Positioning the Construction Industry in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. - Onyia Construction Company

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)
The first Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize
production that gave way for the second, which used electric power to create
mass production and then the third, which used electronics and information
technology to automate production. The 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), is
taking automation to new levels, distorting the lines between the physical,
digital, and biological spheres and using technologies to perform tasks
previously carried out by humans, ranging from piloting vehicles to ‘rules-based’ jobs in all areas of life, such as healthcare, wellbeing, business and law.
When compared to previous Industrial Revolutions, there exist key
differences between the 4IR and the other three. In its scale, scope, and
complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has
experienced before. The 4IR is not merely a continuation of the Third
Industrial Revolution but rather an innovative and distinct revolution.

The Engineering and Construction Industry
On its own, the construction industry plays a key role for governments in both
developed and developing economies. The industry creates new jobs, drives
economic growth, and provides solutions to address social, climate and
energy challenges. The construction industry is prominently linked with other
sectors, and its impact on GDP and economic development goes well beyond
the direct contribution of construction activities. The industry is so crucial
thatthe World Economic Forum (WEF) established the Future of Construction
Initiative in 2015. Since then, the initiative has successfully served as a
platform for the WEF partner firms, governments, academia, and civil society
to shape the industry’s agenda and to find innovative solutions to support the
industry’s transformation and thereby achieve higher productivity, greater
sustainability and enhanced affordability.
Part of the agenda of the WEF for 2018-2021 (Phase 4), in collaboration with
Oxford University and other partners, is to form a central platform to
exchange best practices and ideas guiding the construction industry in its
necessary transformation by scaling the engineering and construction (EC)
ecosystem beyond the existing major players and include key disruptors,
creating and implementing policy reform and system transformation. The
WEF is trying to provide the central leadership needed to position
engineering and construction EC in the 4IR.

The Engineering and Construction (EC) and the Fourth Industrial Revolution
(4IR)
The 4IR is definitely here to stay, and the EC industry needs to urgently
embrace new innovations and technologies for the following reasons;
Firstly, in this age, we continuously produce new information and generate
new knowledge. The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile
devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access
to knowledge, are unlimited. We can record a person’s daily life through their
mobile phone location. Monitoring such data for a period of time, we can
generate knowledge of the person’s lifestyle, such as their work, shopping
interest, favourite restaurants and personal preferences. This technology
allows the intelligence level of machines to increase through continuous data
accumulation and analysis.

Secondly, the Industrial Revolution represents not only a huge advance in
technology and in the improvement of productivity, but will also transform
modes of production and the relationships between elements of production
processes. The 4IR, by enabling the complete communication of all relevant
information at every stage in the production chain, creates separate
production sectors for each process and informs how they relate to each
other, bringing together such processes as inventory taking, improving
production efficiency, saving energy and reducing emissions, thus making the
EC industry part of the information industry. At the same time, it can make
production flexible and allow mass customization, enabling different
products to be produced in a production line which is revolutionary.
Thirdly, the 4IR will spawn a new economic form in the EC industry, the
‘sharing economy.’ A typical example of sharing economy is ride-hailing online
services, such as Uber and Bolt, which allow customers to obtain taxis
services from private car owners. The impact of this new form is disruptive,
not only to the taxi industry, but also the whole transportation industry. In
the near future perhaps, we will have unpiloted vehicles on the streets. The
impacts of the sharing economy are not limited to online ride-hailing services,
but also include the shared space service, e.g. Airbnb, and the global online
work platform, e.g. AAwork. From the shared motors and houses, to the
shared umbrellas, basketballs, toys, clothing and jewellery, the sharing
economy is constantly updating, and will be very profound and revolutionary
in the EC industry.

