Maturity Assessment of Intelligent Construction Management

: In the new era of Construction 4.0, the application of a large number of intelligent infor-12 mation technologies (ITs) and advanced managerial approaches has brought on rapid development of Intelligent Construction Management (ICM). However, it is still unclear about how to assess the maturity of ICM. In this study, a maturity assessment system for ICM is formulated through litera-15 ture reviews, questionnaires, expert discussions and a case study. A maturity scoring table contain-16 ing five assessment dimensions and twenty assessment indicators is developed and corresponding maturity levels and a radar chart of dimensions are designed. A case study of the assessments of two construction enterprises is conducted to validate that the proposed assessment system can be used by construction enterprises to quantitatively assess their ICM maturities and get both overall and specific assessment results. This study also proposes practical improvement methods to im-21 prove ICM maturities for construction enterprises with different maturity levels. Furthermore, the study also discusses the development direction of ICM at present and in the short-term future, 23 which should be paid more attention to by the construction industry.


Introduction
The construction industry is a traditional pillar industry in many countries, its con-29 tribution to economic growth and long-term national development is widely acknowl-30 edged [1]. In China, for example, the construction industry contributed about 25.6% to the 31 national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the year of 2021 [2]. However, the construction 32 industry involves a large number of participants and covers multiple professions so that 33 the improper and bad management of any aspect often causes huge losses. The fatal injury 34 rate for the construction industry is higher than the average for all industries due to its 35 labor-intensive characteristic and poor safety management during production processes 36 [3]. Careless quality management will cause a hidden danger to the later operation of 37 structures. Many construction projects worldwide were completed with significant time 38 and cost overruns due to bad schedule management [4]. Furthermore, conflicts, disputes, 39 and arbitration between construction parties caused by poor construction management 40 greatly lower the construction productivity on site. On the contrary, proper construction 41 management can reduce potential risks when implementing investment and construction 42 projects and make necessary conditions for timely and high-quality delivery of projects 43 within the planned budget. Construction management is a professional service that pro-44 vides a project's owner(s) with effective management of the project's schedule, cost, qual- 45 ity, safety, scope, and function [5], it plays an increasingly important role in various con-46 struction projects. 47 With the rise of the Industry 4.0 [6], the rapid development of information technol-48 ogies (ITs) has greatly promoted and improved the construction industry. As a result, the 49 terms Construction 4.0 and Intelligent Construction came into being. Construction 4.0 is a 50 concept that proposed with reference to Industry 4.0, the definition of Construction 4.0 is 51 dynamically evolving, for example, Sawhney et al. [7] defined Construction 4.0 as a frame- 52 work that is a confluence and convergence of three broad themes: industrial production, 53 cyber-physical systems, digital and computing technologies; Wu et al. [8] regarded Con-54 struction 4.0 as the integration of information and automation technologies in construc-55 tion projects. There are many advanced technologies involved in Construction 4.0, and 56 Forcael et al. [9] concluded four essential technologies to understand Construction 4.0 at 57 present time: 3D printing, big data, virtual reality (VR), and Internet of Things (IoT). Ex-58 cept for advanced technologies, Construction 4.0 also brought advanced managerial ap-59 proaches, García de Soto et al. [10] indicated that Construction 4.0 pushes construction 60 organization and roles to be transformed in many aspects. The evolution from digitaliza- 61 tion to intelligence is the mainstream of the development of Industry 4.0 [11]. As a deriv-62 ative of Industry 4.0, the development direction of Construction 4.0 is the same so Intelli- 63 gent Construction is the ultimate goal of Construction 4.0. Comprehensive development 64 of Intelligent Construction requires intelligence in every segment, among which Intelli-65 gent Construction Management (ICM) takes an essential and inevitable part, it is the foun-66 dation of Construction 4.0 and Intelligent Construction. ICM is the intelligent pattern of 67 construction management, it is a comprehensive evolution of traditional construction 68 management in management concept, working mode and supporting measures which is 69 achieved by the introduction of intelligent ITs and congenial managerial approaches. 