Keywords

1 Introduction

The Indian construction sector is struggling with slight underperformance toward achieving equilibrium between four key elements, i.e., time, money, quality, and end-user satisfaction. The main reason behind not being able to do so is the amount of risk which usually arises knowingly or unknowingly to almost any construction project disrupting a great deal of efforts and resources. For decades the practice of risk management in construction projects has been subjective to phases of identification, analysis, mitigation, and control which are followed more or less in a similar order [14]. Undoubtedly, the process has continued to lead good results in effectively managing risks in small-scale projects and multi-scale industrial projects equally but since every construction project is distinct to one another and require different approach to address and treat their risks, the strategies which were developed earlier got tremendously evolved in due course of time.

Risk as a basic concept is slowly being understood by many and has taken a step forward toward updating themselves, keeping regular checks on what can possibly go wrong and has gone wrong in their projects. However, this is still not true for small players of Tier II and III cities and towns. Bigger engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) companies in the country are mostly engaged in fully-fledged risk management. Their planning, activities, and tasks are made future-proof by either implementing innovative strategies or by introducing new technologies into their systems. The overall success of their projects lies in either or both being incorporated successfully by their team and managers. After the year 2020, the entire sector witnessed a moral obligation to transform and today incorporating new technologies in construction projects and firms is considered to be one of the best ways among all the strategies which is propagating at a very fast rate from companies to companies and professionals to individuals [15].

1.1 The Global Concept of Industry 4.0 in Construction Sector

The growth of industries together has lead to a complete revolution and this should clearly be credited to advancement in research and innovation. “From the technical point of view, Industry 4.0 can be described as the increasing digitization and automation of the manufacturing environment as well as the creation of a digital value chain to enable the communication between products and their environment and business partners. As a result, simultaneous planning of products and production processes leads to improvements in product quality and decrease time-to-market” [13]. The global concept of Industry 4.0 emerged in Indian construction sector as well and is talked through but seems still far from practicality as there are several risk factors attached to it.

2 The Purpose of the Study

With the growing focus on construction sector, reducing the susceptibility of the industry to equally enlarged and varied risks of today’s world is a huge challenge in itself. It is critical for executives to predict and judge to what the future will hold for them in terms of profits, changes in scenarios, business models, or in the entire business framework. The purpose of this study is to determine the present state of technology adoption in organizations and also to identify the key risk factors affecting the adoption by performing an analysis of the technology adoption risk factors.

Based on previous studies the possible challenges for construction industry in terms of technologies are listed below [13, 17]:

  • Willingness to adopt a new technology: This could be either due to high initial investment costs and maintenance costs or non-clarity on its benefits

  • High implementation costs: This is due to costs on associated peripherals, IT facilities, training and education, external consultation fees, etc.

  • Organizational and process changes: Due to implementation of a disruptive technology the business models and processes change significantly and thus it becomes difficult to re-evaluate and re-design at different levels

  • Need for hiring skilled professionals: New technology requires specific skill and knowledge and creating a pool of workforce of the right competencies is a great challenge for construction sector

  • Knowledge management: Lack of codified and shared project knowledge makes it tough to automate data management, handling enormous data without monitoring and verification restricts the use of technology

  • Lack of reference, standards, and architecture: There exists a lack of standards, references, and certifications when it comes to new technology. There is a need for an industry-specific reference architecture and increased participation, collaboration, and accreditation from the government.

  • Acceptance: The construction industry’s conservatism, strong sense of ownership, resistance to change and not reaching toward a common consensus make it nearly impossible for new technology to infiltrate the system.

  • Higher requirements for computing equipments and facilities: High-end technology requires more advanced computing devices and allied facilities which are usually low in portability and flexibility to carry from one point to another on sites. The safety, accessibility, and availability of counterparts possess another challenge

  • Data security and data protection: Due to increased volumes of data, information sharing, and mobility it has become a very essential for companies to protect their sensitive data and maintain privacy from fraudulent on servers and clouds

  • Enhancement of existing communication networks: Accesses to fast and reliable internet in isolated locations makes it difficult to use equipments, sensors, and mobile devices

  • Legal and contractual uncertainty and regulatory compliance: Another barrier is the concern over legality, responsibility, and compliance related to the usability of new technologies

  • Fear of heavy lay-offs due to smart processes of new technologies

  • Increased protection of sensitive devices from dust and pollutants present on-site

  • Need to establish research and development facilities for better results in innovations

  • Need to ensure proper monitoring, inspection, and validation of technologies and services.

