Adoption of Virtual Reality in Construction Projects

Abstract

In recent years, virtual reality has emerged in various fields such as manufacturing sectors, construction sectors etc. Virtual reality technology has a wide variety of applications in various fields. Several applications of VR in construction sector are design review and support, construction support, operations and management, safety training, stakeholder management. Recent researches had shown that VR can also be used widely in decision making process. Despite the various applications of VR in construction sectors, the adoption level of the VR technology is comparatively very low. This study aims to identify the factors that are preventing the adoption of virtual reality in construction projects. The factors are identified through a wide review of literature survey and analysed by means of questionnaire survey with statistical methods. The factors are ranked through the analysis and the most affecting factors are found out. The findings of this study show that requirements of specialized high processing equipment, high investment in VR, lack of awareness about the technology, lack of client’s interest, limited finance of the organizations, existence of champions using VR are the most preventing factors for the adoption of VR in construction projects. To mitigate these issues, several possible mitigation measures has been suggested in this study.