70 Maturity is the competency, capability and level of sophistication of a selected do-71 main based on a comprehensive set of criteria [12]. The ICM maturity of a certain con-72 struction enterprise is its ability to conduct ICM, it should be considered comprehensively 73 from the technological perspective and from the managerial perspective. Therefore, the 74 maturity assessment of ICM is the comprehensive consideration of the development con- 75 dition of ITs and the application condition of managerial approaches. The purpose of ma- 76 turity assessment is to identify a gap which can then be closed by subsequent improve-77 ment actions [13]. Many construction enterprises have been developing ICM and the fierce 78 competition among them requires more efficient improvement plans for their ICM matur- 79 ities. But only when the ICM maturity is accurately assessed can an enterprise select ITs 80 and managerial approaches it needs to improve rather than extensively and aimlessly in-81 volving all kinds of intelligent ITs and managerial approaches, leading to a waste of hu-82 man, material and financial resources. Therefore, the maturity assessment of ICM is of 83 great significance for construction enterprises to find out shortcomings and formulate fu-84 ture improvement plans thereafter. 85 However, there is still a lack of effective systems, methods or even indicators to sys-86 tematically assess the maturity of ICM which has encumbered the development of the 87 construction industry. Existing studies and explorations towards ICM just focused on the 88 innovation or application of one or several types of IT. Due to the differences between 89 construction enterprises or projects, as well as the diversity and complexity of advanced 90 ITs, the application depth and breadth of relevant ITs are different, their values and ben-91 efits remain uncertain. At the same time, the introduction of advanced ITs often leads to 92 the change of managerial approach including organizational form and workflow. The 93 mismatch between managerial approach and IT may also greatly limit the efficiency and 94 value of ICM. Therefore, it is difficult to effectively assess the ICM maturities between 95 different construction enterprises and discover their potential problems at the same time. 96 In contrast, available maturity assessment models are increasingly being applied in other 97 informational, digital or intelligent fields as approaches for continuous process improve-98 ment [14], such as the Building Information Modeling (BIM) capability maturity model 99 [15] and the digital maturity model [16]. These maturity models enable relevant organiza-100 tions to clearly understand their development maturity and to make appropriate devel-101 oping plans later. 102 In view of the above problems, this paper formulates a maturity assessment system 103 for ICM. An intelligent maturity scoring table is established for the quantitative maturity 104 assessment of ICM. The scoring table consists of five assessment dimensions and twenty 105 assessment indicators. To present the assessment results in both overall and specific as-106 pects, the levels of ICM maturity are set and the radar chart of assessment dimensions are 107 designed. Finally, a case study of the assessments of two construction enterprises is con-108 ducted to validate the usage of the proposed assessment system and intelligent maturity 109 improvement strategies are discussed. The assessment system can be used for leaders in 110 construction enterprises to assess their ICM maturities and obtain vivid assessment results 111 as well as improvement plans. For every construction enterprise, the scoring table trans-112 forms its ICM maturity into a score, corresponding maturity level plots the position of its 113 ICM maturity in the whole industry, the radar chart of dimensions visualizes its strengths 114 and weaknesses in dimensions, and finally the improvement strategies guide it to im-115 prove its ICM maturity according to the assessment results. 116 The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews and summarizes pre-117 vious studies related to ICM and mature assessment systems in other fields. Section 3 in-118 troduces the methodology of this research to formulate the maturity assessment system. 119 Section 4 verifies the rationality and effectiveness of the proposed maturity assessment 120 system through expert discussion. Section 5 enumerates the components of this maturity 121 assessment system. Section 6 conducts a case study to validate the usage of the proposed 122 assessment systems and discusses the methods to improve ICM maturity. Finally, section 123 Wu et al. [8] emphasized that Construction 4.0 heavily relies on data to build and 131 maintain the interaction between the physical and virtual world. Because Intelligent Con-132 struction is the ultimate goal of Construction 4.0, data is also essential for ICM [17]. Intel-133 ligent ITs for data collection, transmission, aggregation, analysis and sharing can contrib-134 ute to ICM [18], so can advanced managerial approaches supporting the data-oriented 135 work mode, such as corresponding working post setting and personnel training, online 136 personnel management and workflow interaction, etc. Therefore, the essence of ICM can 137 be concluded as the review and feedback of various types of relevant construction infor-138 mation and data, which includes the collection, transmission and statistics of them, with 139 the support of visualization, intelligent analysis and other technical means in this process. 