Today, the construction industry focuses on sustainability, reliability, and efficiency. With the introduction of technological innovations, including building estimator software, most of the problems began to be solved – efficiency is increased, the number of risks is reduced to make certain decisions based on data analysis, etc. However, how did the evolution of the construction industry come to this?
How Did It All Begin?
Construction has appeared since the first people began to get out of the caves. At first, man built his dwellings from clay, but stone began to be used in the process. However, as time passed, man developed, and whole cities and states appeared that needed protection.
Therefore, it became necessary to erect defensive walls and structures, which in turn gave impetus to the development of architecture. Some rulers who wanted to emphasize their status built luxurious palaces and houses.
When construction became popular, people began to try or create new materials and technologies for construction. Many buildings were made of the material with which the state was rich. Only churches were built of stone, houses were built of wood.
Construction Evolution
In 1830, “railroad fever” began, which led to the massive use of metal structures in construction. Rails, originally intended only for railways, proved to be an ideal building material, from which strong metal structures are easily created.
The rapid development of land-based steam transport contributed to the growth in the capacity of rolling mills, ready to provide engineers with any number of channels and I-beams. The frames of high-rise buildings are still made from such details today.
In 1850, glass became a full-fledged building material. The factory production of large window glass made it possible to work out the construction technologies, first of large greenhouses, and then of grandiose buildings for other purposes, in which either all walls or roofs were made of glass. Fairy-tale “crystal palaces” began to come true.
What Was the Essence of the Industrial Revolution?
Industrial construction began after the Great Patriotic War. Not only functional and technological but also sanitary and hygienic, aesthetic requirements, as well as requirements for the improvement and landscaping of their territory began to be imposed on industrial facilities.
They began to build enlarged industrial buildings and complexes, united under one roof. To service them, they were provided with administrative and household premises, research and design bureaus and laboratories, as well as factory educational institutions.
When designing industrial buildings, they began to use the principle of “flexible workshops”, which is still used today and consists in increasing the spans and steps of frame buildings to obtain large areas and a flexible planning structure, specially justified when re-equipping production without significant reconstruction of the building.
Development of Modern Construction
The design and construction of industrial facilities continued to develop and improve, supported by a good regulatory framework developed by leading research and design institutes. The main industrial construction was concentrated in areas associated with the production of:
- electricity;
- oil;
- gas;
- chemistry;
- petrochemistry.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, as a result of the transition to a market economy and a reduction in the volume of industrial construction, many large enterprises in the construction industry have stopped producing structures and products, and design and research institutes have been unclaimed and were forced to change their profile to civil engineering.
Final Word
Modern industrial construction is associated primarily with the development of energy, the extraction, and processing of oil and other minerals, as well as with service enterprises in the machine-building industry, light and food industries. Many industrial enterprises of the past have been re-profiled, technically re-equipped, and reconstructed using the latest technologies, including foreign ones.
It is worth noting that the progress in the construction sector is even more than just a 100% predictable matter. This is the subject of disputes only in the context of directions and innovations to expect. Be sure that the ever-changing building is not the pioneering thing. Yes, the construction sector has numerous challenges to solve. But the main idea is that most processes become fully automated, flexible, and digital-friendly.
With the best-matching software, you can count on the perfect results including costing, budget planning, and building without poor profit margins and human-factor errors. Be open to experiments, transformations, and optimization. The future is about progressive construction that is 100% digitalized and environment-friendly.
