Abstract
The most significant current technological trend is
digitization, the impacts of which will be faced by all
levels of society. This paper addresses how the
Australian construction industry has kept up with the
pace of digitization compared with other industries in
Australia. The data is drawn mainly from the national
accounts hosted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics,
within the time period of 1995-2015. Construction has
developed into one of the most important industries in
Australia. Together with mining and the financial and
insurance sector, it has contributed to a significant
gross added value (GVA) in the economy. The construction
industry has invested around 1% or less in information
and communication technologies (ICT) as their share of
GVA; however, it has invested about 15% in ICT of their
total investments (gross fixed capital formation). Among
the selected industries, construction's labour
productivity measured by GVA per hour was the third
highest, despite low level of investments in
digitization. The observed correlation between ICT
investments and productivity is weak when using industry
level data from the national accounts. Any big leap
towards digitization is not recognised for the
construction industry; rather there appears to be steady
acceptance of the technology.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 33-43 |
Journal | Technology in Society |
Volume | 50 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Aug 2017 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Keywords
- Australia
- construction
- digitization
- productivity