Digitalization in Malaysian construction industry : awareness, challenges and opportunities

Abstract

The construction industry is going forward by adopting digitization, but players are still battling to grasp and execute it properly. That is why, this study aims to evaluate the awareness, challenges and opportunities of digitalization in the Malaysian construction industry and provides a framework for better digital implementation. In this perspective, a questionnaire-based study was conducted, and the responses were collected from field experts who have implemented a digital system in their construction projects. The outcome shows that the Malaysian construction industry is aware of digitalization and rated the Industrialized Building System (IBS) as the most important technology. In Project Delivery, “Standardized Organization” was the utmost factor for digitalization in construction. The top Challenge in Digital Implementation is “Organizational costs are among the high initial costs of implementing technologies, standards, and specifications”. The top Opportunity in Digital Transformation is “Procedures better planned and monitored”. Based on the top factors, the framework was constructed which will help the practitioners to understand and implement digitalization in a much better way. Thus, this study is significant in addressing the issues related to implementing digitalization in the Malaysian construction industry and providing a perspective to catalyse the development.