140 A number of researchers investigated the attributes and development direction of 141 ICM from the perspectives of intelligent ITs and advanced managerial approaches respec-142 tively. Aiming at intelligent ITs, Sawhney et al. [7] illustrated representative ITs that are 143 used in Construction 4.0: BIM, cloud-based project management, augmented reality 144 (AR)/VR, Artificial Intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, big data and analytics, block chain, 145 laser scanner, IoT, etc. These ITs can also be applied to ICM. Aiming at managerial ap-146 proaches, Woo et al. [19] reviewed different construction management methods by ana-147 lyzing the efficiency of various methods currently applied to public construction projects. 148 They concluded that the direct supervision method is the most efficient construction man-149 agement method because of lower cost and less time. García de Soto et al. [10] analyzed 150 the transformation of construction organization and roles in Construction 4.0. Existing 151 roles will evolve, and new roles will be created, for example, more employees with digital 152 skills are needed. Many kinds of traditional construction work will be automated with the 153 application of robotic systems. Furthermore, current fragmented projects will evolve to 154 project-based integrations and eventually to a platform-based integration. 155 Besides, there are other studies that respectively focused on the application of just 156 one certain IT or managerial approach towards ICM. In this study, we review and con-157 clude nearly all the existing ITs or managerial approaches from literatures. Furthermore, 158 we also discuss with experts in the construction industry to supplement novel ITs or man-159 agerial approaches which have not been published yet. All ITs or managerial approaches 160 searched are concluded in Table 1, their effects on ICM and sources are also listed. Risk prevention Make preventive measures with the use of prediction model [68] While all existing studies render positive influences on ICM individually, their re-164 search directions in general are too scattered to establish sufficient cooperation and con-165 nection with each other. Specifically, they suffer from several shortcomings -they: 166  neglect the combined effect of IT and managerial approach; 167  do not summarize all ITs and managerial approaches available for ICM; 168  lack of methods to assess the application maturities of ITs and managerial ap-169 proaches in ICM; and 170  lack of practical and appropriate plans to improve the ICM maturity of construc-171 tion enterprises. 172 In this study, existing intelligent ITs and advanced managerial approaches available 173 for ICM have been reviewed, the combined effect of ITs and managerial approaches is 174 considered. Therefore, the assessment system can be established by extracting assessment 175 objects from these contents, and then maturity improvement plans are provided. 176 177 This study reviews some representative maturity assessment systems in other infor-178 mational, digital or intelligent fields, as listed in Table 2. Berghaus and Back [69] indicated 179 that a maturity assessment model should consist of dimensions and criteria, which de-180 scribe the areas of action, and maturity stages that indicate the evolution path towards 181 maturity. Though these assessment systems have different assessment targets using dif-182 ferent assessment methods, they all set assessment dimensions and criteria, as well as cor-183 responding development guide to improve maturity. Furthermore, [15] and [70] set ma-184 turity levels to present the overall assessment results, and [70] designed a radar chart of 185 dimensions to present the to visualize the strengths and weaknesses in each dimension. 186 The assessment method, advantage and priority of each assessment system can offer im-187 portant reference to the assessment methods needed in this research: (1) Scoring on di-188 mensions is a quantitative assessment method which has been proved popular and easy 189 to use. (2) Dimension(s) to assess the management capacity should be set, including or-190 ganizational framework, personnel management, workflow, etc. (3) Assessment results 191 should be displayed clearly from both the overall and specific perspectives. For example, 192 maturity levels and radar chart of dimensions can be applied respectively for the overall 193 and specific perspective. In this study, assessment indicators are set with criteria from different dimensions. 197 Steps to develop the assessment system are listed below, as shown in Figure 1.  The first step is the determination of assessment indicators. In the whole assessment 201 system, the maturity scoring table is the most important part whose basic elements are 202 assessment indicators. There are a large number of assessment indicators extracted, so it 203 is necessary to set up assessment dimensions and reasonably classify all indicators to fa-204 cilitate the viewing and use of them, and also help construction enterprises to assess their 205 own ICM maturity from the perspective of each dimension.

