RESEARCH General Home & Garden

CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY
Wearable computers would save money, increase efficiencies

Melissa Mitchell, Arts Editor
(217) 333-5491; melissa@uiuc.edu

3/1/03

Photo by Bill Wiegand Architecture professor George Elvin thinks lightweight, wireless computers may similarly transform the construction industry in the not-too-distant future.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Wearable computers have revolutionized communications in fields such as firefighting and emergency medical services, where information must flow fast in adverse work environments. George Elvin thinks lightweight, wireless computers may similarly transform the construction industry in the not-too-distant future.

"Building design and construction has been called the world’s largest industry," said Elvin, a professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "It is also one of the most inefficient."

Consensus estimates suggest that as much as 30 percent of project costs are wasted through poor management of the design-construction process. This waste represents more than $10 billion in the United States every year that could be directed toward improved design, better materials and related improvements to our built environment."

To that end, Elvin is leading efforts at Illinois to study the effects of using wireless-enabled portable computers that can be strapped to a toolbelt and pen-based electronic tablets to complete integrated design-construction projects.

Elvin will present results of a preliminary study at the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Construction Research Congress in Honolulu, March 19-21.

Elvin said the goal of the study, part of a larger research program to develop tools and practices for improving the built environment through integrated design and construction, was "to measure the accuracy, timeliness, completeness and efficiency of information exchange enabled by wearable computers." The study was based on interviews with architects and contractors; construction-site observations; and data from controlled experiments at Illinois’ Building Research Council. In those experiments, three small structures were built using different communications devices: traditional paper documents, a pen-based tablet computer, and a wearable computer with flat-panel display.

"Results indicated that tablet and wearable computers may significantly reduce rework, while productivity decreased slightly when tablet and wearable computers were used,"
Elvin said. With paper documents, for example, 4.15 percent of total project time was spent re-doing some aspect of the project, compared to 1.38 percent with the wearable computer. Elvin said communications using paper likely proved less efficient because the quality of paper documents faxed to job sites is often poor, whereas the use of tablets or wearable computers allows construction-team members to enlarge parts of documents to view greater detail.

Elvin said a dip of less than 8 percent in productivity indicated in the study "is typical of the initial decline in productivity observed when a new technology is introduced to a workforce in any field," he said. "Further study is needed to determine the long-term productivity impacts of tablet and wearable computers once the user had become proficient in their use."