Why technology has not transformed building 1 day ago Emma Woollacott , Technology Reporter Share Getty Images Building is still largely manual work If you took a worker from a 1920s construction site and transported them to a present day project, they would not be that surprised by what they saw, according to Sam O'Gorman. "Overall, across Europe and the US, stuff is still built in a pretty manual fashion - not very different to the way it would have been built 100 years ago," says Mr Gorman, an associate partner in the property practice of consultancy firm McKinsey. Back in 2017, the McKinsey Global Institute concluded that the construction industry could improve productivity by 50 to 60% and boost the industry's global value by $1.
6tn (£1.3tn) a year. Since then, McKinsey says, improved production processes and the use of new software and apps have improved efficiency, but not to the extent that one might have hoped.
"Construction is a bit of a digital laggard compared with many other industries. It's been slow to adopt digital in the widest sense," says Mr O'Gorman. In recent years, several technologies have been touted as having the potential to transform the industry.
One of those is 3D printing, which involves extruding concrete or other materials to build up the walls of a house. The University of Maine has been working on one such project, developing the world's biggest 3D printer. Using a mix of wood fibres and plant-based resin, the printer formed a 600 sq ft (55 .