Digitalisation in the Construction Industry: A Global Bibliometric Analysis of Trends, Themes and Emerging Frontiers (2010–2025)

Purpose: This study presents a bibliometric survey of the research on global digitalisation in the construction sector, using 420 documents published between 2010 and 2025 on the Scopus database to track the trends in publications, key contributors, thematic categories, and research frontiers through the identification of key bursts.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The PRISMA protocol was used to search and screen databases for documents. The search query used in the Scopus database was Boolean and involved the combination of the keywords, digitalization, computerization, and digitising with the construction industry to retrieve 1,583 documents, of which 420 were included based on sequential filtering by the subject area, document type, language, and content relevance. Bibliometric analyses used VOSviewer to map and cluster keyword co-occurrence networks, and employed the automaton-based burst-detection algorithm of Kleinberg with silhouette scoring for temporal keywords.
Results: The dataset accumulates a total of 4,979 citations and a field h-index of 37 and a mean citation rate of 11.85/document. The increase in publications is very high: prior to 2020, there were 21 publications; in the 2023-2025 period alone, 301 papers have been published, which is 71.7 percent of the entire corpus. China is the most frequent in terms of publications (75 documents), whereas the United Kingdom is the most effective in terms of citation (58 documents, 1,254 citations). The most prolific African contributor is South Africa (27 documents, 480 citations). Keyword burst detection identifies digitalization (burst strength = 6.997, 2019–2022), productivity (5.469, 2019–2021), and BIM (4.671, 2019–2022) as the field's foundational surge keywords, while infrastructure (2.562, 2022–2024, silhouette = 0.950) and waste management (2.373, 2023–2024, silhouette = 0.959) constitute the sharpest current frontiers. Also, four thematic clusters were defined.
Research Limitations: The study is limited to publications indexed in Scopus and to English-language publications. The manual content filtering from 1,277-420 documents results in a certain degree of subjectivity, which can be removed in future research through multi-reviewer validation.
Practical Implications: Policymakers in developing economies should invest in digital infrastructure and skills development targeted at the construction industry. The thematic gaps identified, especially the almost complete lack of developing-country-specific digital adoption frameworks, should be prioritized by research communities.
Originality/Value: This is a bibliometric study on construction industry digitalisation by burst detection and silhouette scoring alongside conventional bibliometric techniques. It pinpoints where the field has been, where it is, and where the greatest demands lie for empirical and theoretical investment.