In This Post:
– VR reduces costs
– VR creates a better design
– VR helps in town planning
– VR can impact a seller’s decision
– VR helps train workers
When building a house, you are worried about a lot of things. Most of the thoughts that concern you are related to how the end product would look like? Can you add another room or will it look too cramped up? Where should you place your master bedroom? What will the front elevation look like? All of these questions can easily be answered with the help of technological advancement. Using visors, you can literally walk in your dream home even before the first brick is laid. In this blog, we will discuss different ways to use virtual reality (VR) in the construction industry.
Ways to Use Virtual Reality in the Construction Industry
The advancement of technology has helped address many issues that construction workers, architects and designers face when building a house. While you can easily construct a house without an architect, if you have hired a designer, architect and contractor, then you might want to actually see how your house would look after being built. With the help of virtual reality, you can actually walk into your bedroom and see for yourself if it befits your requirements and needs. Here is how VR is changing the construction industry.
- Reduces costs
- Fine tune the designing
- Helps in town planning
- Impacts a seller’s decision
- Ensures safety of construction workers
Let us discuss these in detail.
Reduces costs
Now with the help of virtual reality you can easily reduce costs by keeping a check on the different elements, materials used and the effect of the environment on the building. You can also see how the environmental factors come into play and check how sunlight and air is entering a specific room. This way you may alter the orientation of the room depending upon the amount of sunlight or the direction of wind in that room.
There are Microsoft hololens headsets that use virtual reality to create a relation between a digital model and a physical space. Thus you can create a prefabricated design that can be assembled and displayed there and then. Using modular blocks, the design of the house is not fixed so you can make changes to the design on the spot and save a lot of money. If you find any construction or design mistake once the building has been constructed, then fixing it can use a lot of your hard-earned money.
You can plan out your construction project in a better way as VR helps identify any significant problems at the pre-planning stage only. Implementing virtual reality in the construction process is also not very expensive. You do not require a full VR system with headsets and controllers. But sometimes a cardboard headset with a smartphone is all you need to get into the virtual space.
Fine tune the designing
Before technological advancements in the construction industry, a construction project was first visualized on a piece of paper or a model was developed with proper measurements to take a tour of the building before the construction would even begin. This was done to minimize risks and reduce errors. However, you still could not virtually visit the place and see how it looks from the inside to better assess the construction project.
With the help of Building Information Modeling (BIM) you can now check out the detailed virtual representation of your dream home even before the building is erected. This way you can suggest as many changes as you like in the design stage before the construction begins.
Helps in town planning
If you are a developer planning to build a housing society then you can create a virtual representation of the building project on-site before laying the first brick. The immersive nature of virtual reality allows construction workers, city planners to view a 3-D landscape from different points of view. They can use this to redraw streets and neighbourhoods and propose developments accordingly. You can virtually lay out a hospital and see if it is actually where you want it to be placed in the neighbourhood.
Impacts a seller’s decision
One of the best ways to use virtual reality in the construction industry is to use it to sell your house or construction project before it is made. You can customize the design of the house as per your client’s needs. A contractor and architect can work it with the client and figure out what he wants from the project to closely follow the exact project the client wants.
Use VR when building a house or a commercial building for a client, so that you can help your client visit the house and walk through the building and experience it even before it is built. As an architect or contract, you can make changes to suit the preferences of your client so that the end product is exactly in line with the client’s demands.
Ensures safety of construction workers
You don’t need to train construction workers on the site with real heavy equipment. All of this can be done with the help of virtual reality. The construction workers can experience how the equipment works with the help of virtual reality. It minimises risks of construction injuries and fall hazards. It is not only much safer to train the construction workers but also less expensive to train with heavy equipment. Instead of providing real-life experience, the workers can get trained wearing virtual reality headsets and visors.
Experts also suggest that those construction workers who get trained using virtual reality have a lasting impression on their minds and are more careful handling dangerous or heavy equipment at construction sites, when trained with a 3D version.
So, these were some of the best advantages of using virtual reality in construction. You can also explore different technology trends used in the construction industry. If you are planning to build a house, then take a look at the complete construction cost to build a 5 marla and a 10 marla house in Pakistan. Don’t forget to write to us at blog@zameen.com and we will surely get back to you. Subscribe to the Zameen Newsletter appearing on the right hand side of the page. Make sure to keep visiting Zameen Blog, the best real estate and property blog in Pakistan.
