Challenges of digital collaboration in the South African construction industry

Digital collaboration which involves the interaction between the construction world and the digital world in recent times, has gained increasing interest within the South African Architecture, Engineering, and Construction industry. This is because the construction business is at the edge of a digital revolution and countless technologies are promising inventive answers to age-old issues of conveying project on-time, within budget, and to customers' determinations. Despite these enticing benefits of digitalization, the problem of full implementation is still evident within the industry. This study reports the challenges of digital collaboration and the possible strategies for enhancing the use of digital tools in the country. The study adopted a survey design and data were gathered through the use of questionnaire administered on construction professionals in Gauteng province. Data gathered were analyzed using appropriate descriptive statistics. Result reveals that the major challenges of digital collaboration are lack of training, expensiveness of digital technologies, poor adoptability of standards, and challenge of interoperability. To remedy these problems, there is need for; the creation of avenues for proper education and training on digital collaboration, management encouraging digital collaboration usage in workplaces, and ensuring easy access to loans from financial institutions for companies to implement digital collaboration.