Assessment of influencing factors in selecting effective mobile applications—a drive toward automation in construction projects

The Construction Real Estate Infrastructure and Project Management (CRIP) sector is a prominent sector among the industries worldwide. It plays a significant role in contributing to any country’s economy worldwide. Mainly several sub-sectors of the CRIP sector that contributes to country’s economy such as highways, railways, airways, waterways, irrigation, power generation, government buildings, residential buildings, etc. Many public sector projects add push toward the development of CRIP sector in India. The activities also involve multi-tasking and multi-activity with different types of people at different levels. Mostly, exchange of inter-departmental information utilizes vast amounts of data throughout the construction project activities. The efficiency of transformation of data depends on the way in which data were handled, transferred between different stages, and participants involved. This efficiency can be improved by implementing modern tools like automation—Internet of Things (IOT) framework, mobile application, computer software, etc. Among the different automation tool, the most familiar and most common tool is mobile applications. Even though several mobile applications are in practice, all the applications are not performing with full outcome. Although, many applications are lagging with data security, user friendliness, training intensity, etc. The main aim of this research study is to understand the benefits of automation, to compare various modern tools available in the market, and examine those modern tools to check if they rectify negative impacts of automation. The merits and demerits are discussed with the outcome of questionnaires from various users. This was achieved by performing a qualitative analysis among selected mobile applications.