Building contractors were told this week that cloud computing could make a huge difference to the construction industry, especially when it comes to project management.
Autodesk, which develops some of the most influential design software such as AutoCAD and 3DS Max, claimed this week that the construction industry could use cloud hosting to power remote servers, given the nature of working on a building-site, an essentially rugged environment.
This would enable an industry which has otherwise been slow in taking up cloud technology (mainly due to security / reliability concerns) to flourish, changing the nature in which projects are run.
Autodesk senior VP Amar Hanspal thinks that the technology is now ripe for the construction industry to jump on board, just as they did for Building Information Modelling (BIM).
Hanspal said that by using technology such as mobile phones, the work force could be reached and drawings, building models and instructions delivered. He stated that the cloud could be used as an integral tool for construction.
Cloud computing has been adopted by a lot of industries outside construction, which proves its value.
It is enabling users to do things previously unheard of and with proper management can transform business processes. The cloud will be used, it is hoped, to accelerate the BIM which will enable engineers and designers to compute complex calculations on a much larger scale.
It would enable not only remote access but combine this with increased processing power.
A motorway for instance could be designed and analysed as a whole section rather than in sections. Structural engineers could compute could make large scale calculations whilst town planners look at building design solutions within an urban context.
The possibilities are far reaching and could well negate the need for high powered expensive individual computers in the future. Such is the power of cloud computing.
