Use of social media in construction industry : a case study

Social media evolved in the early 2000’s with the birth of Facebook and Flickr in 2004. It is hard to ignore the current influence of social media upon modern lifestyle with the continuous development of many social media platforms over the past decade. On the other hand, the construction industry is often criticised for lack of communication and poor uptake of technology and innovation. Hence, this study reviewed and analysed the usage of social media in the UK construction industry focusing on quantity surveying practices. Three Quantity Surveying practices were selected for the study. Of the three cases, one organisation was selected as the principal case study within which a comprehensive questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate the level of understanding and knowledge of employees about social media within the organisation. The other two organisations were used for verification of findings from the main case study. The case study findings revealed a very low usage of social media within the organisations. Even though there was a mixture of positive and negative views on the commercial potential of social media for construction business, the questionnaire findings suggested that the social media platforms were poorly understood by the employees and its potential is underestimated