Determining the optimal strategy for the adoption of digital technologies in the construction industry: Multicriteria decision-making process

The need to transition the construction industry (CI) from its traditional process to a more digitalized approach toward sustainability and efficiency goals has resulted in the emergent requirement to identify novel strategies that should accelerate the adoption of digital technologies (DTs) in the CI. However, the persisting slow rate of DTs adoption is an indication of the existence of barriers obscured by the complex nature and multiplicity of stakeholders of the CI. To enhance DTs adoption in the CI, it is imperative to understand the relationships, interdependencies, and strength of influence of the barriers of DTs adoption in the CI, and to identify the optimal strategy needed to curb these barriers. To do this, this study adopted a novel interpretive structural modeling (ISM)-decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL)-VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) approach to elucidate the complex relationships among the barriers and propose an optimal strategy which when implemented should accelerate the adoption of DTs in the CI. Analysis indicated that political barriers were the root cause of all the other barriers, and economic barriers were classified as those with highly significant impact on DTs adoption in the CI. Examining strategies against the four key criteria for DTs adoption - cost, impact, effectiveness, and feasibility - top-level management support (TMS) emerged as the best alternative in all the assessed criteria, and was selected as the optimal strategy for DTs adoption in the CI. This study makes a substantial contribution to knowledge by prioritizing the barriers and identifying the optimal strategy for DTs adoption using a novel multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) approach, and developing a framework which provides a roadmap to accelerate DTs adoption in the CI.