194
The second step is the calculation of the weights of assessment indicators. This study 207 uses questionnaires designed in correspondence to the Precedence Chart Method (PCM) 208 [76,77] to consult experts on each indicator's importance to the maturity assessment of 209 ICM, then the weight of each assessment indicator and dimension can be calculated with 210 the results of questionnaires. Scores of the assessment indicators and dimensions in the 211 maturity scoring table can later be calculated by converting their weights. 212 The third step is the design of the maturity scoring table. The indicators cannot be 213 used directly so that assessment criteria should be set to instruct assessors when scoring. 214 Arranging each indicator according to its dimension and then adding corresponding score 215 and assessment criterion make a complete maturity scoring table, necessary instructions 216 for each content should also be written to guide assessors to use it correctly. 217 The last step is the analysis of assessment results. The presentation of assessment 218 results should take into account overall and specific aspects. This research uses maturity 219 levels to plot the position of the ICM maturity in the whole industry and a radar chart [78] 220 of dimensions to visualize the strengths and weaknesses in each dimension. Therefore, 221 this step includes the setting of appropriate maturity levels and corresponding relation-222 ship between score intervals and maturity levels, as well as the design of the radar chart. 223

224
A complete assessment indicator includes assessment object, weight and criterion. 225 The scope of construction management is confined but intelligent ITs and advanced man-226 agerial approaches supporting ICM over the scope at present are unlimited and uncount-227 able, not to mention new ones being developed. The responsibility of indicators is to 228 screen objects and contents that can best reflect the development of ICM. Therefore, as-229 sessment indicators in this study do not list and conclude ITs and managerial approaches 230 available for the scope, but abstract attributes that reflect the development situation of 231 these ITs and managerial approaches instead. In a word, it's not detailed ITs and mana-232 gerial approaches enterprises use but attributes enterprises satisfy that develop ICM. The extraction of assessment indicators needs to comprehensively contain factors 235 from the following three aspects. 236 (1) Construction management scope, to determine the assessment scope of indica-237 tors. According to regulations and requirements of the construction industry, 238 aspects and fields that the construction management should be responsible for 239 are clarified, which should be covered by assessment indicators. 240 (2) ITs and managerial approaches supporting ICM, to abstract attributes as assess-241 ment objects. Comprehension on the application status of relevant ITs and man-242 agerial approaches can fully tap the application potential and highest maturity 243 of each one, that is, the scale of attributes. 244 (3) Existing assessment methods and systems, to refer to successful experiences. As 245 mentioned, there are already advanced maturity assessment methods and sys-246 tems in other fields, as shown in Table 2. Among them are successful experience 247 in indicator extraction, assessment dimension setting and assessment methods. 248 The above factors are extracted from both literatures and expert discussions. Refer-249 ring to literatures can obtain a comprehensive grasp of the relevant contents, discussing 250 with experts can make a supplement, such as details omitted in literatures, latest manage-251 ment technologies which are not published yet, and matters require attention for acquired 252 contents in practical application. These factors should be considered together during col-253 lection. First, find out ITs and managerial approaches that can be applied in fields accord-254 ing to the management scope, as shown in Table 1. Then search for application status of 255 relevant ITs and managerial approaches to conclude abstract attributes of them which are 256 regarded as preliminary assessment objects. Finally, with reference to the framework of 257 other maturity assessment systems, establish indicators by adjusting and reorganizing 258 preliminary assessment objects according to service objects of all ITs and managerial ap-259 proaches. Make sure that complete independence of indicators is obtained and there is no 260 overlap between them. The indicator extraction process is shown in Figure 2. In a word, 261 the assessment indicators are extracted from literatures and expert discussions through 262 these three procedures, each indicator does not have direct sources of literature or expert 263 discussion because of these fused procedures. It is indicated by the literature review that a dimension to assess the management 268 capacity should be set. Among all indicators, there are some that describe the personnel 269 organization and management or workflow of construction management, so first set a 270 dimension for them. The remaining indicators describe ITs and managerial approaches 271 related to the construction management itself. Blanco et al. [79] illustrated many specific 272 and clear activities to differentiate technologies used during different construction phases, 273 including the phases of design, preconstruction, construction and operations. These spe-274 cific activities classified ITs and managerial approaches for construction management 275 properly, but they are too scattered. According to the essence of ICM, dimensions for re-276 maining indicators can be set by composing these specific activities (definitions of these 277 specific activities can be seen in [79]). Considering the service objects and application 278 fields of the remaining indicators, set four dimensions for them, each dimension and its 279 components are shown in Table 3. On the whole, five assessment dimensions are set fol-280 lowing strict internal logic to ensure that there is no overlap between each other, the mean-281 ing and description of each assessment dimension are shown in Table 4. 282 In order to make each indicator more consistent with the meaning and description of 283 corresponding dimension when classifying, indicators should be adjusted appropriately 284 after the determination of dimensions, so that each indicator can be clearly and uniquely 285 classified into a certain dimension, and the number of indicators contained in each dimen-286 sion should be as close as possible. After the determination of dimensions and the adjust-287 ment of indicators, available indicators can be classified into each dimension. 288

II. Information collection and monitoring
Collection and monitoring of various types of construction information and data through collection and measurement equipment arranged on construction site.

