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Paper: w78-1993-29
Paper title: Building industry and the agents of change
Authors: Bharat D
Summary: The infornmtion technology and the changes it brings about are recent and evolving phenomena.In the absence of established historical perspectives, many previous studies have focused onthe information technology issues that are of only immediate concern to the building industryand thus provide only limited perspectives. In this paper, we suggest that it is an appropriatetime to look beyond the technological bottlenecks such as incompatibility of software orhardware, prohibitive resource investments, and others that are often cited as the reasonsimpeding applications of the information technology in the building industry.With the new developments taking place in the information technology, the gradual and pacedchanges in the building industry organizations will be rephced by changes with a bigger scopeand a higher momentum. These changes will not result in simply a new breed of professionalswho become another discrete part of the web comprising the building industry; they will affectthe very web defining the building industry. Additionally, the technological developments thatwill bring about such changes are presently being carried out by forces external to the buildingirtdustty thus further obscuring their potential impacts. Five key information technologyadvances are submitted here as the agents of significant change in future: networks, groupware,robotics, flexible manufacturing, and microprocessor embedded building components. It isargued that the building industry needs to expand the debate about the role of the informationtechnology by taking account of developments which presently lie outside its immediate andtraditional concern. The paper initiates this discussion and describes a number of likelyimpacts of the new technology on the educational, professional and organizational spheres inthe building industry.
Type:
Year of publication: 1993
Series: w78:1993
ISSN: 2706-6568
Download paper: /pdfs/w78-1993-29.content.pdf
Citation: Bharat D (1993). Building industry and the agents of change. Mathur K S, Betts M P, Tham K W (ed.); Pre-proceedings of the first international conference on the management of information technology for construction; Singapore, August 1993 (ISSN: 2706-6568), http://itc.scix.net/paper/w78-1993-29
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