Construction work futures: automation, robotics and work futures in the Australian construction industry
Sarah Pink has launched a report ‘Construction work futures: automation, robotics and work futures in the Australian construction industry’.”. The report is part of the AUTOWORK project, a project investigating the future of work across the construction, health and consumer sectors.
The report investigates how automation and robotics are playing a growing role in the construction industry and how this is likely to evolve in the future. Drawing on design ethnographic research with expert tradespeople, safety specialists, educators and the industry’s new tech workers (including startups from outside the traditional boundaries of the sector) it surfaces new insight into innovation in the sector, and calls for greater attention to how humans will shape and work in the construction industry in possible futures.
Challenging existing assumptions about the industry’s “slow” digital transition, this report introduces a new Work Futures approach to understanding work, automation and robotics in the construction industry, that takes into consideration the complex nature of how Work Futures will unfold in this sector.
“Our Construction Work Futures research gave us the unique opportunity to learn from experts with on-the-ground experience and generate new insights about how automated and robotic technologies will realistically participate in possible work futures in the construction industry. We are thrilled to share this new report and very grateful to the people who generously participated”
Professor Sarah Pink, Monash Emerging Technologies Research Lab
Research Team
Sarah Pink (Futures anthropologist), Ben Lyall (sociologist), Hannah Korsmeyer (design researcher), Bianca Vallentine (project manager).
The project “Workers in transition through automation, digitalization and robotization of work”, AUTOWORK, is an international collaboration between the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway and Monash University, Australia, funded by a grant from the Norwegian Research Council’s Welfare, Work, and Migration program, Project no. 301088.
Updates are supported by Sarah Pink’s Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship. 2024-2029, Project ID: FL230100131.