III. Information transmission and aggregation
Transmission and aggregation of information and data collected on site within time limit, proper storage and archiving to prevent loss and tampering.

IV. Decision-making supported by visualization
Visualization and modelling of engineering information and simulation of construction operation to support decision-making.

V. Intelligent analysis and deduction
Analyze engineering information with the application of intelligent technologies to provide calculation, detection, prediction, and optimization, etc.

291
The questionnaire in this study mainly investigates respondents from three aspects: 292 (1) Basic information of respondents, including professional field and title, working post 293 and year, to show the objectivity of the questionnaire. The PCM uses a comparison matrix to calculate the weights of target objects, as 304 shown in Table 5, the left columns in the table refer to the comparing objects, while the  The assessment indicator itself is the summary of ITs and managerial approaches that 319 construction enterprise uses and it does not contain the description of the highest intelli-320 gent maturity of each IT and managerial approach. Setting assessment criteria for each 321 indicator is essential for assessors to make more accurate judgments when scoring each 322 assessment indicator. After that, assessment indicators with scores and assessment criteria 323 can be reasonably arranged according to their dimensions. Finally, the complete scoring 324 table is finished when necessary instructions for each content are written for correct use.

326
The scores obtained by assessors on the assessment of construction enterprises using 327 the scoring table represent their ICM maturities. The score can indeed intuitively reflect 328 the overall ICM maturity of each construction enterprise, however, as each enterprise 329 commonly only knows its own score, it cannot plot the position of itself in the whole in-330 dustry without comparison with other enterprises. Besides, its strengths and weaknesses 331 between different assessment dimensions remain unclarified. 332 In this study, scores are converted into corresponding maturity levels as the overall 333 presentation of assessment results. The division of maturity levels must ensure that enter-334 prises at the same level possess ICM maturities at roughly the same standard. How many 335 maturity levels should be set? Whether the score intervals between levels should be con-336 sistent? How to allocate them if they are inconsistent? These questions can be answered 337 only when preset maturity levels and the corresponding relationship between score inter-338 vals and maturity levels are further verified and corrected. Verification and correction of 339 mentioned contents are also realized through expert discussion, so for convenience, they 340 are arranged to be discussed together in the verification section. Also, in order to clarify 341 the strengths and weaknesses of enterprises in assessment dimensions, the radar chart of 342 dimensions is designed as the specific presentation of assessment results. 343 344 Till now, determined contents are obtained mainly by theoretical analysis so crucial 345 attributes of this assessment system have not been verified through application. Wernicke 346 et al. [70] developed a framework for assessing digital maturity of construction site oper-347 ations. To examine and verify the framework, they conducted a case study on one con-348 struction site. The digital maturity of that site was firstly calculated by the proposed 349 framework. Then they discussed with the assessor about the detailed status of the digital-350 ization of that site as well as the strengths and weaknesses. The consistency between the 351 assessment results and the discussion results verified the proposed framework. Further-352 more, the usability and benefits of this framework were also discussed. In this research, 353 we also use expert discussion to verify our proposed assessment system. However, rather 354 than conduct just one discussion with one assessment target, we conducted two rounds 355 of expert discussions with experts from several construction enterprises. The first round 356 was conducted to verify the scoring table and preset the maturity levels. The second round 357 was conducted to verify those preset maturity levels. The overall verification process is 358 shown in Figure 4. Besides, more details are discussed in our expert discussions.  