The New Advanced Society

The construction industry is like the bedrock foundation of a global economy and this may be true owing to the ever-growing mass urbanization, indirectly leading to problems related to material, machine, man, and money. Therefore, this chapter has presented a detailed review of the major problems faced in this industry and introduced a solution using the distributed ledger technology. There have been many proposed solutions that use blockchain technology to overcome the problems faced in this industry. Instead, we propose a solution that uses Corda, a platform that runs on the distributed ledger technology, instead of a traditional blockchain.

In the case of the construction industry, there are many instances where certain transactions occur between a few participants but all the participants need not be aware of it. Using a traditional blockchain requires all the participants in a network to validate these transactions before they are approved and added into a block. There is a possibility to use a permissioned blockchain, like the Hyperledger blockchain, but making separate channels for industries with such complex supply chains makes it difficult for the participants to keep track. Thus, using Corda in this scenario is the best solution as these transactions appear only on the ledgers of the concerned participants and they can be verified at any point in time, in the future. It is to be noted that though Corda is not like other blockchains, it provides similar features like decentralization, immutability, trust, security, transparency, auditable, etc.

Although our solution is designed to focus on three participants (the client, the main contractor, and the subcontractor) in particular, it helps overcome the problem faced with the lack of visibility around various processes. It also helps in overthrowing the lack of trust by introducing shared consensus. The introduction of digital technologies helps in saving a lot of space and time that is used in the process of intensive documentation i.e. there is no need to document details of every task as they are automatically stored in the digital databases. Lastly, this solution helps the client by keeping him/her in the loop wherever the money is spent. In this way, the client can be assured that his/her money is not being wasted and is used appropriately.

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