Virtual Reality: 3 Ways of Shaping the Construction Industry

Virtual Reality

Nowadays, new construction technology is rapidly shifting the way construction is done, from apps on mobile devices to drone photography and laser scanning. Few construction sites have fully escaped the onward march of technology, but many companies have encompassed it and are reaping significant rewards.

The virtual reality (VR) is a new technology that is changing the construction industry by solving old problems. It is the next level in 3D modeling that involves a detailed virtual model of project. It places the user directly inside the virtual environment so that the user experiences a full immersion in the virtual space.

Here are the three ways on how the new age of virtual reality technology is solving old problems:

Streamline Collaboration

construction collaboration

Virtual reality gives teams the capacity to “see” a project site without traveling to it. This makes easy for teams to collaborate in real time, in a shared environment where they can point out details and issues, even ask questions and making immediate decisions about changes.

This progresses timelines by facilitating feedback. It reduces rework by refining accuracy and the detail level of communications.

The benefits of virtual reality for collaboration are relevant when building in a difficult or remote sites, where teams may be communicating across substantial distances and site conditions that makes its visit challenging.

For example, there are nonprofit organizations that constructs building all over the world including in developing countries and disaster-prone areas. They use VR to help the onsite stakeholders understand the projects needs during the planning phase. They also use it to ensure remote teams can view progress and provide input throughout the construction phase.

Some of the construction companies uses VR to maintain open lines of communication with stakeholders all over the world before, during and after construction to raise awareness for their work in the communities they serve.

Scale Up Quickly

Because every building is different and every site is unique, construction has never an easy scaled industry (assuming your credit score can qualify for it). Virtual Reality aids on making it easy to share across teams and quickly gets update on relevant issues.

Creating a 3D model of a construction site was used to be a complex physical process that required space, materials and time. These miniature models were helpful in orienting the project, but contained inaccuracies and lacked of details.

The 3D modeling software improved a project by making it possible to create a detailed, accurate model more rapidly and inexpensively but also by making it possible to share it across the teams. Virtual reality takes it to a level of making it possible for people to involve themselves in the project as they were actually there and interact with the environment same like a walk-through. Armed with technologies, teams from other side of the country can come to a site together and observe its details in real time.

Moreover, lessons learned from a walk through can be applied with the teams and projects to constantly improve processes and create consistency.

Improve Customer Experience

The lack of transparency has been a common frustration for building owners and other stakeholders during the construction process. They had to trust the construction company whose doing their job and hope that having an occasional site visit would clear up the issues.

Today’s customer experience is completely different. Instead having a paper drawings and plans, clients can walk into s virtual reality model and see what their project will look like when it’s complete. This permits clients to make smart decisions and improves the contractor’s aptitude to set and meet expectations.

Throughout the construction process, the updated 3D in a virtual reality environment allow the customers to watch the project unfold and see that everything is on track and progressing as planned. When questions and issues do arise, customers can address it right away in a collaborative virtual environment, reducing friction and increasing speed.

By improving its streamlining collaboration, scalability and upgrading the customer experience, virtual reality helps construction companies tackle the old and new issues to create a more profitable and satisfying construction experience.

The Different Types of Construction

Bulding Construction

Under the field of civil engineering and architecture, construction is a method that consists of assembling or building infrastructure. This work is managed by a project manager and supervised by a construction engineer, project architect or design engineer and a construction manager. There are different types of construction projects such as building construction, heavy or civil construction and industrial construction.s

Building construction is a process of adding small or big structures to land or real property. Most of the building construction jobs are minor reconstructions like adding bathroom or reconstruction of a room. The titleholder of the property acts as a designer, laborer for the entire job and paymaster. However, all the building construction jobs contain numerous elements in legal consideration, usual design and financial.

Building constructions are obtained publicly or privately using different methodologies such as management contracting, hard bid, design & build bridging, construction management at risk, and negotiated price.

The residential construction technologies, resources and processes should obey to the codes of practice and local building authority regulations. The materials used are commonly accessible in the market. Those common materials used are timber, brick and stone. The cost of construction is based on a “per square foot”. This is when homes can vary suggestively on local site conditions, considerations and economies of scale.

Heavy or civil construction is a process of adding infrastructure to the location of a building. The builders are typically from government agencies both at the local or national level. They are supervised and undertaken by large private corporations such as golf courses, power companies and whoever administers the construction of access railroads, roads and dams.

Industrial construction entails specialized skill in construction, planning and design. The holders of this project are normally industrial, for profit or large corporations. This kind of corporation can be found in industries like chemical, medicine, power generation and petroleum manufacturing.

There are lots of reputable construction companies that can be found in the US. One of them is the Turner Construction Company which works with a number of national sector groups that concentrate on a typical building type. Most of their clients include Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical, Justice, Healthcare and Breen Building as well as Aviation, Sports and Public Assembly. The said company also offers different additional services of supply chain management, such as, Turner Logistics, TCS or Turner Casualty and Surety that delivers loss control programs and proactive safety. They are one of the largest construction running companies in the US.

Factory

Another famous company is Anderson Construction Group. It provides many professional builds or designs, general contracting, wind mitigation, SoftPlan construction documents and construction managements. This company conveys a large variety of industrial, residential, medical and specialty projects. The company is one of the leaders in providing value added construction services to their consumers by making a successful partnership during the construction processes.

The IHC Construction Company is another trusted US construction company. They manufactured concrete blocks packed by hydraulic pressure. IHC Construction Company has construction management, underground contractors, pre-construction and horizontal drilling. The horizontal drilling of IHC is the imminent of pipe construction and underground conduit. That method eliminates or reduces damages caused by the usual open cut trenching system. The design and build division of the company offers various construction services to offices, residential warehouses, industrial and commercial markets.