The scoring table was sent to leaders of many construction enterprises and then they 363 filled out the scoring table according to ICM maturities of their own enterprises. Except 364 for collecting the scores of each enterprise, we discussed with their leaders about the cru-365 cial attributes of this assessment system. Through the feedback of these leaders, related 366 contents of the scoring table can be verified and updated. 367 368 After the collection of the scores of each enterprise, the distribution of all scores were 369 obtained. Rough score intervals can be divided by clustering all the scores and thus the 370 maturity levels can be preset. According to the score intervals of the preset maturity levels, 371 participated enterprises were differentiated into different maturity levels. Through de-372 tailed discussions with leaders from several representative enterprises at each maturity 373 level, summary descriptions of the overall ICM maturity of enterprises at each maturity 374 level were formed. The setting of maturity levels must satisfy two criteria: (1) enterprises 375 at the same level possess roughly the same standard of ICM maturity; (2) enterprises at 376 higher levels demonstrate relatively obvious priorities in ICM maturity compared to those 377 who have lower levels. Necessary adjustments to the set score intervals were conducted 378 to satisfy the two principles and the appropriate corresponding relationship between ma-379 turity levels and the scoring results can be finally obtained. So far, all contents in the whole 380 assessment system have been verified to ensure their accuracy, rationality and appropri-381 ateness.  384 To obtain more extensive responses, we set two criteria for selecting the potential 385 respondents for the questionnaire: (1) respondents with ample work experience in con-386 struction management or with ample knowledge of intelligent technologies; (2) respond-387 ents from as many as possible professional fields. Leaders from many different construc-388 tion enterprises feel interested in our study, so they helped us select employees from their 389 enterprises according to these two criteria to answer the questionnaires. They tell us that 390 older employees tend to have more work experience while younger employees tend to 391 have more knowledge about intelligent technologies. We offer them a QR code which can 392 be scanned to reach our questionnaire and these leaders assign qualified employees to 393 fulfill the questionnaire. The questionnaires were collected two weeks after sending the 394 QR code to leaders, incomplete ones were deleted and finally there were 706 question-395 naires considered valid. Basic information of respondents is shown in Table 6. Respond-396 ents think that existing indicators are proper so there is no need for eliminations and sup-397 plements. Furthermore, respondents provide us with suggestions on setting the assess-398 ment criteria, such as taking the operability of ITs into account. 399 There are twenty indicators in total and their accurate weights can be calculated us-403 ing PCM. However, in order to make the data neat and easy to use, it is necessary to make 404 adjustments within an appropriate range and finally keep the outcome in integer. Scores 405 of the all assessment indicators and dimensions in the maturity scoring table are calcu-406 lated by converting their weights, as shown in Table 7, they illustrate not only the present 407 situation but also the future development trend of ICM. 408 (1) The first dimension has the highest weight of nearly 40 percent in the whole scoring 409 table. It describes the personnel organization, management and workflow of ICM. 410 Effective personnel organization and management are crucial basis for every kind of 411 enterprise and company to maintain competence and it is the same for construction 412 enterprises. Furthermore, as ICM is still rapidly developing, more and more suitable 413 workflow will always be a necessary key for construction management to develop 414 more intelligent and for ITs and managerial approaches to maximize their superiori-415 ties. According to the expert discussion, nearly every enterprise has developed their 416 own cloud platform. They work online and their organizational framework was ad-417 justed to adapt to the intelligent working mode. 418 (2) Indicators I-5, I-6, III-3, I-1and V-2 have the top five highest weights. According to 419 the expert discussion, they are all present developing focuses for ICM. Most enter-420 prises have been collaborating with researchers from institutes and universities to 421 develop ITs and managerial approaches these indicators describe. These ITs and 422 managerial approaches have been realized to varying degrees among different enter-423 prises. Due to the high weights these indicators possess, they are now decisive factors 424 for a construction enterprise's ICM maturity.