Lastly, as pointed out by economists Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson,
the revolution could yield greater inequality, particularly in its potential to
disrupt labour markets. With the growth of automation, robots and
computers will replace workers across a vast spectrum of industries. Low-skill
or low-pay jobs will be lost to 4IR. This could lead to an increase in social
tensions as the EC industry is a major employer of unskilled and semi-skilled
workforce. To be fair, this is not a unique feature of the 4IR. As factually,
Industrial Revolutions have always begun with greater inequality followed by
periods of political and institutional change. However, mankind will face a
more serious challenge in this revolution, because it is robots and computers
that take our jobs, not the flow of labour between different industries.
3 Simple Steps to Position Engineering & Construction EC in the 4IR Era
A recent study in Nigeria captured Decision-Making, Team Building,
Communication, Programme Design, Motivation, Creativity, Leadership and
others the top fifteen skills and competences in a list of fifty-seven, required
to successfully manage EC in today’s economy. To be well positioned and
better embrace of the evident 4IR of the EC industry, the leadership of the
industry in every economy must adopt and focus on this key three steps as
well as tailor it to the nature and culture of their respective domestic
industries.
1. Develop required Skills and Competences
2. Open to Disruption
3. Collaboration

Develop Required Skills and Competences
By 2020, the fourth industrial revolution will have brought us advanced
robotics and autonomous transport, artificial intelligence, machine leaning,
advanced materials, biotechnology and genomics. These developments will
transform the way we live, work and relate with one another. What is certain
is that the future workforce will need to align its skillset to keep the pace.
Skills and competences like Teambuilding, decision making, motivation,
leadership and other creative problem-solving tops the list of most essential
skills in most studies and literatures today. The ability to look at problems
from different perspectives and come up with definite effective and
innovative solutions is a valuable to the engineering and construction
industry of today.
Making sense of huge amounts of data generated by the 4IR IT and effectively
analysing and communicating them is a major career boast for candidates
looking for management and leadership responsibilities in the EC industry
today. These data influence designs and functionality of the final products of
the EC industry as such major decisions relies on the accuracy of data
gathered and analyzed. The access to quality data in this 4IR, and efficacy of
the analysis, plus innovative creativity is an unassailable edge in the future. As
machines take over technical operations, EC organisations will begin to place
greater value on these soft skills and competences for managerial and
leadership roles that cannot be performed by machines. At least not yet.
Because truth be told, there is no denying that the rapid pace of technological
advancements and its effect on the once traditional EC industry. It has
become a voyage, one that requires a highly adaptive and creative mentality.
By reskilling the leadership and management of the EC industry, the 4IR will
not only evolve what we do, but us.

Open to Disruption
It is imperative to always remember that billions of people and countless
machines are already connected to each other through groundbreaking
technology, unprecedented processing power, speed, and massive storage
capacity, data is being collected and harnessed every second like never
before. The nature of the change will depend very much on the EC industry
itself. Global media and entertainment for example, have already seen a great
deal of change in the past years. Some advances are ahead of others. Mobile
Internet and cloud technology are already impacting the way we work. 3D
printing and advanced materials are still in their early stages of use, but the
pace of change is fast and reckless.
At EC industry, we must understand that change will not wait for us. Industry
leaders, academics and governments at all levels need to be proactive in
thinking, up-skilling and retraining our people, in other to drive the entire EC
industry into the 4IR. Definitely, this movement will fundamentally alter the
way we live, work and relate to one another. The change is seismic. The
impact is drastic. The potential is limitless and the gain is countless. Take the
social, communication or the media and entertainment industry for instance.
The 4IR does not have to be our enemy. In the words of Gary Coleman, Global
Industry and Senior Client Advisor, Deloitte Consulting;
“The fourth industrial revolution is still in its nascent state. But with the swift
pace of change and disruption to business and society, the time to join is
now”.

Collaboration
The global industries are evolving. There is no denying this fact. The 4IR is
happening and whether we participate or not, it will affect us. Hence, we
must develop a comprehensive and globally shared view of how these
technologies transform our work, reshape our economies and alter our
environment. This is affecting every industry: reshaping how people work,
relate, communicate and learn, as a result, the revolution brings along new
opportunities for people to work together as a team across geographies, to
share knowledge and improve lives. These teambuilding and knowledge
sharing opportunities mitigate the dangers of the global damages caused by
the previous three industrial revolutions.
There is no force more powerful than the combine power of people. To
succeed, the mission is simple; combine the power of data and the power of
people. And have every one working together with utmost professionalism.
In the words of 2013 Nobel laureate in economics, Yale University, Robert J.
Shiller, “You cannot wait until a house burns down to buy fire insurance on it.
We cannot wait until there are massive dislocations in our society to prepare
for the fourth industrial revolution”. We cannot wait for to dislocated, to
embraced and reposition for the 4IR. We need to shape a future that works
for all of us by putting people first, and empowering them.