Construction site management is the software and machines that run the work on a building site once digging begins: buying and delivering the materials, checking what has been built against the plan, predicting delays, and finishing the walls. It is the second of the two zones of construction technology, after preconstruction.
Materials come first. A large housing project uses thousands of tonnes of cement and steel, bought in many separate deliveries. Construction materials procurement platforms take the builder's order, collect prices from suppliers and deliver the materials to the site.
Next, someone must check the work. On most sites, engineers walk the floors with printed drawings and note the progress by hand. Construction progress monitoring replaces this walk with a scan. Drones, cameras on helmets and walking robots photograph or scan the site. Software then compares the scan with the BIM model, the 3D model that the designers drew, and shows what has been built, floor by floor. It also finds mistakes, such as a wall built in the wrong place, before they are covered by concrete or plaster.
The progress data is then used to look ahead. Construction risk prediction compares the site's progress with data from many past projects. It warns, weeks in advance, that a task is slipping and will hold up the tasks that depend on it. For an Indian housing developer, a delay is expensive. Under the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, or RERA, a developer who hands over flats after the promised date must pay the buyers interest for the delay.
Finally, some finishing work is now done by machines. Construction robots plaster and paint walls, evenly and faster than a crew with trowels and rollers.
All four products report to construction management software, the shared platform on which the project runs. The aerial photos of a whole site often come from drone surveying, the same kind of service that measures mines and villages.