Digitalisation in the construction industry: insights from Hilti
Our first conversation was with Oliver Glockner, Director Innovation at the Hilti Group. He told us that digitalisation plays a central role at Hilti and is present in every area of the company. It starts with recognising customer needs, continues through product development and manufacturing and extends to marketing. Across all these fields, the aim is to become faster, more agile and more adaptable.
He stressed that driving digitalisation forward is wanted throughout Hilti and that ideally it should be anchored in all areas of the business.
New demands on employees through digitalisation
Asked how digitalisation changes the demands on employees, Mr Glockner reported that the use of technology on construction sites has so far been rather limited. In future, however, there will be more digital solutions such as apps and less paper. Accordingly, more people who can handle such technologies will be needed. It is good and helpful that many people also use these technologies privately, so that the basics of working with apps, for example, are already there.
For those who have been in the trade for a long time, however, it is quite a change.
For more complex technologies, executing companies naturally need more people with the corresponding skills, who act as an interface between the device and the work to be done, so to speak, and are familiar with both languages. With regard to AI, for example, you have to know where the possibilities and limits lie: what works, what doesn't, how the technology is applied, how results are evaluated and, finally, how they are communicated correctly.
The job profiles of the future will accordingly be considerably more technology-oriented.
Digitalisation as an opportunity against the shortage of skilled workers
We then raised the subject of the shortage of skilled workers in the construction industry and asked whether new technologies, and the new areas of work and tasks that come with them, might also offer a way of drawing young people into the industry. Mr Glockner was convinced of this, since the new technologies are appealing and attractive. This can also be seen in the lively start-up scene in the construction industry, which did not exist in this form before.
There is a lot of investment, including venture capital, an active search for innovation opportunities and increasingly interdisciplinary teams: experts from software and IT are now involved too, so that the same perspective no longer always dominates and different ways of thinking can be drawn on. Mr Glockner stressed that developments in construction tend to progress rather slowly, so it is justified that a little more is finally happening now.
BIM, robotics and automation make construction trades more attractive
Asked about innovations that specifically appeal to young people, he named BIM first of all. It enables clean planning in 3D, in which data is directly available and the same work does not have to be done several times. What might appeal to younger people in particular is that the whole thing has a touch of gaming about it. Overall, new technologies make work on the construction site less strenuous and more fun.
A lot can also be automated and hard physical work made easier: measuring, for example, can be done by a robot instead of with a folding rule, and overhead drilling, which is considered particularly strenuous, can be taken over by a drilling robot.
Digitalisation on the construction site: impressions from practice
Having gained an insight from Oliver Glockner into the digitalisation processes at a leading Swiss company like Hilti, we held several conversations in various construction trades and gathered interesting impressions of how digitalisation is perceived on site.
While the implementation of digital processes is evidently viewed very positively and strongly promoted at management and organisational level, putting it into practice currently still seems somewhat more difficult.
Digital processes in a plasterer's working day
A plasterer told us about an attempt in his company to handle all reporting via a tablet. He found it rather cumbersome, though, because he had to have the tablet with him all the time while also wanting to protect it from dirt and damage. His company had also tried digital planning once, but it had not really caught on. They intend to try again next year.
Asked in which areas digital support would be helpful, he felt that none was really needed. He did agree, however, that digitalisation will advance and that digital processes will change the tasks and areas of work in the construction industry. He was also convinced that this could make the construction trades more attractive to younger generations, since these age groups are more digitally minded.
How road builders and bricklayers perceive digital technologies
The conversations we had with a road builder and a bricklayer can be summed up as follows: they are open to digital technologies and would see them as easing a working day that is physically demanding in many respects. However, the conversations also showed that digital processes have so far gained relatively little ground.
In addition, the initial phase with new technologies is often quite difficult, because it first takes more time to get used to handling them before any added value becomes apparent.
Digitalisation in construction: between theoretical potential and practical implementation
What became clear from these conversations is that there is a relatively large gap in how the opportunities and potential of digitalisation in construction are assessed. While the planning and management level sees the opportunities of digital technologies very strongly, welcomes their implementation and looks extremely confidently towards a digital future, digital processes have so far been perceived as of little help in practice.
Admittedly, the conversations, in the way we conducted them, cannot be considered entirely representative, since we mainly approached small construction sites, for example. Nevertheless, a tendency can be recognised: strong confidence at management level and greater scepticism at the executing level about the possibilities of digitalisation.
There therefore seems to be a large gap between what is theoretically possible and what is actually implemented in practice.
Finally, we would like to thank Oliver Glockner and everyone who took part in our conversations for sharing their impressions of digitalisation with us.
