Building craftsmanship 2.0

Before we focus on the stakes and to better understand the benefits of inserting the digital technology in the building sector, let’s explain the current situation.

The building sector is between tradition and modernity. Construction materials are becoming industrialized but the implementation is still very traditional.

Today, big building companies tend to buy craftsmanship companies that will disappear if nothing changes.

However craftsmanship brings vitality to local areas and addresses specific construction needs, both in knowledge and in practice.

A new way for them to get digitized is to use a smartphone : 40% of them had one in 2012, 60% today, 80% in 2020? These figures are encouraging for the introduction of the digital in the building sector. Nevertheless, using a smartphone is only useful when applications or websites make it useful. Especially, they must ease the communication, missing today, and also the organization, too complicated and that takes too much time to the workers and their clients.

So, now, let’s talk about the benefits of the digital in the building sector.

Introducing the new information and communications technologies in the building sector makes possible to recreate contact, links (?) between stakeholders, stakeholders and buildings, buildings and materials, materials and inhabitants.

First, digital technologies can help create a marketplace, enabling the workers to find clients, and conversely.

Nowadays, construction workers, whom are part of a small company, have very few means to get known, which means no referencing on Internet or any kind of advertising. They find most of their clients thanks to word of mouth. Some of them will also use quotation websites (that are, by the way, marketplaces) but they can prove to be perverse for the workers : they have to pay the quotations they carry out because a worksite is supposed to follow the demands, but these demands are often unqualified. That is why they sometimes lose more money than they earn. This kind of marketplace is thus not ideal for building craftsmen.

This bad visibility implies that Internet users tend to choose big groups like Leroy Merlin, Ikea or any other. This is an easy solution, but is far from being a quality solution. Actually, the main problem for customers who have a renovation project is that they don’t know who they should turn to, in order to find reliable professionals matching their demands. The main stake for an independent building craftsman is to make sure of his quality and to let know what are his precise skills. For that, a profile page and an assessment system (marks and comments) for each worker, like Airbnb or Blablacar do, would be a solution. This would force them to do their best and to offer the best quality/price ratio. With such a system, the best workers would be rewarded, and the other encouraged to improve themselves.

The digital technology can also be used as a real organization tool, both for workers and for their clients. This will save them a lot of time.

At the organizational level, a very simple idea would be to create a shared calendar between the workers and their clients, and also between the workers of the same building site. The first use would be for the first contact, where the client could see the availabilities of the professional for the first appointment, and also for the intervention dates for the renovation works, like Airbnb. The second use would be for the worksite’s management, where this calendar, shared by workers and clients, would help manage easily the diverse interventions and the dates of materials’ delivery.

About organization simplification and better communication between both parts, the digital technology also eases documents exchange : drawings of houses between workers and clients, documentation about materials between workers and their suppliers, administrative documents, etc. In particular, it would be interesting for the customer to group at the same place all his inspiration photos found on the Internet, juxtapose them with photos of the existing housing, and enable choosen workers to access them so they can display the renovation project before going to the housing.

Eventually, craftsmanship should consider the new digital tools as a wonderful opportunity and not as a threat.

Craftsmanship shouldn’t find themselves in the position of the taxis with Uber, because they have a real expertise and unique skills. They have to look at increasing them with new materials and techniques. If they don’t, the risk for them is to get on the fringe of the digital economy. The logics of collaborative economies and marketplaces are gaining ground in every sector of the economy. These platforms and other Internet services are the children of the digital world, and therefore they will become inevitable and valuable.

Quickly : Digital technologies are changing many sectors of the economy. The building sector, which is still very traditional, could really improve itself by integrating new digital services. The market access would be easier, in search of qualified projects and trustworthy craftsmen. The building site’s organization would be simplified thanks to collaborative tools, such as a shared calendar or a dashboard. Serving renovation works with digital tools would enable everyone to save time.

MyWom is a project that aims at integrating these different services to support handcrafted building companies in their digital transition. All those elements, associated with an intuitive and ergonomic interface, would represent a great gain of time for both craftsmanship and their clients. If you want to discuss the details or the ambitions of our service, you can contact us at welcome@mywom.fr or share a comment below.