How To Save Money Through The Use Of Virtual Reality In The Construction Business

How To Save Money Through The Use Of Virtual Reality In The Construction Business

Computer Aided Design (CAD), 3D modeling and Building Information Modeling (BIM) are some of the technologies currently in mainstream use in the construction industry. Integrating them with new technologies such a virtual and augmented reality is another frontier that most construction firms hope to adopt in the future.

However, some have already joined this promising reality in the building industry. Though still at an early stage of development, it promises many things. One of them is saving money for both the customer and the contractor. Here are five significant things that any company can do to save through this technology.

1. Testing Before Actual Works Begins Minimizing Costly Errors

Mega projects are usually novel ideas. They implement hundreds of new technologies, designs, styles, models and many other things. Since there is no experience in new things, integrating the project into one giant project can be chaotic at best. In the past, people would experiment with dummy models before actual construction. Though dummy, they are still quite expensive.

Today, using virtual reality, you can integrate any project seamlessly, test it, improve it and actuate it before the real works begin. If you are working on a joint or a solid concrete technology—you can even experience it before work starts so that when you get to the actual project, there is no rework.

2. Streamlining Communication

Projects require perfect communication between and among stakeholders and teams. Miscommunication is common between the contractor and the customer. As they say, the glory is lost in the translation. The statement is entirely true when it comes to construction projects. A significant number of projects entail a series of communication hitches where the customer feels that the contractor is not getting the project right.

You can minimize all that by engaging the customer at every stage through virtual tours. With virtual tours, you can experience the project as if it were real on virtual reality. Companies such a Render 3D Quick are ahead of time when it comes to rendering 3D virtual tours.

3. Refine Designs To Precision Minimizing Waste

A contractor is always confronted with the challenge of refining and redefining designs to suit the environment, use, funds, and client’s expectations—a complex host of issues that are hard to get right first time. With virtual reality, your worry is just time and expertise. Without virtual reality, you have to complete designs, get feedback, test, and rework.

Even if the project is complicated, for example designing a hospital facility, all you need are renderings of the project, improve on them, redesign them, reprogram them afresh if need be, until you get it right. There is very little waste compared to actual CAD designs that take time to develop or adjust.

4. Improve Workplace Safety

Making the construction site safe is one of the most tedious and unrewarding tasks in the building and construction industry. Even when you think you have done your best, minor injuries occur sometime making the whole construction process expensive and tedious. In most countries, when a workplace injury occurs, the site has to be reapproved in another time-consuming and costly endeavor.

With augmented and virtual reality, you can improve work safety effectively. In fact, some companies are offering VR safety training tours. Everyone in contact with the construction site has to pass through various hazards successfully before he or she is allowed to enter the site.

5. Improve Response And Flexibility Within The Project.

A construction project operates in an open environment subject to changes. For example, road construction projects have to navigate changing weather patterns, changing traffic, political upheavals, and many other challenges.

Smart companies factor in together BIM, spatial technology modeling, environmental externalities and all the other factors together to understand and anticipate such challenges.

A company that does so is capable of responding before a problem occurs, or envisages merely the difficulties and adjusts its timelines and milestones effectively. ‘Unforeseen’ circumstances will not catch such a company.

Contributions

Adopting VR technology is not the end of making your construction needs better; it is the beginning of a process of making the innovation work to your advantage. If you adopt it with the five items in mind, you will improve your quality, spend less for better quality, and spend less time completing projects. The money that you would have used to do elaborate safety training, to rework designs and plans, to correct misinformation, or even recover lost time due to externalities is saved.

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