El Salvador's construction sector enters the era of automation.

Salvadoran builders have entered the digital age with automation processes that allow them to optimize resources, improve quality, and monitor the entire life cycle of a construction project. This was confirmed by the president of the Salvadoran Chamber of Construction (Casalco), Luis Dada, during his speech at the recent Casalco awards ceremony for the most outstanding in the sector.

«In the era of automation in which equipment and technologies are more interconnected, the sector is fully entering the fourth industrial revolution with the implementation of intelligent, interconnected and interoperable systems that allow improvements on multiple fronts: quality and data integration, the way in which information is managed and analyzed, saving time, preventing and reducing errors”, highlighted the union leader.

In this sense, he emphasized the “Building Information Modeling” (BIM) whose use, he explained, goes beyond the design stage, covering the execution of the project and extending throughout the life cycle of a building, allowing the management of this and helping to reduce operating costs.

According to Autodesk, a website specialized in construction, BIM is the holistic process of creating and managing the information of a built asset. Based on an intelligent model and powered by a cloud platform, BIM integrates structured and multidisciplinary data to generate a digital representation of an asset throughout its lifecycle, from planning and design to construction and operations.

Luis Dada stated that a good number of companies in the sector already make use of this methodology and that Casalco has a BIM technical committee, which is initially made up of member companies.

In addition, he said that said committee collaborates to establish the first guidelines and bases for the formation of the BIM Forum El Salvador, which will be a technical and permanent instance that will convene representatives of the academy, professionals and both public and private institutions to promote the development, dissemination and good practices of BIM in the construction sector.

«We are adapting to processes and methodologies that allow the conceptualization and execution of our projects to be increasingly efficient, we have understood that the needs of the market have changed and that consumers are also aware of the impacts and effects that a building will produce in the people who live or work in it,” Dada said.

In this sense, he stressed that businessmen have the responsibility and commitment to ensure that projects are carried out with “special respect and commitment to the environment.”

According to data from Casalco, in the second quarter of 2022, the construction sector reported growth of 12.1%, contributing 5.4% to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).