Construction Decision Making Using Virtual Reality

We make decisions every day, some with the potential for a huge impact on our lives. This process of decision-making is crucial not only for individuals but for industries, including construction. Unlike the manufacturing industry, where one can make certain decisions regarding an actual product by looking at it in real time, the nature of construction is different. Here, decisions are to be made on a product which will be built somewhere in the near future. The complex and interim nature of construction projects, along with factors like time essence, increasing scale of projects and multitude of stakeholders, makes it even more difficult to reach consensus. Incorporating VR can aid in getting an insight on the final product at the very beginning of the project life cycle. With a visual representation, the stakeholders involved can collaborate on a single platform to assess the project, share common knowledge and make choices that would produce better results in all major aspects like cost, quality, time and safety. This study aims at assessing decision-making in the earlier stages of construction and then evaluating the performance of immersive and non-immersive VR platforms