Smart construction concept: perception of G7 contractors in Sarawak / Elissa Sandy Jalong

Smart construction has widely appeared in construction industry because of the rapid growth and maturity of evolving Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The smart construction project has been implemented in Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge whereby the intensive use of ICT has been applied in the project. However, smart construction concept has not been implemented in Malaysia yet due to Malaysia still using traditional procurement method as the main procurement during construction project. The use of ICT in construction industry is seen to be more suitable for big scale and risky projects. The research aim for this research is to ascertain the perception of G7 contractors to the concept and characteristics of smart construction and its future prospect to Sarawak construction industry. Therefore, several objectives have been constructed which includes to study the concept of smart construction, to identify the level of knowledge on smart construction among professional in G7 contractor companies and to determine factors that hinder the implementation of smart construction faced by the professional in G7 contractor companies. The objective can be achieved by using data collection such as literature review and questionnaire survey which are distributed to the company director, project managers, architects, engineers and quantity surveyors in Kuching district. SPSS software has been used to analyse the findings. The findings revealed that the respondents have high level of knowledge on the smart construction. However, the findings revealed that the factors that hinders the implementation of smart construction are the high cost of acquiring or purchasing specialized software, high cost for training staff for ICT application and lack of skills in ICT among staff and project team. The findings can be used to cater the factors that hinders the implementation of smart construction in construction industry.