Computers in the Workplace

     If you read the about page on this blog, you'll know that my career path to information technology started in the low voltage voice/data cabling, and network infrastructure hardware installation highly based in construction.  Being one who dealt with telephony and internet circuits, and switch/router configuration, I did more computing than most in the trades where computers are not widely used in the trade field by anyone lower than any trades foreman.  Although, many of the trade "grunts" are not using laptops in the field, they are incorporating smartphones more especially the cameras where they will take pictures of a blueprint allowing them to refer to their phone for locations and measurements of builds rather than taking constant trips back to the blueprint to refresh themselves or see the next task saving time, and potentially money on a job that may have been bid as a flat rate.

    The first person in a trade project that may be using a computer is of course, the architect who will need a high-powered computer and high bandwidth inter/intranet to design, create and share the building designs that they create.  After the architect, the main place where a computer will be used is in the process of creating and submitting bids by the contractors competing for the job where they will use word processing and spreadsheet skills to create financial documents such as bids, receipts, and invoices to send to the customer to compete for and document the agreements of the job.  Once the job is in production, you will often find the general contractor with a computer to document the jobs progress and communicate with the customer, trade companies and the organize the logistics of a job, otherwise you may only sometimes see a handful of trade foremen on a laptop while the "grunts" under them will only be using a smartphone as I mentioned before. 

There are other areas where tradesmen will use computers, mostly in form of smartphones where the tradesman will often log into web portals to check into a job site to document time and materials, and to take pictures and fill out work orders as deliverables for a job that they do which is common practice, especially for repair calls.  

    In future, I believe computers will be more widely used in the trades but not increasing much in the sub-foreman position.  While blueprint mapping technology may improve and be more widely used, the use by those doing the physical labor will still only be using a smartphone or tablet while those above and them will stay about the same because the steps in the process of bidding, documenting, invoicing, and communication will not change a whole lot, and the manual labor will always remain that, reading the map and building the structure where the map says.