Awareness of Big Data concept in the Dominican Republic construction industry: an empirical study

Abstract

Purpose The construction industry, being one of the main activities in the ever-demanding need for technology developments, sometimes falls short of other industries in terms of implementation. The adoption of Big Data (BD) in industries such as health and retail has had positive impacts in aspects such as decision-making processes and forecasting trends that allow planning some future business movements. Hence, the question of whether these results can be imitated in the construction industry. Therefore, this paper aims to address the level of awareness identified as a first step towards implementation of the BD concept within the construction industry in the Dominican Republic (DR). Design/methodology/approach As little to no information exist on the subject; the selected approach to perform this research was qualitative methodology; 21 semi-structured interviews were studied using situational awareness. Four levels of awareness were developed based on the Endsley’s Situation Awareness model. Findings The results showed that nearly 95% of the interviewees had either no knowledge or very basic awareness of the BD requirements or intermediate awareness, but only 5% had applied BD concepts in the construction industry. Originality/value This study shows the gaps that exist in the understanding and implementation of BD concepts in the DR construction industry. This paper establishes the need to develop continuous professional development programmes for construction professionals and a need to update curriculum in construction-related education.

Challenges faced by the adoption of big data in the Dominican Republic construction industry: an empirical study

“…al., 2019). But as demonstrated in a previous study of this research in which the level of awareness about BD and its characteristics were measured (ReyesVeras et. al., 2021), there is an overall low level of awareness in the construction industry of the Dominican Republic and considering that awareness refers to the knowledge or perception of a fact or situation, in this case BD technology, this detail represents a challenge to overcome in order to achieve an industry-wide adoption of the technology.…”

“…BD technology has been identified as a possible solution to the pressing needs of modernization to which the construction industry is subjected, its contribution in the areas of improvement of decision making and resource management make this technology a unique tool for the modernization of the industry (Reyes Veras et. al., 2021;and Vellante, 2021).…”

“…The aforementioned study on the measurement of BD awareness levels and its characteristics (Reyes Veras et. al., 2021), also showed that there is also a low level of knowledge of the technology in other industries, which makes its popularization in construction even more difficult.…”

“…When the challenges identified by the participants are analysed, it can be observed that only two of them (the high investment cost and the security concerns) correspond with those identified in the literature. This is largely due to the low level of knowledge that is possessed in the construction industry of the Dominican Republic about BD and its characteristics (Reyes Veras et. al., 2021).…”

Review of Big Data Integration in Construction Industry Digitalization

“…Thus, it has become easier to use these tools, especially by increasing previous practical experiences that can be followed. At the same time, customers are hoping that construction companies will turn more toward big data, to follow the lead of other industries (Veras et al, 2021). Extracting facility management information digitally from BIM rather than going deep into large amounts of documents and paper drawings and handing it over to a new customer as fast to use digital files is a distinct application.…”