Hello, everyone.
This is Enta.
Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the post-COVID era.
What will Japan be like after the pandemic?
What will happen to us in the construction industry, in particular?
It would be no exaggeration to say that the world has entered the era of remote work.
What Is Telework?A portmanteau combining “tele” (meaning “distant”) and “work”That's what I've heard.
To be honest, isn't the construction industry still very much focused on hands-on work on-site?
The reality is that nothing gets done unless people go to the site.
Since the construction industry is all about creating something from nothing, the job site is the foundation of everything.
We’ll likely see structures built using 3D printers, and in fact, they already seem to be in use in areas without earthquakes.
Other than that, I think heavy machinery will become somewhat more automated.
It seems feasible to have it drill autonomously to a specified set of coordinates, and refueling—where it automatically heads to the fuel dock and docks to refill—has already been demonstrated using cleaning robots, right?
It seems quite possible that, eventually, heavy machinery will be the only thing still operating even late at night.
It sounds like the construction supervisor on the night shift could handle that monitoring task.
While jobs that can be performed by machines will be automated to a certain extent, they probably won’t progress to the point of remote work.
It’s likely that updates on the progress at the job site are provided on an ongoing basis (limited to contractors who have been selected for the project).
Until now, we’ve had to either go to the site in person to check or ask the supervisor to send us photos, but going forward, using videos to check progress may become the norm.
This will likely become standard practice not only between prime contractors and subcontractors, but also with government agencies.
Back in the day, key construction sites overseen by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism had fixed cameras installed, so I always felt like I was being watched...
And it’s always when there’s a worker acting… weird? that I get one of those annoying calls from the subcontractor supervisor, huh? lol
It seems that process management could be handled using drones and other robots.
For example, you can take photos on a regular basis to quantify the differences.
We already have the soil volume and other figures.
Will photo management become video management?
As video search technology improves, it will recognize a blackboard with the word “drilling” written on it and play a video about drilling.
On site, we write “Drill Hole Length Measurement” on a blackboard-like surface, and once we briefly show it to the camera, that’s when the drill hole length measurement begins.
It starts when you search for “drill hole length measurement.” I just let the video play in the background like that.
It's possible that photo management might disappear.
The same applies to as-built inspection: once you can measure with a certain degree of accuracy, there will be no need to take measurements anymore.
I think quality control for things like mortar test specimens will still be done the old-fashioned way for a while, lol.
They won't take the test specimens to the testing facility...
Overall, I think things are gradually getting easier.
However, I think it remains true that all the finer details will still be handled by the human eye and hand.
Machines can perform predetermined tasks 100% of the time. That's because they're commanded to do so.
I can't decide whether it's something I should do or something I don't have to do.
Even though we say AI “thinks,” it’s not all-powerful.
This is especially true for people in our line of work.
For example, while excavating with automated heavy machinery, an unexpected boulder suddenly pops up.
The heavy machinery will be constantly using a claw bucket to nudge the boulders around.
If you were a human, you'd have to decide whether to switch to an Aion (hydraulic breaker).
However, machines aren't capable of making such minor judgments.
The machine's decision is as follows: if the boulder is 1 cubic meter, it switches to the Aion; if it's smaller than that, it uses the claw bucket.
Even with a 0.9 m³ bucket, you still have to dig with the bucket teeth, lol.
I suppose eventually they'll start making judgments based on factors like hardness and rebound.
And if there's a problem, the heavy machinery will alert us and record a video, right?
As construction managers, will we also be responsible for monitoring the progress of heavy equipment automation and managing its operations?
Will the simplification of construction management lead to the need for more complex management?
No matter how things turn out, we're taking a hands-on approach for now.
Going to the job site and building things. That’s the absolute foundation of our work as civil engineers.
That said, while I understand that putting up construction signs is unavoidable, I wish they would switch to digital displays so the messages can be changed however they want after the signs are installed.
いちいち「本日、通れます！」とか「本日、時間通行止め」とかのマグネット貼りに行ったりする事がないように！ｗ
建設コンサルは多少のテレワーク化は進むような気がしますが、それでも現場行って目で見る雰囲気と映像では全く違うので実際はどうなるんでしょう？
役所の立会が動画化されれば、役所の担当者も人員が減らされて大変なので時間に大幅に遅れるという事も少なくなりそう。
少しでも仕事が楽な方向にはドンドン進んで行って欲しいです。
皆さんは今後をどの様に想像しますか？
See you later.
