The construction industry is clearly one of the major industries both in India and the world at large. It is an amazing fact that most of the industries that relate to us in our daily life such as airline industry, automobiles, railways, manufacturing etc. generally exhibit high quality products, timeliness of service delivery, reasonable cost of service and low failure rates. The construction industry, on the other hand, is generally the opposite. Most projects exhibit cost overruns, time extensions, and conflicts among parties. According to a survey conducted by the Department of Trade and Industry in UK;

I fear, in India, statistics would be worse than this. It has become painfully obvious over the past few years that many other industries have outpaced the construction industry when it comes to adopting technology based tools.

Another study of a research advisory firm, reports that companies across all industries spend an average of 2.54% of revenues on IT & technology. The same research shows that the construction industry, far behind most other industries, spends only 0.34%.

Firstly, by IT or Information Technology we mean a combination of computer hardware and software that is used in order to process data in some way to generate information that we use to do our job.

We all know construction project management attempts to achieve project mission objectives within specific constraints. It needs information to make decisions. Managers do not need loads of input data generated in the control process. It is the information extracted from the data that helps managers performing their functions efficiently and effectively. The worlds richest man Bill Gates, put it, “How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or loose.”

Spectrum Of IT

IT can promote various degrees of organizational change ranging from incremental to far-reaching. Three kinds of structural organizational change that are enabled by IT:

(1) Automation,

(2) Rationalization,

(3) Reengineering.

Each carries different rewards and risks.
The most common form of IT-enabled organizational change or the first phase of IT adoption is automation. This has allowed employees to automate a number of time-consuming and error-prone activities and gain benefits in cycle-time, productivity, and accuracy. For example, a main contractor makes use of standalone software to keep track all Request For Information (RFI) in a project.

A deeper form of organization change or the second phase of IT adoption is rationalization of procedures. Automation frequently reveals bottlenecks in production and makes the existing arrangement of procedures and structures painfully cumbersome. Rationalization of procedures involves the streamlining of standard operating procedures, which eliminates obvious bottlenecks, so that operating procedures become more efficient. Roughly speaking, it is a process of fine tuning the first step. For example, the main contractor implements an intranet and standardizes the data in RFI across all projects in the enterprise.

A more powerful type of organizational change or the third phase of IT adoption is business process reengineering, in which business processes are analyzed, simplified, and redesigned. Reengineering involves radically rethinking the flow of work and the construction business processes with the intention to radically reducing the costs of businesses. Using IT, organizations can rethink and streamline their business processes to improve speed, service, and quality. Business process reengineering reorganizes workflows, combining steps to cut waste and eliminating repetitive, paper-intensive tasks. It is much more ambitious than rationalization of procedures because it requires a new vision of how the process is to be organized. For example, the main contractor sets up an extranet to online collaborate with the architect for the RFI process.

Not many construction industry players have moved beyond the first phase of automation. However, there are some companies have committed to a continuing investment in technological advancement and organizational change. By changing how they are organized and do business, they have achieved far greater benefits than available through automation alone. Companies like this have succeeded in staying ahead of their competitors not merely by automating but by changing their organization as well. Their strategic advantage has been their preparedness and ability to continually innovative, and to manage the change necessary to gain substantial business benefits.

The knowledge and information revolution began at the turn of the twentieth century and has gradually accelerated. In a knowledge and information based economy, knowledge and information are key ingredients in creating wealth. Never before have owners and directors of smaller construction, building & civil engineering companies felt so much pressure to do more with less. To ensure that the development meets the budget and remains profitable, developers must monitor tightly the project throughout the lifecycle. The imperative pressure from the top hierarchy to build cheaper, faster and better will force the whole project team for seeking enduring improvement in construction project management, and this demands a lot of data processing. The following simple example will tell you the importance of information in a work like earth work excavation. This illustration of a breakeven analysis would be to compare two methods of road construction for a road that involves a limited amount of cut-and-fill earthwork. A breakeven analysis determines the point at which one method becomes superior to another method of accomplishing some task or objective. Breakeven analysis is a common and important part of cost control.

