THE VALUE OF HANDHELD COMPUTERS IN CONSTRUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Construction is an information intensive industry in which the accuracy and timeliness of information is paramount. Construction projects can experience extensive delays or rework due to information that is unavailable, inaccurate or simply outdated which can decrease the overall productivity of the project and can incur indirect costs due to schedule delays or rework. The main objective on a typical construction project is to add value to the constructed facility, the business, the company and the community by ensuring that time and money are not wasted and to improve quality and working conditions.

Handheld computers (HHC) can be used as tools to add value to a construction project and have the potential to solve some of these problems by providing field workers with accurate, reliable and timely information at the location where it is needed and enable workers to transmit up-to-date project information back to management directly from the construction site. Thus, HHC's can increase the amount of direct work on a project indirectly by directly decreasing the time spent on support work such as accessing drawings and sending RFI's and therefore reducing idle time.

Construction Information Needs

In construction, value is generally viewed and often defined in terms of changes in three (3) items i.e. cost, time and quality. To add value, people who involved in construction project need to apply and rely on more modern information technology (IT) since construction have increased as projects have become more complex and owner demands have become more challenging. By managing IT more efficiently, it is hoped that value can be added to a construction project.

Generally, IT is a term that includes all kinds of technology that are used to create, gather, store, process, retrieve, exchange and transmit and it has been used in various forms such as data, voice, images, video and etc. and one of the IT tool that we are going to discuss here is Handheld Computers (HHC).

Application Of HHC In Construction

The use of HHC's on the construction jobsite has so far been very limited. Normally, the implementating of handheld computers on the jobsite mostly in gathering schedule, quality, layout, inspection and other types of information. Unlike desktop computers, whose applications in construction have become standard practice for most personal who involved in the construction project, HHC applications remain almost exclusively in the realm of pilot studies at innovative construction organizations or reseach project. Some of the typical Handheld Computer applications in the construction project are as below :

• Calendar and contact management
• Order entry and order management
• Point of sale and pricing
• Financial management and tracking
• Technical support guides and documentation
• Signature and approval management
• Logistic management
• Financial management and tracking
• Problem tracking and resolution

The Benefit of Handheld Computers

In a survey by Alemany (1999) showed that those who used HHC at work saved time on paperwork and spent more time on supervision. Another survey conducted internally by a large construction company found that supervisors spent between 36 to 50% of their time on paperwork and therefore by providing construction workers or people that involved with the construction project with HHC, it can help them locate tools, equipment and materials and send RFI's and access relevant schedule information could potentially allow them to spend more time on direct works and less idle time waiting answers or needed tools and materials. The other benefits of using HHC are as follows:

• One-time handling data in the field
• Elimination of illogical data entry
• Completeness of entered data
• Selecting data from pre-determined lists speeds up data entry and standardize the results
• Data integrity is improved
• Less storage space for documents
• Fewer hard copies since they can assessed on the computer
• Information can be excahanged wirelessly
• Field computations are simplified and users can view maps and CAD files
• Can incorporated a lot of software to aid field personal in solving problems and understand task better

Conclusions

HHC have many benefits that can improve construction processes. The most significat benefit is perhaps HHC's ability to provide workers with real-time access to relevant information at the jobsite and to send real-time information back from jobsite to the appropriate decision makers. In addition, the HHC's ability to improve the accuracy of the information being exchanged is one of their primary added value in construction.