425
(3) Indicators IV-3, V-3 and V-1 have relatively low weights. According to the expert 426 discussion, only a few employees have contacted with ITs and managerial ap-427 proaches these indicators describe and the development levels of these ITs and man-428 agerial approaches among different enterprises are pretty low. Besides, publications 429 about these ITs and managerial approaches are mostly limited to theoretical or pro-430 spective, they have not been applied to ICM comprehensively and maturely. How-431 ever, as the publications imply, these ITs and managerial approaches have great ben-432 efit and considerable application potential to ICM, including VR [34], AR [35], pre-433 diction model [68], time-space conflicts management [67], etc. A number of construc-434 tion enterprises have included these ITs and managerial approaches in their future 435 development plans and their weights will definitely increase in the future.  438 The scoring table is attached in the appendix, assessment criteria for each indicator 439 are set according to the application status of relevant ITs and managerial approaches. Maturity levels and corresponding score intervals are set according to the two criteria, 442 as shown in Table 8. Five maturity levels are set among which there is a particular level 443 called "Minimum Intelligent Maturity". During expert discussions, we found that ITs and 444 managerial approaches described by many indicators have been well developed. There-445 fore, more than half of the scores in the scoring table are easily acquired by every con-446 struction enterprise. Enterprises with scores less than 60 must demonstrate shortcomings 447 in so many aspects under this circumstance. Therefore, the lowest maturity level "Mini-448 mum Intelligent Maturity" is set to conclude these enterprises which are not "intelligent" 449 enough. As mentioned, many leaders of different construction enterprises filled out the 450 scoring table and their scores were collected. The number of enterprises at level 2 is the 451 largest. Few enterprises locate at the Minimum Intelligent Maturity and a small part of 452 enterprises just entered level 3. There is not even one enterprise that entered level 4. 453  In this function, is the score of the dimension i in the radar chart, is the score 461 of the dimension i in the scoring table and is the weight of dimension i (shown in 462 Table 7). Then the pentagon representing the ICM maturity of the enterprise in dimen-463 sions can be drawn. 464 6. Case study 465 The proposed assessment system was examined in a case study of two construction 466 enterprises A and B. These two enterprises are both located in Hangzhou, a city in south 467 China. Enterprise A mainly focuses on the construction of highways and canals, enterprise 468 B mainly focuses on the construction of highways and railways. One leader from each of 469 the two enterprises filled out the maturity scoring table according to the actual situations 470 of their enterprises. 471

472
Their assessment results using the maturity scoring table were 78 and 81 respectively. 473 Therefore, the ICM maturities of enterprise A and B were very close, they both almost 474 entirely satisfied the demands of level 2 and enterprise B has just entered level 3. Further-475 more, to show their strengths and weaknesses in each dimension, a radar chart of their 476 ICM maturities is drawn, as shown in Figure 5. 477 Then two discussions with these two leaders were conducted respectively for de-478 tailed situations of their ICM maturities, as shown in Table 9. Enterprise A and B have 479 paid great attention to the development of ICM and they have made specific development 480 plans for the introduction and application of several ITs and managerial approaches. 481 However, their unsystematic development plans have caused different kinds of deficien-482 cies in each dimension, and then led to relatively elementary maturity levels thereafter. 483 Enterprise A and B are located in the same city and they have know each other for years. 484 They both commented that their development situations of ICM are very close and they 485 admitted that their maturity levels are relatively elementary. Not enough new roles have 486 been set in enterprise A and existing roles have not been thoroughly adaptive to ICM, 487 leading to a burden to the newly developed workflow. It is the main reason, according to 488 our assessment system, for enterprise A to have a slight gap in scores compared to enter-489 prise B. A: Employ a software system team.
A & B: The frequency of use is unstable.

Validation of the assessment system
494 Despite many existing weaknesses and deficiencies for these two construction enter-495 prises, the biggest problem for them is the low capacities of organizational management 496 which are caused by the incompletely adjusted working posts. Even if there are ITs and 497 managerial approaches developed, they cannot be efficiently applied. Therefore, we 498 strongly recommend these two enterprises to set more new roles first. Then other 499 measures can be applied, such as training employees more often, improving the network 500 signal on site, introducing VR, AR or MR, etc. After the discussions, these two leaders 501 claimed that they would adjust their development plans according to our recommenda-502 tions. 503 In total, these two leaders spoke highly of the usability of the assessment system. 504 They commented that the assessment criteria helped them to reach deeper into their actual 505 development situation of ICM; and the assessment dimensions are essential for them to 506 find their deficiencies and weaknesses in detail. Therefore, the case study proves the val-507 idation of the proposed assessment system, it can provide not only overall and specific 508 representations of the ICM maturity of a certain enterprise, but also targeted development 509 plans thereafter. There should also be a potential, anticipated or typical development path to the de-512 sired target state after evaluation [81]. The ultimate purpose of the maturity assessment 513 of the ICM is to efficiently and accurately improve its maturity. After assessment using 514 the maturity scoring table, construction enterprises can further understand details of their 515 weaknesses through the indicators with lower scores, and these are the aspects that needs 516 to improve most. To provide specific improvement plans for construction enterprises, this 517 study discussed improvement strategies from two perspectives. 518 The first perspective is the detailed ITs and managerial approaches. This study ex-519 tracts and summarizes ITs and managerial approaches that can improve the maturity of 520 ICM during the extraction of the assessment indicators. They can be used to help construc-521 tion enterprises that have been assessed to find out and fill the present gaps. These ITs 522 and managerial approaches are listed in Table 1 where they are very detailed and specific. 523 They are simply classified according to their effects on ICM and their sources are con-524 tained in the table, which can be searched and consulted by enterprises to understand the 525 development and application methods of any ITs and managerial approaches in detail. The second perspective is the framework of enterprises at level 4. Organizations en-529 gaged in information, digitalization, or intelligence have similar frameworks which in-530 clude many layers. However, each layer in the framework of different kinds of organiza-531 tions consists of different components. The frameworks of highly developed organiza-532 tions are powerful and comprehensive where all layers have undergone extensive devel-533 opment. When a certain construction enterprise has the highest maturity of ICM, it must 534 have the 4th maturity level and have developed almost every IT and managerial approach 535 in Table 1. Under this circumstance, each layer in its framework possesses adequate com-536 ponents, representative components are summarized according to the sources of ITs and 537 managerial approaches in Table 1, as shown in Figure 6. This framework can be used for 538 reference by construction enterprises to supplement their own framework and finally con-539 tinuously improve their ICM maturities. 540 In general, construction enterprises are able to obtain suitable improvement plans 541 synthetically from these two perspectives after assessment, as shown in Figure 7.

