Emerging Technologies for Electrical and Instrumentation Construction

The United States construction industry has a limited availability of information regarding new innovations and emerging technologies in construction applications. This inability to identify and quickly implement new technologies into construction practice contributes to our eroding international competitiveness, declining productivity, and rising construction costs. In light of these problems, a systematic search, assessment, and introduction of new technologies into the construction industry is necessary.

The Construction Industry Institute (CII) is sponsoring this project to identify research and development work which is useful to the construction industry. The information gathered is to be recorded in the Advanced Construction Technology Survey (ACTS) database and will ultimately be published in an effort to make these discoveries known more broadly. The CII anticipates improved design, construction productivity, and economy through an earlier use of the most recent developments in construction technology. Hopefully this will also stimulate further technology development through a methodical approach to national awareness and information. This report presents specific construction-oriented research in the fields of Electrical and Instrumentation Systems.

Overall, the trend of electrical and instrumentation construction is towards efficiency, both in installation and operation. This is being accomplished through integration, modularization, miniaturization, standardization, automation, and innovation. Power distribution, automation, control, communication, and instrumentation systems have changed significantly as a result of technologies advance.

This report lists several sources of information for electrical and instrumentation construction, discusses the technologies discovered, presents the results of the investigation, and gives conclusions and recommendations for future research.