AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON THE CURRENT IMPLEMENTATION OF INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN THE MALAYSIAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY-A PILOT STUDY

• Published in: Malaysian Construction Research Journal
• Main Author: Idris N.H.; Mahbub R.; Hashim N.; Baharuddin H.E.A.; Ismail N.A.A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Construction Research Institute of Malaysia 2023
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85194560505&partnerID=40&md5=5cc135d3ba0a5057b709dcbcc6a4f1f4

Around the world, Innovative Technologies have appeared as key contributors in improving productivity quality and safety in Construction, including Malaysia. Innovative technologies or Construction 4.0 technologies have already been in the construction industry for quite a while and innovative technologies are on different levels of maturity. Technologies such as BIM, Cloud Computing, and Modularisation have developed significantly while other technologies such as Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality are still being enhanced. Unlike other industries, despite the acknowledged benefits, the construction industry has been slow and is still slow in implementing innovative technologies and has certainly never undergone a major transformation. Consequently, productivity of construction industry has stagnated over the last 40 years, or in some cases, even declined, although innovative technologies are and will eventually transform the Construction Industry. In addition, the present unexpected COVID-19 pandemic has been an eye-opener to the construction industry on how technologies can support construction companies to survive during this pandemic. Thus, the researchers piloted a study to examine the current implementation of innovative technologies with a small sample of decision makers of construction organisations within the Malaysian context before proceeding with the main data collection with a larger sampling size. Findings indicate that the current implementation of innovative technologies in the Malaysia Construction Industry is still low. Pilot study findings also suggest that Clients/Government need to change the norm of continuous search for the lowest price to award projects that limits creativity and critical thinking, to promote the use of innovative technologies. Even though Modular & Prefabrication and BIM technologies have been in the industry for quite some time now and reached the maturity level, the statistic shows the opposite trend. It can be concluded that the Malaysian Construction Industry has yet to stretch out and comprehend the opportunity of the innovative technologies implementation. © 2023, Construction Research Institute of Malaysia. All rights reserved.