A Tale of Two SITIES

In the recent past, there has been a proliferation of activities both in research as well as commercial arenas relating to Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) usage in the construction industry. However, it is not easy to gauge the extent to which success has been achieved or even the extent to which the industry as a whole might be exploiting the ICTs. One way of gauging this is obviously through detailed surveys. This paper considers some such surveys from the two sides of the Atlantic (specifically USA and UK) and attempts to draw conclusions from them. The acronym, SITIES, could metaphorically relate to the two‘cities', USA and UK, as well as Surveys of IT In architecture, Engineering and conStruction. The data from USA is largely drawn from CFMA (Construction Financial Managers Association) Bi-Annual IT Surveys. The data from the UK is drawn from various sources including CICA (Construction Industry Computing Association), BRE (Building Research Establishment) and ITCBP (Information Technology Construction Best Practice). The surveys from the two sides of the Atlantic are quite dissimilar in nature and, thus, make it hard to make comparisons between them. However, it is still possible to make some interesting observations about the nature of ICT exploitation in the two countries. The paper concludes that technologies being used in both contexts are quite similar but there are differences in certain trends in terms of uptake of these technologies. Besides, the trade organisations in the USA seem to be more actively involved in encouraging and supporting activities in this area for their members than the UK.