Business intelligence and analytics to support management in construction: a systematic literature review

Management is essential to meet the requirements defined in a project, such as business objectives and stakeholder expectations. The computational tools in the Business Intelligence and Analytics (BIA) category have great potential to contribute to management, providing important management information about the business. Tools of this type are widely used in the most varied sectors of the industry, but in the construction industry, the scenario is different, with much to progress. Therefore, the present work presents a survey of Business Intelligence and Analytics tools applicable to the construction sector and its possible applications, in order to present options for improving management in these organizations, based on evidence obtained in studies carried out. To this end, a systematic review of the literature was carried out, which analyzed 1407 articles from six databases, where several applications were identified, the most relevant in the area of cost management, budgeting and work safety. With that, it can be concluded that there are several BIA tools for construction, with different applications. Most software was developed for each case studied due to the unique characteristics of the construction sector. The large-scale adoption of the tools involves cooperation between companies, professional associations and universities. It verifies limitations in the research regarding the characterization of the companies, due to the absence of this data in the analyzed articles. It suggests that the challenges of implementing technologies and the verified limitations should be addressed in future studies.