545
The ICM is rapidly developing at present but there is still a lack of systems, methods 546 or even indicators to systematically assess the maturity of ICM. In this study, we develop 547 a maturity assessment system through literature reviews, questionnaires, expert discus-548 sions and a case study. The maturity assessment system consists of a maturity scoring 549 table, maturity levels and a radar chart of dimensions, which can be used by construction 550 enterprises to assess their ICM maturities and formulate suitable future improvement 551 plans thereafter. First, fill out the maturity scoring table based on the ICM development 552 situation of a certain construction enterprise. Then the score can be converted into a ma-553 turity level and a dimension radar chart, the position of the enterprise in the whole con-554 struction industry and its own strengths and weaknesses can be accurately understood. 555 Finally, the suitable improvement plan of this construction enterprise can be set up with 556 reference to the improvement strategy and the framework of enterprises at level 4.

557
The maturity scoring table consists of five assessment dimensions and twenty assess-558 ment indicators. When using it, assessors need to score each indicator based on their sub-559 jective judgement on their own construction enterprises. Since the subjective difference is 560 inevitable, it is strongly recommended that the ICM maturities of each enterprise are as-561 sessed by more than one leader and the average of their scores is taken as the final result. 562 According to the scoring table, developing ITs and managerial approaches which support 563 organizational framework and working process is of great significance for construction 564 enterprises to reach high ICM maturity. Many enterprises do not pay enough attention to 565 advanced managerial approaches because they have not realized the unimagined pro-566 gress that these approaches can bring to them. During our discussion with leaders in con-567 struction enterprises, we found that many enterprises had already developed adequate 568 ITs and managerial approaches. Unfortunately, a big number of ITs and managerial ap-569 proaches remained unused or insufficiently used for the lack of suitable organizational 570 framework and working process, leading to a low ICM maturity with a huge amount of 571 resource waste. 572 The study has two limitations. First, the study uses the maturity scoring table as the 573 assessment method because of the high complexity in the assessment process of ICM ma-574 turity. Although the scoring table is accurate and reliable, it is not efficient enough. Future 575 research can use the assessment indicators in this study to establish more efficient ma-576 turity assessment methods for ICM, such as the assessment methods consisting of yes no 577 questions, flowcharts, or single choice questions. Second, the assessment indicators and 578 their weights in this study represent the development situation of ICM at present and in 579 the short-term future. There is still a long way for construction management to reach thor-580 oughly intelligent since most construction enterprises are located at level 2 and there is 581 nearly no one that has entered level 4. However, there will be a time when most enter-582 prises have entered level 4 because of the efforts that the whole construction industry is 583 making. Meanwhile, more ITs and managerial approaches will come into use and serve 584 as indicators, the weights of all indicators must change with time going by. Future studies 585 are recommended to add new indicators and correspondingly adjust the weights of all 586 indicators. For example, the ITs and managerial approaches towards automated are de-587 veloping rapidly and will occupy more and more weights [82,83].