Three-fourth of construction projects included in a recent survey of project owners are running over budget and late, according to Procore Technologies. The survey was conducted in May and June by IDC and included about 500 responses from construction project owners and developers in the public and private sectors across North America.
The survey revealed that 75 percent of respondents were over planned budgets on their projects, and 77 percent were late. On average, projects were 70 days late compared to their original estimates.
Per project, respondents experienced an average of six changes to the budget and five changes to the schedule, with a 15 percent average increase in project costs as a result of these changes.
Procore is a supplier of construction-management software and commissioned the survey. It said the study identified significant differences between high and low performers, based on variance between budget estimate and estimate for day and project completion time. Better on-budget and on-schedule performance often corresponded with embracing integrated technology, according to Procore:
- High performers: The 17 percent of respondents who were least over their budget and estimate for days/completion time.
- Low performers: The 19 percent of responding organizations who were most over their budget and estimate for days/completion time. Low performers struggled with outdated or manual processes across project conceptualization, preconstruction planning, change order management, and incident tracking on the job site.
Most respondents (85 percent) are not using specialized construction-specific software, according to Procore. The remaining 15 percent manage construction projects with integrated software tools.
Owners recognize the importance of data centralization as a key building block for supporting new technologies that can help increase on-time and on-budget performance, according to Procore. The technologies they identified as priorities for long-term future adoption will require supporting application and data integration efforts to maximize benefits and results.
Top construction technologies identified as priority for future adoption
- Data centralization technologies (42 percent)
- Predictive analytics for cost modelling (36 percent)
- Building Information Modeling (BIM) (32 percent)
- Digital twin (31 percent)
- Green building/construction (30 percent)
“The survey shows that project owners can see what needs to be done,” said Warren Shiau, research VP for IDC, in a prepared statement. “But if the adoption of these technologies is going to be effective, they need to look at modernizing their data, applications and IT infrastructure—or else they won’t be fully able to take advantage of these game changers.”
Respondents predict the greatest impact on project performance in the next three years will be BIM (53 percent), connected supply chain (44 percent), pre-fabrication of components (41 percent), and predictive analytics for cost modelling (34 percent), according to the survey results.
Source: Procore Technologies