It would be possible to do the earthwork by hand or by bulldozer. If the manual method were adopted, the fixed costs would be low or non-existent. Payment would be done on a daily basis and would call for direct supervision by a foreman. The cost would be calculated by estimating the time required and multiplying this time by the average wages of the men employed. The men could also be paid on a piece-work basis. Alternatively, this work could be done by a bulldozer which would have to be moved in from another site. Let us assume that the cost of the hand labor would be $0.60 per cubic meter and the bulldozer would cost $0.40 per cubic meter and would require $100 to move in from another site. The move-in cost for the bulldozer is a fixed cost, and is independent of the quantity of the earthwork handled. If the bulldozer is used, no economy will result unless the amount of earthwork is sufficient to carry the fixed cost plus the direct cost of the bulldozer operation.
Relationship existing between volume of production and costs can be expressed by the following equations:

Total cost = fixed cost + variable cost × output

In symbols using the first letters of the cost elements and N for the output or number of units of production, these simple formulas are
C = F + NV
UC = F/N + V
Figure 1.1 Breakeven Example for Excavation.

If, on a set of coordinates, cost in dollars is plotted on the vertical axis and units of production on the horizontal axis, we can indicate fixed cost for any process by a horizontal line parallel to the x-axis. If variable cost per unit output is constant, then the total cost for any number of units of production will be the sum of the fixed cost and the variable cost multiplied by the number of units of production, or F + NV. If the cost data for two processes or methods, one of which has a higher variable cost, but lower fixed cost than the other are plotted on the same graph, the total cost lines will intersect at some point. At this point the levels of production and total cost are the same. This point is known as the "breakeven" point, since at this level one method is as economical as the other. Referring to Figure 1.1 the breakeven point at which quantity the bulldozer alternative and the manual labor alternative become equal is at 500 cubic meters. We could have found this same result algebraically by writing F + NV = F' + NV' where F and V are the fixed and variable costs for the manual method, and F' and V' are the corresponding values for the bulldozer method. Since all values are known except N, we can solve for N using the formula N = (F' - F) / (V - V')

IT & Technological Push
The advent of various new technologies like the Internet and wireless network with the potential to address some of the limitations facing current construction project management practices has created a major impact on the industry. The role that IT & technology plays in the construction industry has gradually been changing the way companies conduct everyday business. What used to be a paper-and-pen world is starting to become a monitor-and-keyboard world in the immediate future.
Some technologies and advancements pushing the external project management & collaboration adoption change include:
Application software packages meeting the specific construction industry needs including project management, scheduling, document management, estimating, job costing, accounting, field administration etc;
Web based technologies enabling for the sharing and transmitting of information, including drawings, photos, voice, print and computer data. The Internet merges perfectly the time honoured adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, with the contract-mandated assertion that time is of the essence, to produce an on-line, visual construction management system.
Wireless technologies, including 3G, Satellite Broadband, WiFi, WAP, that enable the transfer of information to remote sites without the requirement for, or restrictions of, hard infrastructure such as cabling or wires and that are accessible via mobile phones and other hand held devices.
Interoperability, or seamless information exchange via integrated technologies and based on object modeling, allowing participants in the process to access and value add to the information in a form suitable for their needs. This allows all disciplines and project partners to share information thus avoiding duplicating effort and encouraging shared working processes.

Conclusion
Construction and Building company owners and directors are discovering that IT and technology in construction project management is becoming key to successful construction projects. The challenge they face is persuading other project team members to embrace the technology. The resistance to change, no matter how actively or passively, at the micro or macro levels of the industry, contributes to the major impediment of IT and technology take up in the construction industry. The simple, central argument presented here is that electronic project management & collaboration systems implementation is political as well as, sometimes far more so than, technical in nature. When that is understood and accepted, politics are then the process of getting commitment, or building support, or creating momentum for change.
In today’s world, people are talking about the ‘Real Time Enterprise”. Increasingly decisions need to be made quickly. It could be a few hours or even a day, but in today’s increasingly competitive environment it couldn’t be longer. Without the right information that is shared by everyone collaboratively, at the right time, you become a real-time enterprise - in the sense of making the decision making process swift - is not going to be able to compete let alone survive.
Depending on the investment time horizon, the specific challenges and tools available may change, but the overall direction is unmistakable. The construction industry is about to experience a profound change: leaner organisations, more consistent and rigorous performance metrics, and relentless productivity improvements. The net result of these changes should also be increased profitability for those who are successful at mastering the new IT & technology tools with the promise to enable these changes.