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(or may not) play out over the next 20
years in the construction industry.”
This is no mean feat. And in order to
develop a clear, accurate impression
of what the future may hold, the
researchers initially needed to cast a
very wide net. This meant looking at
all the forces that are reshaping the
world as we know it – things like the
exponential growth of computing
power; population growth and its
ageing; even climate change had a role
to play in the scenarios the Farsight
Project explored.
Then the project team turned its
focus to specific innovations that
are happening now and assessed
their potential to get a foothold in the
construction industry. According to
Robert, this is a key point. The project’s
scenarios are built on actual trends
that are currently developing and have a
realistic prospect of going mainstream.
This isn’t to say Farsight is
attempting to predict exactly what
the industry will look like in 20 years.
Instead, they are developing multiple,
plausible scenarios – each of which has
the potential to become a reality.
“Trying to predict the precise shape
of the industry 20 years from now
is a fool’s errand: the forces are too
complex. That’s why our project is
exploring several scenarios – so that we
cast a lens over a range of contrasting
outcomes, all of which
are plausible.
“For example, I can see a world where
there hasn’t been much change at all.
Maybe the tools are a bit more advanced
and there’s more IT in and around
construction sites but fundamentally
the jobs haven’t changed all that much.
On the other hand, I can see an industry
that has been significantly disrupted
by very advanced technologies (like
robotics and artificial intelligence), and
that this disruption has rewritten the job
descriptions of 75% of our workforce,”
says Robert.
Regardless of the degree of change
we see in the industry, Robert believes
it is a near-inevitability that the
workforce will become more highly
skilled and technically specialised. And
this will see the emphasis shift from
skill-sets focussed on manual dexterity
and physical labour, to skill-sets
focussed on the intelligent and precise
use of technology.
“This is a trend we’re already seeing.
The average worker will be increasingly
paid according to her (there will be more
women) ability to work with machines.
So the challenge for the construction
training system is to create workers
with higher levels of technological
literacy. The worker who thrives in the
construction site of the future will be
the one who is comfortable with using
existing technologies and embraces new
technologies as they come online.”
Indeed, machines that can automate
labour-intensive jobs traditionally
undertaken by hard-working humans
are already starting to gain a foothold in
the industry.
Take the robotic tiling machine
developed by researchers at the Future
Cities Laboratory (FCL) in Singapore.
It is able to lay tiles two to three
times faster than a human worker
while maintaining high precision and
consistent quality. The FCL expects
that before long 75% of tiling work will
be automated.
Similarly, ‘Hadrian 105’ the brick
laying robot developed by Perth’s
Fastbrick Robotics promises to
revolutionise the brick laying industry
in more ways than one. The machine
will undoubtably send productivity
levels skyward but, by taking care of
all the heavy work, it is also touted to
significantly improve working conditions
for tradies.
“Hadrian is something that’s going to
improve people’s lives and workplaces
and allow us to do things much more
safely. At the moment there aren’t
many brickies working until they’re 70,
the work’s just too strenuous, but the
expectation these days is that we’ll work
until we’re that age. Most bricklayers
need to find something
else they can do by the time they’re 50
years old. Imagine if they were just
doing artisan work and there was a
machine working on the same site
doing all the heavy work, all the big
repetitious long wall sections – no more
planks, drums, mixers and shovels,”
Fastbrick Robotics CEO Mike Pivac told
Building Connection
.
These are just two examples but
we’re likely to see many similar
technologies come into play. Robert
gives driverless robotic technology as an
example – he says it’s quite possible that
the same sort of systems will be used
to operate both driverless cranes and
earthmoving equipment.
But small, portable smart machines
that accomplish fairly routine physical
tasks are not the only things we’re
likely to see on the scene fairly shortly.
Robert suggests it’s also worth keeping
an eye out for ‘exosuits’; wearable
devices that allow humans to lift much
Augmented reality glasses, exosuits and driverless robotics are just some of the
technologies we can expect to see being used in the industry before long.