The construction industry has been criticized as an “old-school” industry, because of being a slow adopter of mobile technologies. This has changed recently. A 2014 survey of 1,048 participants found that 72% of construction practitioners have smartphones, and use smartphone applications for work purposes. While there are thousands of smartphone applications advertised as “construction apps”, the most popular smartphone applications offered by software providers to the construction industry are for field data collection, project management, bidding, building information modeling (BIM), accounting, customer relationship management, and estimating. This paper discusses the current state of smartphone applications available to the construction industry, and examines the apps’ functions. Due to the rapid growth in the smartphone applications market, new applications become available every day for use in different industries. Given the large number of choices, both companies and individuals in the construction industry must beware when selecting and purchasing smartphone applications. The business needs of the potential users and the expectations from the applications must be well identified, and the selection must be made accordingly. Properly selecting and deploying smartphone applications for construction-related tasks is expected to improve communication, enhance workflow with real time information, and increase productivity.
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