2.1 Technology Areas

The primary focus of almost all industries is to prioritize their need for adopting a suitable technology based on certain justified reasons and conditions. For say, there could be some motivating factors for the contractors, developers, consultants, or any other related professional that encourage them to assess their options and survey through the technology market so as to reach a conclusion and decide on whether to take trials and safely invest or completely abandon the idea. These reasons may range between earning more profits, growing businesses, competing among competitors, increasing speed, accuracy, and quality of projects, gaining trust and maintaining transparency of processes, increasing risk appetite, effectively managing and monitoring different projects at the same time, enhancing value chain, become more inclusive and become environmentally sustainable for future. Depending upon such reasons and purposes the demand for technology adoption varies and similarly the notion of being ‘new’ to a technology from company to company also varies. The technology that is current or is available in the latest versions can also be considered as new, and a technology which was never used earlier from the perspective of the user can also be termed as new. Therefore, we can say that being ‘new’ is a relative term for technologies and it is irrespective of the time frame.

In order to summarize key technologies which have found their purpose in the construction industry Table 1 is developed showcasing systematic differentiation of fundamental disciplines/sciences and technologies under interdisciplinary, evolving, and advanced level areas (in short Technology Areas), where the latter shares the common roots of origins from the previous. These technology areas are realms of various sets of methods, systems, processes, and devices which may be categorized based on their application, capability, utility, functionality, current state of development, and scientific knowledge domain. Also, there exists an ever-growing list of technologies that are deemed fit into the Technology Areas of Future where the research and development is still underway.

Table 1 List* of fundamental disciplines/sciences and technology areas
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3 Literature Review

There are many studies existing related to new technologies who have shaped the face of Indian construction sector, including those of current technological trends and evolution of Industry 3.0 to 4.0. For example, Ribeirinho et al. [15], [6] [4, 17, 16] have indicated several positive signs on a transformation and digitalization of the industry as a whole. The list of possible disruptive technologies has been shared along with their likely benefits and deliverables. Even authors have tried to address the problems and issues faced by companies and stakeholders while making firm decisions on adoption and implementation of these technologies into their projects and systems, such as [1, 12] for BIM-related adoption challenges in India, [5] for the perceptions on drones being adopted in Indian construction projects, and [2] tells exactly how 3D printing was welcomed for experimentation but still is far from its absorption on the field. Also there are unlimited literatures on application of new technologies in a mixed form to achieve targets in a project, for example [19, 18] stated that using a combination of building information modeling BIM (4D, 5D), virtual and augmented reality, Internet of Things, teleoperation, soft skills, artificial intelligence applied to big data and cybersecurity to manage risks related to occupational safety and health on construction sites. Further Basir et al. [3, 20] devised solution of integrating BIM and GIS in order to improve the entire life cycle of the construction project.

So far, the literatures are exploratory when it comes to building a technique that can measure the intensity of risk exposure on construction projects. Few authors suggested a method of combining work breakdown structure and simultaneously its risk breakdown structure in the form of a two-dimensional matrix. [7] was the first literature who explain about risk breakdown matrix and how to use it for managing risks which includes numerous parameters. Several others build upon this taking their cases such as [9, 11, 10] WBS-RBS on EPC projects and for bridge construction and identifying hierarchy of fatal incidents on site.

4 Methodology

Although many literatures suggested the possible use of risk breakdown matrix (RBM) for a combination of work packages of construction projects (at y-axis) and risk breakdown structure (at x-axis) of the same [7], but there is no literature that suggests how to measure the overall risk exposure of projects by a new technology adoption. Therefore, in order to analyze quantitatively this contemporary structure a proposed version of RBM is introduced to systematically analyze the required parameters, where a modified risk breakdown matrix is constructed for a combination of technology areas (at y-axis) and risks of technology adoption (at x-axis) for all types of construction projects. A risk matrix [8] is also constructed for the likelihood of technology adoption against the impact of its adoption.

For better understanding of the modified RBM, the following Table 2 may be referred. The nomenclature given for project risk sources is RS1-15 and technology areas is TA1-15.

Table 2 Sample modified risk breakdown matrix for measuring risk exposure
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Under this matrix, every individual cell represents two values Pi, n and Im, j where P stands for probability of occurrence of technology adoption risk in the project and I stands for impact of adoption of that technology area (TA) on the project. The general formula for obtaining degree of criticality (R) TA is given by;

$$ (R)^{TA} ,i = \sum_{j = 1}^n {Pi,j \ast I i,j} $$
(1)

where (R)TA, i is the global incidence of risks in TA i; P i, j is the probability of occurrence of risk-j in TA-i; I i, j is the impact of risk-j in TA-i.

Similarly, the sum of the values for each column identifies the relationship of all TAs of the project to a particular source of risk (RS) or the presence of risks in different TAs. The general formula is given by;

$$(R)^{RS} ,j = \sum_{i = 1}^n {Pi,j \ast I i,j}$$
(2)

where (R)RS, j is the total effect of risk source risk-j in the whole project. The value obtained by summing columns using the second formula allows a classification of sources of technology adoption risks in terms of their influence on the project [7].

