Construction technology is the software and machines that builders use to design a building, price it, plan it and build it on site. It is also called construction tech, or contech. It covers every stage of a metro line, a flyover or an apartment tower, from the first 3D model to the day the keys are handed over.
A construction project brings together many separate companies. The owner pays for the project. The owner may be a property developer, a company or a government agency, such as a metro rail corporation. Architects and engineers design it. The main contractor, often called the general contractor, builds it. The main contractor hires subcontractors for specialist work, such as electrical wiring, plumbing and painting. These specialist jobs are called trades. Suppliers deliver the cement, steel and tiles. All of these companies must work from the same set of drawings, and they work together only for this one project.
The work happens in five stages. First, the design is drawn, more and more often as a BIM model. This is a 3D model in which every wall, pipe and beam is an object with a size, a material and a cost. Second, contractors count the materials and labour that the design needs, and quote a price to win the job. Third, the winning contractor sets the schedule and the budget. Fourth, the building is built, and the work on site is tracked against the schedule. Fifth, the finished building is handed over to the owner, who then runs it with property management software.
The software in this scene sits in two zones. Preconstruction is the desk work before anyone digs. It includes BIM software, construction estimating software and the tools that track many projects at once. Construction site management is the work on site: buying the materials, scanning what has been built, predicting delays, and robots that plaster and paint walls. One product covers both zones. Construction management software is the shared platform on which the whole project runs. It holds the latest drawings, the schedule, the inspections and the payments to subcontractors.
Why did construction go digital so late? Every project is different, and the companies on it separate when it ends. The work happens on a site, not at a desk. And contractors earn a small margin on each project, so they have little money to spend on software.
That is changing, because a mistake costs more the later it is found. Consider a sleeve for a drainage pipe that is missing from the drawing of a floor slab. On the drawing, an engineer can add it in ten minutes. After the concrete is poured, workers must drill through the hardened slab, and the work on the floor above may wait for days. So builders now scan their sites with drones and cameras, and software compares what was built with the model, using computer vision. Counting the quantities in a design, which took estimators days, now takes minutes.
Most of the software companies in this scene sell mainly to builders abroad. Several of the largest of them build much of their software in Bengaluru, Pune and Chennai.