An exploratory study of awareness and perceived relevance of GIS among general contractors in the USA

This document analyzes the awareness and perceived relevance of geographic information systems and related technologies by construction industry general contractors via an exploratory survey of individuals in the field. A quantitative survey was developed based on an extensive literature review and meta-analysis. The survey was then administered at the Association of General Contractors (AGC) 2018 convention in New Orleans, LA. Eighty-eight construction industry related individuals participated. When asked if they were familiar with GIS, a tool for organizing data so it can be displayed and analyzed based on its geospatial characteristics, 32.95% (n=29) said they were not, 57.95% (n=51) said they were, and 9.09% (n=8) did not respond to the question. The researchers further assessed respondents who stated yes to familiarity with GIS or left it blank in depth. Within this group, the greatest perceived relevance was in property and site survey maps (4.37 average), digital mapping (4.22 average), engineering surveys (3.95 average), and topographic or planimetric mapping (3.95 average). This article proposes consideration of broader use of GIS for geovisualization in the construction industry as in many ways it is an untapped resource. GIS use could play a more important role in design and planning, site location selection, materials management, market analysis, monitoring, logistics, and decision making. © 2019 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.