Technology Impact: In Built Construction

Pic Credit:
http://www.indiaoutsidemywindow.com/2007_08_01_archive.html

A couple of months back, I looked out of my corner office's bay window, to observe the construction activity in progress on an adjacent site. Yes, I had nothing better to do, and yes such observations can be meditative too, but that's a different story. The building being constructed was not very large, and the casting of the terrace slab was underway. Close to 50 labourers and 2 batch mixers were in furious action in kind of an assembly line that could best be described as organised chaos. I could see that in some batches there was excess of one component or the other and in some short. The end product was concrete alright, but inconsistent enough to make me wonder if this building would be warranted by the builder for defects for even 5 years. The swank looking multi-storied building where I had my office was built by the same builder-developer and I had my question answered right away. Thank God, we had opted for a short lease, this good looking building from the outside had major quality issues that were showing up on the inside.

While I may generalize that most developers are not conscientious of quality build, there are quite a few who have started adopted new build technologies, even if it means higher construction cost but results in faster and better quality build. Altruistic as it may sound, the higher cost would be transferred to the buyer, the faster build would improve the developer's financial IRR, and good quality would mean a happy customer and lesser post hand over defect liability (which is now being made mandatory under RERA). Even so, by and large, the construction industry has been a slow adopter of technology that matters in improving systems and processes to provide certified and warranted quality end product. 

Pic Credit:
http://www.duralift.com.au/how-technology-is-changing-construction/

Use of satellite and laser mapping, drones to monitor construction sites, CCTV cameras for security, smart wearable-s to measure productivity, blue prints on tablets, inventory updates and measurement tables on apps, creating 3-D Augmented and Virtual Reality simulations to market the developments are some of the innovations that are slowly but surely paving their way into the Indian construction industry. But technology without relevant and uniform data is useless. As of now, starting from land records to offsite-onsite plans speak differently at different places. One cannot say with certainty at what stage the projects (be it big or small) are at leave alone determine accurate project costs incurred. If you want to test this, try and research 10 projects (any size) that have been completed before time and below cost. On the other hand one would need a million fingers to count off those that have exceeded time and cost budgets. The answer is really simple. Measures employed to save costs actually turn out to be counter productive because there is no seamless data flowing through to the different constituents involved. As a result of the above;  from an equity, debt or purchaser's point of view; there is no clarity as to what has been paid for. The patience in the system to not ask dirty questions is purely a function of forward sale and paucity of finished goods that has been the norm until now. The ground situation has changed and it's time construction methods and standards too. 

Pic Credit:
http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/vertical-city-viable-solution-sustainable-living.html

Vertical cities. With an ever growing population, there is always going to be a pressure on land, driving prices higher and higher to the point of negative economics. The experiment of large acreage satellite townships is giving way to newer design paradigms. Building self contained vertical townships that occupy lesser footprint and accommodate a higher number of people, thereby decreasing the pressure on mobility and the availability of critical open spaces necessary to achieve a certain quality of life. Extremely tall buildings are no longer in the realm of science fiction. Burj Khalifa may not remain the tallest building in the world in just a few years. The average height of skyscrapers in Mumbai has shot up from 12 floors to some 30. If regulations permitted, most buildings would touch the highest technically feasible (hopefully) threshold. The next frontier in building technology would be 3-D printing of construction material, on and offsite, to provide customization. Most building would opt for becoming full or almost off-grid in terms of most utilities. Water recycling, waste management, solar power generating exteriors, photo-chromatic energy saving glass, heat pump air-conditioning, carbon absorbing walls and green houses and other such wonders are all available but expensive technologies that are getting cheaper by the day, just like solar and wind power. Would vertical cities be the answer to sustainable and smart living?  That depends on how smart one is in visualizing the future. If this is impossible then inhabiting Mars in 2030 is further than impossible. But the word impossible is impossible itself with VTOL and scramjet commercial airliners, flying cars, robotic walking suits, and space travel all threatening to be commercially available by year 2020. 

image courtesy: http://www.audiotech.com/trends-magazine/images/articles/2014/10/pg36.png 

So much for the future, back on the ground, what do we do now? For one, do the mundane, like build a reliable data base not just of "big data" but "small data". Just to give you a sense of proportions, an average construction of 100,000 ft2 requires 10,000+ components. Then from a due diligence point of view, there is lot that technology can do. Be it land records, to ownership of flats, to buy/sell transaction reporting in the primary and secondary space, to accurate valuations. Standardization is an other issue that could be cured. Then consider offering funding, measuring utility consumption as micro audits, house maintenance and security, there is so much to be done. Remember IOT (Internet of Things) is not as far away as we think. With the economy hopefully shifting gear towards greater transparency in transactions, the existing and new portals for buying/selling/renting real estate should become actual experiential and seamless transaction sites, and not just a place to browse and collect information for improving one's market knowledge and offline negotiation. Yes, it will throw up new issues as is always the case with whatever mankind creates, but with every problem, there is seemingly a solution or two too.

Pic credit:
http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/delhi-traffic-police-get-masks-to-beat-delhi-dust/

Hopefully, by 2030, we would not have killed planet earth and in turn ourselves by misuse of technology, which could mean anything' from destroying nations, cities and homes with wars on each other or deciding to build nations, cities and homes incorrectly continuing our war with the environment of this planet we stay on.