7] conducted a survey of digital technologies in procurement of construction projects (construction procurement Process). Finally, [8] focused on ICT that provides access to the data in managing issues within project management including, planning, risks, progress monitoring, quality control, etc. In comparison, this research paper provides a large coverage of technological ICT trends as will be discussed in the following subsection. 1.2 RESEARCH AIM The aim of this article is to analyse the most cited research efforts published on ICT Technologies in the construction industry over the past two decades (1996-2016). This is achieved to understand the historical trends in the use of different types of ICT Technologies which will exhibit more potential research directions. This research has implications for the beginning researchers, practitioners and universities of the construction field and it forms the foundation for profiling other databases and specific types of construction related ICT journals and papers in this area. 1.3 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES Since 1996, a number of quality academic outlets were dedicated to publish research on ICT and construction. Seeking for a quality and trustworthy database, Scopus is represented as one of the world's largest database of a trustworthy and peer-reviewed research which indexes most of those outlets (i.e. 20,500 titles and subject areas from thousands of publishers) all around the world. By employing a 5 phase’s rigorous profiling methodology, this research intends to assess the availability of published research on ICT Technologies in correspondence to the available construction Tasks. From the empirical findings (using 4 mainstream keywords), initially 202 research works were identified from the Scopus database during the period 1996–2016. After assessing the 202 publications, 68 articles and papers were finally considered relevant and taken forward for further investigation. The rationale for undertaking this research is to provide a better understanding of the types of ICT Technologies employed along with the construction Tasks in the provided construction research, at which it will provide beginning researchers with the most widely employed construction related ICT technologies and tasks and of the editorial preferences of the journals and papers revealed as part of this research in terms of: 1) Review Sources, 2) Publications Frequency, 3) Citation analysis for each journal or paper, 4) Keyword Frequency and 5) Authors’ Frequency. Therefore, the prime contribution of this research focuses on identifying the association of 1) Geo-spatial coverage, 2) Publication Types employed (i.e. Journal article or conference proceeding paper), 3) Research Methods employed (i.e. experiment, case study, mixed method, etc.), 4) Construction Tasks employed (i.e. Project management, HR Management, Cost, etc.), 5) ICT Technology employed (i.e. BIM based, Web based, information systems, etc.), 6) Association between the Construction Tasks and ICT Technologies and 7) ICT Technology and Construction Tasks Distribution. This comparison will provide insights into the historical trends and current patterns in using different types of ICT Technologies in the construction industry based on the determined construction Tasks. To achieve the abovementioned objectives, the authors contribute by conducting a review of 68 articles and papers. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 highlights the significance of ICT in construction and provides a definition to ICT. Thereafter, section 3 presents the research profiling methodology highlighting the overall research conducted in this paper. Then, in

Section 4, we analyse and propose an overview of the research trends and patterns. Section 5 illustrates and discusses the analytical findings of the current paper. Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper by summarizing the empirical findings. 

2. CONSTRUCTION AND ICT

 2.1 SIGNIFICANCE OF ICT 

[9] claims that an improvement in the information technology in construction (ITC) is a major international research endeavor in scientific institutions. [10] concurs with Amor's view that there is a growing body of knowledge from researchers and policy makers from the developed and the developing countries regarding the unequivocal importance and role of ICT as a prime tool that has the potential to modernize societies, boost economy, and bridge huge barriers such as distance, equity, and time associated with the traditional World. 2.2 DEFINITION OF ICT Before getting into the details of ICT penetration in the construction industry, an agreed upon definition of ICT is a necessity. In this regard, [11] defined ICT as any product that stores, retrieves, manipulates, transmits or receives information electronically. [12] introduced the term ITC as a synonym to ICT, claiming that it has been used frequently worldwide. ITC was defined as the composite of information technology and construction and of the relationship between these two. Bjork further considered it as the domain of study of information technology in construction. Similarly, [13, 12] defined information technology as a collective reference to the integration of computing technology and information processing. They believed that ITC was not a single technology but a wide range of technical approaches to a variety of problems. Therefore, ITC was defined as the application of decision support tools which uses electronic machines and programs for processing, storage, analysis, control, transfer and presentation of construction information data during the whole life cycle of a construction project. Alternatively, [14] defined ICT as a combination of communication systems and technical decision support systems. Respectively, the first refers to any independent device capable of providing communication like telephones, faxes, laptops while the second refer to computer applications. However, [15] defined ICT as a combination of automation, and information and communications technology. Automation is the use of computers to replace and/or enhance a variety of jobsite applications which includes surveying, the control of equipment, and the installation of prefabricated units using Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies and advanced robotic systems. However, Construction ICT entailed the use of computer systems that are capable of capturing, organizing, storing, analyzing, exchanging, transmitting, and sharing information namely, video conferencing, web based project management, DBMS, data warehousing, and data mining

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 

Searching for ICT Technology and construction Tasks in the construction field based on Elsevier’s Scopus database revealed an interrelated and large amount of work. Consequently, this study aims to develop a comprehensive review of the subject following five phases of research profiling methodology. International Journal of Managing Information Technology (IJMIT) Vol.8, No.3/4, November 2016 4 PHASE 1- SELECTION OF DATA SOURCES Several Constructions Related ICT Articles And Papers Were Determined Based On The Following Four Steps. 1) We Restricted The Selection Based On The Publication Year. To Limit The Searching Into Two Decades, Publication Year Was Specified To The Period Between 1996- 2016. 2) Source Type (i.e. Journal or Conference proceeding, etc.) was set to be all. 3) Document type (i.e. Article or Paper, etc.) was set to all as well. 4) We then entered several keywords (including Plurals and synonyms) related to the research as demonstrated in Table 1. When calculated based on journals, conference proceedings and others respectively, the average ICT keywords scored higher percentage rates in the conference proceedings (CP) and other source types while construction keywords scored higher in the journal (J) source types. The overall Total percentage demonstrates the presidency of the construction keywords with a 52% compared to the ICT with 48%. PHASE 2- APPLYING SEARCHING FORMULA We employed a formula: (KEY(information technology)AND KEY ("information and communication technologies") AND KEY ("construction") AND TITLE-ABS-KEY ("information and communication technology")) AND PUBYEAR > 1995 AND PUBYEAR < 2017 AND (LIMIT- TO (LANGUAGE, "English") ). The period was limited to two decades (1996-2016) and the language was limited to English. Document type was introduced to demonstrate the fine details corresponding to each source type. Table 2 demonstrates the findings at which a total of 197 research work was revealed for each source type and each subset of document type. PHASE 3- REFINING THE DOCUMENT TYPE ITEMS To maintain the originality and novelty of the current research work, Table 3 demonstrates the exclusion of the review articles (F=9) and other document (F=1) from the analysis efforts, though they were read and analysed to determine the research gap as mentioned in section 1.1. The exclusion effort returned 172 research works.

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