Cloud Computing in Construction Industry: All You Need To Know

The construction industry is growing and evolving day by day with huge buildings, malls, and hi-tech construction projects being built all over the world. To sustain in such a competitive market, companies are looking to get the most out of the latest technological innovations and software solutions to maximize their efficiency.

The construction industry involves a huge number of tasks being performed from offices or directly from the construction site. What construction companies need now is to be able to update orders, generate reports, and track schedules from the field via tablets or mobile devices, instead of sitting at a work desk with a computer.

Here comes the role of cloud construction software that enables companies to access all the data, perform entries from any device, and can be used from anywhere, at any time. Over the past years, cloud computing has reshaped the construction industry to a great extent. In a survey conducted in 2017, 85% of construction contractors use or plan to use cloud-based solutions.

Although the cost of servers has reduced in recent years, you don’t always have to set up servers yourselves. Contractors can also host the construction data on the cloud of a third-party service provider.

Let us discuss the reasons why cloud computing solutions are gaining popularity in the construction industry.

1. High Mobility

The construction process is an outside job and involves a lot of traveling between worksites and field offices by the project manager. You, as a contractor or project manager, would like to keep track of the real-time updates at all times.

One of the major advantages of cloud computing is the ability it offers you to access the construction software and data at any time from any location. All you need is an internet connection and your smartphone, laptop, or tablet.

2. Powerful Computing Tool

With terabytes of data related to manufacturing, wholesale trade, finance, transportation, and warehousing involved in hi-tech construction projects being generated by multiple sites, processing requires the most powerful servers that a typical computer would not take care of.

It is highly expensive to set up such an infrastructure in the local offices. Moreover, it takes a lot of your time and effort. However, most cloud service providers offer High-Performance Computing (HPC) servers to carry out all the construction-related functions. You can simply opt for their services and get high output for your construction process.

3. The Power of Accessibility and Easy Sharing

In today’s world of business, you cannot waste a lot of time in sharing data through emails and messages. With the help of cloud computing, you can give access to the construction software as well as files to all the team members that are a part of the project.

Moreover, those files can be viewed from any location. These solutions make sharing simple by providing real-time communication and collaboration capabilities and eliminating menial tasks.

4. Eliminate Server Sprawl

Construction companies might need a variable amount of data storage depending on the project on which they are working. There are times where company resources such as the local hardware and infrastructure that are kept locally, are not utilized to the fullest, leading to reduced productivity.

Scaling on-demand facility provided by cloud service providers eliminates this situation and helps in better utilization of resources. The flexible cloud environment provided by the cloud service provider enables you to save space and cost, freeing you from restrictions of local hardware setup. You can scale-up or scale-down according to the needs of the construction project.

5. Improving Collaboration Across Worksites

Managing work at different construction sites is one of the most important challenges faced by the construction industry. Contractors have to visit different locations in person to check the progress of the work being done there.

Cloud helps in keeping the worksites in sync for the contractors to easily keep track of each one of them. As a project manager, it helps you in collaborating with what everyone is doing, what are the contractors assigned on and helps them provide work assistance.

6. Drop in Rent and IT Headcount

With the adoption of cloud hosting services, construction companies can drastically reduce the need to rent large office spaces. There won’t be any requirement to purchase real estate to deploy an expansive server setup and spend on its maintenance.

This is due to the fact that when you choose a cloud hosting service, your construction software and data is hosted on the remote cloud servers of the provider. Hence, you will not have to buy and maintain high-end IT infrastructure from your end.

7. Best-in-class Security

Keeping data saved on local systems in your office can make it vulnerable to events like data theft and system damage. Any loss of data due to such events can have disastrous effects on a construction firm.

However, cloud service providers strive to implement advanced security procedures and standards to keep client data safe on the cloud. One of the strategies to secure the data from natural disasters is Disaster Recovery, which involves storing data on more than one server located in different locations to ensure continuity.

Other methods include data encryption, multi-factor authentication, Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems, firewalls, and many more. Also, only authorized users are allowed to have access to data stored on the cloud, which adds an extra layer of safety to it.

Cloud Is the Future

The next big thing in the construction industry would be the ability to differentiate parameters and measure the progress of daily tasks using the Internet of Things and its devices. The adoption of the cloud can provide useful information and insights to enable project managers achieve high- performance for their project throughout the entire project lifecycle.

With cloud evolving in its computational capabilities, the idea of its services slowly moving away from storage into a concept of Big Analytics is most exciting. There is a whole new level of services that are available to construction companies in the cloud arena, which help benefit from these analytics that is created from data.

Any construction company’s most recognized benefit of cloud computing is cost-saving because it reduces capital expenditure. On the other hand, cloud computing enhances company’s organizational processes that expand markets, accelerate decision-making, and improves communication with the customers.