Building beyond barriers: a study of technology integration in Northern Canada’s construction industry

The construction industry in Northern Canada (NC) faces unique challenges, including extreme weather conditions, limited daylight, and remote geographical locations. These factors significantly impact project timelines, costs, and overall efficiency. Novel technological and management solutions in the construction sector offer promising solutions to overcome these barriers. This research used a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews to investigate state-of-the-art technical and managerial solution adoption, key challenges, and critical success factors for improved project delivery in NC. Except for modular construction, other identified technologies, particularly information technology-based solutions, were revealed to be less used. Over 80% of the challenges have been identified as important issues. All the respondents agreed that identified critical success factors (CSF) are vital for improving construction project delivery. The findings of the semi-structured interviews confirmed the above results, and skill shortage was revealed as a central challenge as well as a CSF for infrastructure project delivery in NC.