State of the Art of Construction Analytics

The topic of analytics has gained extensive attention during the past years to encourage informed, data oriented decision-making. Although not formally explored, the topic is nothing new to the construction industry. Extensive volume of data on patterns and trends are already being collected and used within the decision making process in the construction projects, at the construction companies, or in national/global policy making. As part of an extended research effort at Purdue University, this paper reports on a study to methodologically explore the process of creation of insights from data in the construction research. A protocol to study construction analytics was developed by integration of the definition of analytics into the knowledge pyramid. The protocol is expanded through established definitions of data categories. The proposed protocol is then validated through an inductive study based on a limited sample of research in construction. The outcome of the research is a validated protocol for structured review of the patterns of collection, process, and application of data. This protocol is currently being used as a foundation for the ongoing research within a more extensive sample of the construction research.