China's Construction Project Cost Industry Enters the Big Data Era

As a traditional industry, the construction industry has been advancing its informatization process slowly amid the general trend of information development. This is not only constrained by its industrial characteristics: the traditional project-based development, implementation and management mode of the construction industry, and the fluidity of projects make it impossible for the construction industry to implement informatization construction in a solid and effective manner. On the other hand, it is also because the construction industry has never found a good entry point for informatization. On the premise that the basic applications have basically realized software transformation, the current informatization process of the construction industry has encountered a bottleneck again. With no suitable breakthrough found and no large-scale investment allowed under the project-based development, implementation and management mode, the informatization process of the construction industry is advancing with great difficulty.

China's construction cost industry has always been a weak link in informatization construction. The traditional and professional characteristics of the industry have led to no sound progress in the industry's informatization level for a long time. However, since the government deregulated the management of project cost, the industry has achieved considerable development driven by market forces. Especially with the vigorous promotion of industry leaders represented by Cost.com, the project cost industry has moved from paper to online, from single price inquiry to manual price inquiry, from local coverage to national coverage……

Since Cost.com launched the professional big data service platform for the construction industry in 2014, China's construction cost industry has entered the era of big data ever since. The combination of cloud computing and big data has solved in a one-stop manner the problems that perplex project cost practitioners, including data platform construction, data storage, data security management, data standardized classification, data analysis and other issues.

The application of big data in China's construction cost industry has brought the following changes:

First of all, the enterprise-level cloud computing data platform application is realized at low cost. With the help of cloud data solutions, dynamic, systematic and secure effective management of data is achieved, which improves the informatization level of project cost in the construction industry more comprehensively and targeted, and helps enterprises realize the management of information resources on the premise of cost control.

  Secondly, it provides security guarantee for project cost information and data. Data is stored in the cloud, so there is no need to invest human, material and financial resources in data storage and management. It offers 7*24 service, and offline price inquiries are automatically imported into the cloud database. It carries out effective authority management, supervision and monitoring for the use of enterprises' core cost information and data, and applies cloud data security solutions to guarantee the security of project cost information and data, eliminating the huge investment required for building self-owned databases.

  Furthermore, cloud computing technology integrates platform resources, and big data services always provide front-line market prices of the past, present and future. It helps users grasp the dynamics of the national building materials market, assists Chinese construction enterprises to reduce operating costs and improve their market competitiveness.

Finally, it realizes standardized classification and management of project cost information and data. According to the national standard of building materials for intelligent classification, with 48 major categories and more than 1000 subcategories, it automatically and intelligently stores enterprises' building materials price data by classification. Personalized customization supported by big data technology has realized separate customization for project cost information query, price inquiry and database services.

　　There is no doubt that cloud computing technology has brought huge progress to China's construction cost industry. In the form of platform as a service, it provides users with services including enterprise data application, management, storage and customization. Users can easily enjoy big data services at low cost only through the network.