From both the Eqs. (1) and (2), the risk probability number (RPN) and probability number (PN) are calculated on each axis.

4.1 Data Collection

To gather values of probabilities and impact factors for each technology and associated risk, a detailed structured questionnaire was prepared on Google forms using Likert scale (low, medium, high and yes, no, maybe) and was sent to nearly 90 professionals working on construction projects in India out of which 40 responses were found to be appropriate for the analysis. Also, a telephonic survey was taken from 7 respondents who preferred guided filling of the same Google survey form for more clarity on thoughts.

5 Result

Each response of this pilot survey was translated into a formulation of a modified risk breakdown matrix, where a randomly selected response is represented as a sample analysis matrix in Table 3.

Table 3 Modified risk breakdown matrix developed from responses of a respondent
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In the modified RBM, the risk source order shows risk probability number (RPN) obtained by (R) RS, 1, (R) RS, 9, and (R) RS,2 to be of the value 1, 2, and 3, respectively. These ranks clearly outline the importance of such technology adoption risks having the potential to significantly affect a project’s growth. The technology area order shows probability number (PN) of (R)TA, 17, (R)TA, 20, and (R)TA, 6 of values 1, 2, and 3, respectively [9]. And these ranks list down the technology areas which are least likely to be adopted newly to a construction project because of their higher impacts than others. Therefore, the technologies like Rapid Prototyping Technology (includes additive/subtractive manufacturing and 3D concrete printing), Artificial Intelligence, and Building Information Modeling are perceived as the top three most challenging new technologies to be adopted by any stakeholder for their projects of any scale in India. And having said that should definitely not be understood as adoption of these are not likely to happen in future. They will be adopted sooner or later. Further, the top three reasons and challenges came out to be initial investment and maintenance costs, hiring of qualified and subject-related professionals especially at the ground level, and the need to establish a strong information collection, distribution, use, and management mechanism in organizations hindering them for not getting picked up so fast in the construction sector. Also, the bottom four least risky technologies, having risk probability number (RPN = 22), are mobile communication devices and applications, smart personal protection equipments and suits (including wearables such as armbands, health trackers, smart helmets, goggles, gloves, safety harness, etc.), digital training and assessment tools, and digital payments and banking tools. The risk matrix is developed for all the 33 technology areas mentioned in Table 4 as per the same response received from the survey. It depicts the level of acceptance of technologies in the sector from his/her perspective, where Mobile Communication and Devices TA3, Augmented and Virtual Reality Tools TA9, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools TA14, Green and Clean Technology TA16, Rapid Prototyping Technology TA17, Earthquake Resistant Technology TA19, Offsite Manufacturing TA21, Advance Surveying Tools TA27, and Digital Payments and Banking Tools TA32 are among the technologies having a greater chance of adoption (not in the same order of importance) regardless of the construction risks they are capable of managing in projects and organizations.

Table 4 Risk matrix of technology areas based on survey response
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Similarly, the rest of the survey responses were analyzed and the technology area having the highest chances of being adopted is Mobile Communication and Devices TA3 (Total count = 39/40). This was simply derived based on the total number of counts appearing in either of the bottom three TA order ranks from each modified RBM. The highest chance of a technology area not being adopted came out to be SCADA TA23 (Total count = 2/40). The technology adoption risk factor being the highest is investment and maintenance cost R1 (Total count = 32/40), and the least is the increased protection of sensitive devices from dust and pollutants on site R7 (Total count = 6/40).

6 Conclusion

It is unarguably the adoption risks of the technologies or technology areas which are dragging down the pace of the construction sector in India. Therefore, based on the above findings of the study it may be concluded that both the analysis techniques together can measure which type of new technology (or technology area) is being gravely affected by which type of adoption risk and thus influencing the overall likelihood of the adoption in projects from the viewpoint of the stakeholder. In other words, this pilot research study tried to reveal the present case scenario of the adoption of various new technologies in India.

7 Limitations and Future Scope of Study

The overall scope of this study is limited to when there is a need to gauge each technology area on the level of its complete potential vis-à-vis its exact utility as a risk factor for its adoption. Also, there was seen as an unquestionable relation between the technology adoption and the type of organizations, and type of project, such as residential, commercial, institutional, industrial, infrastructure, agriculture, etc., along with the scale of the organizations involved. The future progress in the study can be made by testing the feasibility of the analysis method for another set of adoption risks with some other set of new technologies or futuristic technologies. The data collection can also be further enhanced by introducing Delphi technique, personal interview, or any other suitable form of survey.