survey reveals construction company resistance to some new technology

A new industry survey suggests that one of the most difficult things about running a construction company is estimating project costs.

The survey, conducted by the Eagle, Idaho-based TSheets by Quick Books, indicated that roughly 20 percent of respondents regarded such estimates as their most troublesome financial activity.

Meanwhile, another 38 percent said their most challenging estimate was figuring out how much to pay workers.

Despite those numbers, some 46 percent of respondents revealed that they now use accounting software to help them come up with realistic estimate figures.

According to Dottie Chong, a writer for TSheets by Quick Books, even though 19 percent of respondents additionally indicated they are using technology to keep track of labor costs, “half of the businesses surveyed are tracking time manually.”

Chong noted that a large number of companies still have managers keeping track of employee hours, or continue to use either a punch clock or paper time cards.

An embrace of new and available record-keeping technology, Chong added, could save time for companies, letting “users track work hours automatically, with location-aware features for added accuracy,” she added.

Even with the continued embrace of older cost-estimating methods, a report released late last year by the publication Fortune indicated that, nationally, construction companies are increasingly “leveraging technologies like artificial intelligence, cloud-based data analytics, and mobile computing to drive efficiency and boost margins.”

The report added that in the last 5 years, more than $18 billion has been invested by venture capital firms focusing on an array of new technology for what is seen as a growing construction market.

By Garry Boulard

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