Potential application of blockchain technology to transform the construction industry

Blockchain was introduced as a digital currency management technology, which has disrupted various industries within the last decade. It contains a decentralised distributed ledger that is updated, shared and managed through a peer-to-peer network, hashing algorithm, public-key cryptography and consensus mechanism. The salient features of blockchain, decentralisation, anonymity, security, immutability amongst others, influence various industries to adopt blockchain. This chapter explores the potential application of blockchain in the construction industry. The construction industry is often critiqued due to its disaggregated structure, sequential nature of works, lengthy supply chains and involvement of multiple stakeholders. Blockchain technology due to its salient features has the potential to resolve these issues by automating manual processes, providing a platform that tracks and monitors transactions and creating a secure and reliable infrastructure that increases trust and transparency. As an emerging disruptive technology, blockchain has the ability to transform the construction industry through improvements in various aspects related to construction supply chains, property transactions, payments, certification and quality assurance amongst others. RxEAL and LandBlocks are a few of the blockchain-based prototype systems introduced in construction. Blockchain contributes to sustainable construction whilst assisting to achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals. Blockchain is already disrupting many other sectors of the economy and is not far from disrupting the construction industry, for which, the stakeholders should be prepared to boldly embrace and exploit this emerging technology well in advance.