Construction and aerospace-a technological dichotomy

While aerospace powers forward in technological advancement, construction slumbers through digital adoption. But in that cavernous gap lies an opportunity to bring aerospace-style thinking into a non-aerospace world. All it requires is persistence and the ability to demonstrate value for money.

As an aviation enthusiast and practising civil engineer, I often find myself with one foot in the future and one foot in the past. The aerospace industry is seen at the cutting edge of technological advancement; even in the management space it has found itself adapting to ways and means of integrating multiple disciplines and disparate teams to build a new vehicle or advanced product. The space race of the 1960s gave rise to technologies and practices we now take for granted - computing, telemetry transmission and systems engineering to name but a few. Aerospace has clearly been leading the way for decades while attracting some of the brightest minds and most forward of thinkers.

On the other hand, the construction industry is far from technologically advanced. We still depend on men to hand dig holes in the ground and the adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) continues to be exceptionally slow. While Boeing developed the 777 in the early 1990s entirely via computer aided design, the construction industry had barely discovered email. At times, comparing the two industries is like comparing analogue to digital. In the ten years of watching the construction industry turn the crank handle on technology adoption, the pace of change can be described as nothing short of pedestrian. Though I have no doubt large contractors are investing in the future and taking the challenge quite seriously, they have scale and must continually adapt, for shareholders will demand a return on their investments.

But the industry isn't dominated by merely a handful of large contractors. The small and medium sized enterprises are the life blood. It is these companies which are the last to embrace change. In the context of airfield civil engineering projects, they dominate the market – resurfacing runways, constructing parking stands and taxiways, and fitting out the electrical substations and lighting infrastructure. Herein lies the dichotomy, and my personal struggle - a largely unsophisticated industry serving a highly sophisticated one. An industry leading technological change versus one which finds itself slow to adapt. But in that cavernous gap lies an opportunity to bring aerospace-style thinking into a non-aerospace world. All it requires is persistence and the ability to demonstrate value for money. It's a challenge worth taking on.