AUTOMATION IN CONSTRUCTION: EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The construction industry's 4th industrial revolution is transforming the nature of work for construction professionals and pushing them to gain new qualifications in terms of skills, knowledge, and abilities. Educational and training programs play a vital role in workforce development during this rapidly evolving transition. Although the construction research community has paid increasing attention to better understanding the emerging needs for education and training, there is still little knowledge about the design of novel educational and training approaches to overcome the unprecedented challenges during the automation era. The first step toward directing future research and investments in this domain is to systematically understand the scope of the present knowledge and identify the knowledge gaps that form the foundations for future research directions. This research fulfills this requirement by undertaking a scoping review utilizing the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis extension for Scoping Review (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines. The extracted information from the identified relevant studies was synthesized and mapped using a well-established framework. Using the outcomes of the systematic scoping review and its synthesis process, a series of knowledge gaps and potential directions for future research and scholarly works were identified and discussed.