Awareness of Big Data concept in the Dominican Republic construction industry: an empirical study

Purpose The construction industry, being one of the main activities in the ever-demanding need for technology developments, sometimes falls short of other industries in terms of implementation. The adoption of Big Data (BD) in industries such as health and retail has had positive impacts in aspects such as decision-making processes and forecasting trends that allow planning some future business movements. Hence, the question of whether these results can be imitated in the construction industry. Therefore, this paper aims to address the level of awareness identified as a first step towards implementation of the BD concept within the construction industry in the Dominican Republic (DR). Design/methodology/approach As little to no information exist on the subject; the selected approach to perform this research was qualitative methodology; 21 semi-structured interviews were studied using situational awareness. Four levels of awareness were developed based on the Endsley’s Situation Awareness model. Findings The results showed that nearly 95% of the interviewees had either no knowledge or very basic awareness of the BD requirements or intermediate awareness, but only 5% had applied BD concepts in the construction industry. Originality/value This study shows the gaps that exist in the understanding and implementation of BD concepts in the DR construction industry. This paper establishes the need to develop continuous professional development programmes for construction professionals and a need to update curriculum in construction-related education.