In 2020, the global buildings and construction industry accounted for 37-39% of all CO2 emissions and 36% of energy consumption (of these, actual construction work accounted for 10% and 6% of global emissions and energy totals, respectively).
And this was despite the cooling down of project activity due to COVID-19 restrictions on labour and materials supplies. As the engine of construction demand revs up in line with the global recovery from COVID-19, and bearing in mind that there has been a significant regression to fossil fuels during the pandemic, construction’s impact on the environment can be expected to worsen substantially. Dampening the impact of construction on the environment is a crucial piece of combating climate change and securing sustainable development, but measures to do so ignore the vital role of information and data.
The common currency that flows through it and reverberates through all its parts is information.
This impact is often broadly broken down into materials, fabrication, transportation, installation and other site activities, and commissioning and other facilities management activities. Measures to target these emissions often (and correctly) target each of these discrete elements separately–with recycled waste used as a sand base for concrete production or technology solutions to streamline on-demand construction transportation.
Solely targeting these separate elements fails to capture the reality of construction as a complex system involving several differently interdependent components–from design to fabrication to site planning to maintenance. In this way, and perhaps more so than several other industries, construction is far greater than the sum of its parts. As with any other complex system, therefore, and especially with construction, the common currency that flows through it and reverberates through all its parts is information.
Project data flows across levels of abstraction (from design to installation), across all levels of the team (from architects to site engineers), and across all stages of the lifecycle (from construction to maintenance). In effect, all stages of a construction project’s supply chain are linked by common data (since the object of interest of all parties is the same, more or less: the building being constructed).
Using data as a lens allows us to perceive the environmental, social, and governance costs of poor construction project data management. It also demonstrates that efficient data management and analytics are the cornerstones of any winning strategy to curb construction industry emissions and energy wastage.
Building and construction are very energy-, materials-, and land-intensive activities that contribute to environmental degradation and destruction. This damage emanates from construction's effects on the natural environment due to their supply chains but also directly through site emissions and other pollution.
With every additional day a construction site must operate ... more emissions and more carbon-intensive materials will contribute to environmental pollution.
The first is obvious and has been studied extensively, but the second is more pedestrian and often overlooked. However, site emissions are a major pollutive force that impacts local communities as well as contributes to climate change. A single diesel generator that powers a crane could produce up to 140 tons of carbon per year. And producing cement, the main material used in construction, contributes 8% of global emissions alone.
There are minimum levels of such emissions that must be borne if they are not avoidable entirely with renewable electrification. However, when poor data on-site leads to variations, reworks, timeline delays, and budget overruns, sites contribute to even greater emissions.
48% (or $31.3 billion) of all rework in the US is caused by poor communication and data: 22% caused by poor data and 26% by poor communication. This is with the average trust score being 4.1 (out of 5, where 5 is very high trust) in the US. It’s 3.9 in Singapore. And it’s estimated that construction waste will amount to 2.2 billion tons by 2025.
With every additional day a construction site must operate (due to delays or reworks and other symptoms of bad information management), more emissions and more carbon-intensive materials will contribute to environmental pollution.
Bad data cost US GDP 16.5%, and this amounts to losses of $1.84 trillion applied to global construction. If you are a part of a firm operating at a standard similar to or inferior to US construction, it’s fair to assume that, give or take, 16.5% of your annual revenues are consumed by bad data management. These financial costs materialise as social costs in terms of business volumes, productivity, and employment.
Site activity generally also contributes to pollution–noise, air, water, and soil–that acts to the short-term as well as long-term detriment of community health and wellbeing. This is especially true in developing and dense cities with substandard zoning and building regulations. While often unavoidable, they can be minimised by curtailing delays and variations that keep sites open longer than they need to be.
Finally, better data management goes hand in hand with empowering workers in the field to collaborate better and contribute to more efficient use of labour that doesn’t veer into over-exploitation and mistreatment when delays and errors must be “economised” by abusing labour. A sound data management strategy invariably involves tools and digital solutions that could contribute to the upskilling of workers as well.
As Jordan Kostelac, Proptech Director for JLL Asia explains, “Tools that make [workers’] lives easier, help them respond more quickly, and control their environment better–this is where the value or the future is.”
Generally, the more collaborative and high-trust a work environment for construction, the more confidence there is in completing on time and within budget.
Trust is of two varieties: internal trust amongst a construction firm’s staff and project trust between multiple firms on a project team. Good data management underwrites effective cohesion within both individual firms and multi-firm project teams.
The stronger trust this enables within and between firms provides a strong basis for improved productivity and efficiency. It also creates a robust platform for the introduction and collaborative absorption of industry reforms–including those centred on climate change. This explains, in part, why the Singaporean government is mandating the formation of Construction Industry Alliances of multiple firms to be the launchpad for major reforms aimed at productivity and sustainability.
The ability to join and then perform in such alliances may soon be an important governance requirement for construction firms. Since they require high trust to be instilled, effective data management is crucial for the future of construction industry governance.