Barriers to ICT Adoption in Construction Revisited

The paper presents introduction to a study on the barriers to the implementation of information and communication technologies (ICT) in construction. In the study, we compared the ICT use in construction with some other industries as reported in the literature and some industrial studies. We challenge the conventional wisdom that construction industry is not being rational in its choices to adopt (or not) various ICTs. We approached the issue from several methodological frameworks. In the paper we structure the reasons along the PESTEL framework. We examine each of the factors and suggest how they could be overcome. A survey has been designed and executed among the members of the Advisory Board of the EU Digiplace project. The results show that the industrial partners are less critical of the technology migration problems than researchers. The paper concludes that there is a need for a better way of deployment of and learning about new technologies that would benefit small and medium enterprises – the lag in productivity growth is largest there. This could be implemented in the form of industrial platforms in the context of the developments of the Industry 4.0. © 2020 The Authors. Published by Budapest University of Technology and Economics & Diamond Congress Ltd Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of the Creative Construction Conference 2020.