Infrastructure Development and the Future of Work: Can the Construction Industry Adopt Teleworking?

The current pandemic has forced industries to rethink their value chain and processes through which they deliver their products or services. Since earlier this year, across the board, the response has been a mix of ‘We got this!’, ‘We’re doomed!’ and ‘Oh, sh**!’. Some sectors had successfully implemented the tools and technology necessary to support teleworking (i.e., working remotely) before this pandemic. Others were in the process of integrating such technologies, and a large number did not have it on their radar.

The construction and infrastructure sector has experienced a significant disruption as it heavily relies on colocated teams on job sites to execute specialty tasks. Today, the new economy is increasingly moving towards virtualization of products, processes, organizations, and relationships. In this article, I’d like to discuss the concept of Distributed Work and Teleworking and review some examples in other industries that have adopted this approach as a new way of doing their work. I am a firm believer in cross-industry innovation, and I believe the construction and infrastructure sector can learn from other industries and implement tools that maximize productivity while at the same time provides flexibility for the workforce.

Figure.01: River Swing Bridge, early 1900s — Crowded job sites still remain the standard scene after nearly 150 years of evolution in industrialized and mechanized construction

HISTORY OF DISTRIBUTED WORK

A distributed workforce is a business operation that functions beyond the physical confines of a conventional office, factory, or a job site. Geographically it can spread over a wide area, domestically or internationally. Technological advancements play a pivotal role in facilitating this approach. By installing key technologies, distributed companies enable their workforce to access the necessary tools without needing to be physically present. One key observation is that not every industry can utilize teleworking at the same rate. Figure.02 shows a coarse schematic representation of the adoption rate based on the nature of product or service.

Figure.2: Product/ Service spectrum and rate of teleworking adoption

Below are three different case studies concerning the product/ service spectrum shown in Figure.02. It demonstrates how each is adapting to teleworking and distributed workforce.

WORDPRESS

WordPress.com is one of the high traffic websites in the world. Automattic Inc owns WordPress, and it is 100% distributed. That means everyone works from home, or more precisely, from wherever in the world they wish. They have implemented this strategy since 13 years ago, and they’ve been amazingly successful with it.

Some argue that remote work inhibits creativity. However, in the age of the web, collaborating with people around the world has become the standard practice. It’s true that in a distributed company, you can’t just walk down the hall to find serendipity, but Automattic has overcome this by providing the right technological tools to enable encounters and serendipitous ideas. Many times a day, WordPress.com releases new features and updates. It shows that its workforce collaborates intensely around them. Remote work certainly changes the nature of the interaction, but it does not inhibit creativity.

Any company that can enable their people to be fully effective in a distributed fashion, can and should do it far beyond after this current crisis has passed. It’s a moral imperative. — Matt Mullenweg, CEO Automattic

A-10 THUNDERBOLT (WARTHOG) AIRPLANE REPAIR

Recently, a battle-damaged A-10 Warthog airplane was successfully repaired by a specialized engineering team that came up with a creative repair solution without ever seeing the plane, let alone meeting together in person. The engineering team from the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Hill Air Force Base provided a brilliant solution with a quick turn around to fix a bullet hole in the plane’s underbelly.

This repair job is a complicated multi-disciplinary and multi-step endeavor that usually takes place with all the specialty teams physically present in the hanger. With all the ongoing flight restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic, moving the full team on site was out of the question. Hence, the leading team devised a plan to minimize the onsite crew to a few maintainers who carried out the repair plan directed by the leadership team. Conducting initial inspection, processing the data, coming up with an initial concept, and repeating these steps until success. Using distributed working or teleworking, they managed to reduce the onsite crew to a couple of individuals. You can read more about this story here.

Figure.3: A-10 Thunderbolt (Warthog) after repair — Source: US Airforce

HEALTHCARE

Healthcare industry is moving towards digitization at a neck-breaking speed. One of the primary reasons is to enable diagnosis at an early stage without the need for personal check-ins, which ultimately reduces the number of onsite staff and improves the system. Telehealth is the distribution of health-related services and information via modern telecommunication technologies. It allows patients to receive long-distance clinician contact, care, advice, reminders, education, intervention, monitoring, and remote admissions. Telemedicine is another sub-category that is more focused on diagnosis and monitoring.

CONCLUSION

The current pandemic has accelerated efforts, across industries, to further invest in technologies that facilitate distributed working opportunities and to minimize the need for colocated teams. Infrastructure assets are considered the nation’s mission critical projects. Capital intensive undertakings that any delays during execution cost the stakeholders millions of dollars in daily damages. Teleworking technologies hold the promise of minimizing such disruptions.

Conventionally, Synchronous Communication has been the primary method in which we communicate on the job sites. It is real-time communication between two people, such as face-to-face or phone communication. With the current forward progression towards teleworking and distributed workforce model, the construction and infrastructure sector can also benefit from Asynchronous Communication. Where one person provides information, there is a time lag before the recipients take in the information and offer their responses. This approach frees both parties from the need to be “synced up” and colocated.

Figure.04: Teleworking adoption post pandemic

The construction and infrastructure sector needs to rethink its roadmap to digitization. A roadmap that not only encompasses the design and preconstruction phase, but also includes the execution phase. Undoubtedly, it takes time to develop the necessary technology tools to support this transition. But it’s possible with one invention at a time.

Construction is an already struggling industry in attracting new skilled workforce. The post pandemic era makes it even harder as other industries are racing to offer much more exciting new working conditions, such as permanent teleworking, flexible hours, and eliminating the immigration obstacles. By utilizing emerging technologies, we can open the construction industry to a new talent pool of highly skilled advanced technology workforce to support the American infrastructure development into the future.

Hessam K. is an entrepreneur in the Infrastructure Technology space. He is passionate about leveraging emerging technologies to help with infrastructure development. Connect with Hessam on Twitter and Linkedin.