Artificial Intelligence (AI) is impacting industries across the board and the building and construction industry is no exception. From design and planning to on-site execution, AI is influencing how we approach the built environment. Combined with drones and Building Information Modeling (BIM), AI has the potential to synergize existing technologies, reshaping how we plan, execute, and manage construction projects.
Start Small
The perception of AI is a huge question mark for most people. Be honest: When you think of AI as the first image, do you not think of the iRobot movie poster? When that movie was released in 2004, it seemed like a reality that would never happen or at least occur in the distant future. Our reality of the past few years has been that this technology is much further along than most of us realized. As an industry that is inherently slow to adopt, this is a time of technological advancement that, amongst the uncertainty, we should avoid relying on the hype and stay focused on our critical pain points and the high-impact solutions that make a difference while aligning with our business strategy priorities. A few questions our teams have been asking are:
- What are repetitive tasks that take up significant time?
- What tasks fail to leverage our team’s time to the fullest potential?
- Do our current platforms have untapped efficiencies?
The key message here is to start small. Enable your team to focus on tasks that require the most brain power and maximize their strengths. We believe our best-in-class construction teams are best leveraged in the field, finding unique solutions to problems and not dragging files from one folder to another.
Automation is Easy
While automation is realistically only an input for AI, it’s an easy way for our 4000-year-old industry to see the potential of computing power.
At Gilbane, we have been leveraging simple automation tools like Microsoft’s Power Automate, Dynamo for Revit, and various other products to streamline simple tasks.
- Document updates: Using power automation, it’s simple to set up a process that can update documents, send emails, notify individuals, and aggregate data without human intervention.
- Revit Tasks: Functions like creating room tags, extracting model data, generative design, etc., can all be done with Dynamo automation, allowing designers, engineers, and GCs to spend their time on the most intensive tasks first.
Next Stop, AI
As a first step, think of AI as something that can raise the floor and ceiling of what our people can do and less about replacing them.
AI can be as simple as leveraging Microsoft’s Copilot to aid the composition of an email and cater to multiple audiences or assist the writer of this blog post in compiling the sentence you are reading…just kidding…but it could!
Taking this a step further, Gilbane is leveraging machine learning capabilities in reality capture platforms to track completion progress, accuracy, and safety compliance. All this is done by walking the job site with a 360-degree camera and letting the machines do the rest of the work. This enhances our teams and frees them up to spend their time where needed most.
- Progress
- Field teams now receive a % complete report out of trade contractor progress, by discipline, to support conversations regarding schedule compliance and the pay application process. These discussions are less about “trust me, I know what I’m talking about,” and more about “The data in the field validates progress based on visual proof and machine learning.” A picture says 1000 words and a picture with data says much more.
- Schedule
- It’s hard to understand on a granular level how a schedule is trending without these tools to leverage. Typically, this is done through pull planning and word of mouth, “trust,” but having data to support progress, report a scheduled improvement in an OAC, or even map a recovery curve when weather hits changes the game and elevates our teams’ capabilities.
- Safety
- AI, via reality capture, can understand whether an extension cord is on the ground that shouldn’t be or whether PPE is or is not being worn. And this is just the start.
In Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence is only going to get better. It’s an uncomfortable reality for some, but it’s also here to stay. Design and construction industries are constantly looking for ways to reduce waste, efficiently use funds, and build smarter than the generation before. Growth comes from what is uncomfortable and unfamiliar.
