The Advance of AI in Construction

By Mark Schwartz is the Senior Vice President of Construction Enterprise Solutions at Trimble.

More than a year after the launch of ChatGPT, artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere, and its use is being explored across industries—including within typically technologically averse sectors like construction.

Far from being nervous about its applications, many contractors are embracing AI innovations, particularly given their potential to transform end-to-end workflows. From design and construction to operations and maintenance, AI is unlocking efficiencies and helping solve the labor shortage by automating repetitive tasks. It’s optimizing projects and enabling them to be built more sustainably, and it’s streamlining the supply chain—facilitating better relationships between contractors and project owners through enhanced predictability.

While AI used to only be within the domain of large companies due to high upfront costs, the democratization of technology mixed with the sheer number of companies working on developing new AI initiatives has made the costs dramatically decrease. Now, small and medium contractors can more easily afford to experiment with AI, making it much more accessible and impactful.

As we look ahead in 2024, below are a few ways that AI has already begun to make inroads in construction along with projections of how it will continue to positively impact the industry in the years to come.

Helping Solve The Labor Shortage

For the past decade or more, the labor shortage has been particularly acute in the construction industry, leading contractors to look for new solutions. This is one area in which AI has proved particularly helpful, as it can automate repetitive tasks while also reducing the human errors that naturally occur with things like data entry.

Now, instead of a human manually inputting information, data can be quickly scanned and exported into a format that’s usable for multiple stakeholders. This is helpful for repetitive tasks associated with invoicing, order tracking, credit collections or reconciliations—freeing accounts receivable and accounts payable personnel to focus on more important, strategic initiatives.

AI is also helping to solve the labor shortage when it comes to design, as it’s being used to harness and leverage data more efficiently—enabling designers to iterate faster and facilitate better decision-making. For example, architects can now leverage AI to quickly generate conceptual images and photorealistic visualizations of 3D models. This helps inspire the creative process, communicate their vision and build alignment faster.

When it comes to the actual constructibility of designs, AI is also working to automate repetitive actions for things like rebar detailing, which is less generative and more predictive. For example, AI can now suggest specific rebar layouts based on what a detailer has done previously, streamlining the design process. While this doesn’t mean AI is building the actual building, it’s being incorporated into various processes to simplify workflows and reduce overall decision-making and workload.

By augmenting the human experience, AI enables work to be done more efficiently and accurately, with manual checkpoints woven in to ensure the data is accurate. Because the data going out is only as good as the data being used to train the machine learning models that power AI, clean data and manual checkpoints overseen by a real person are imperative to the industry’s trust in AI systems and their success overall.

Enhancing Sustainability

Construction is a major emitter of embodied carbon, causing many contractors and asset owners to look for new ways to mitigate their impact on the environment. This includes a concerted effort to reduce the carbon emissions associated with materials and construction processes throughout the lifecycle of a building. AI can enable contractors to become efficient and productive, which naturally translates to greater environmental benefits.

One example involves the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which was looking to improve wall insulation across a large number of residential buildings. Instead of creating customized cladding panels for every vent, door and window, the walls were scanned using 3D laser scanning. AI was then used to extract the facade components from the data, and the dimensions were sent to panel manufacturers who produced them off-site. Without AI, the cost of delivering this project at scale wouldn’t have been feasible.

Making The Supply Chain More Efficient And Effective

Amid market volatility and economic uncertainty, companies are also turning to AI to more accurately connect and orchestrate their supply chains. Doing so can improve efficiency and productivity while also creating a better customer experience.

Twenty years ago, many supply chain decisions for retail were based on “tribal knowledge.” The sales manager guessed which goods people were going to buy, the logistics manager guessed the capacity needed to deliver goods to the customer, and the supplier guessed what demand would be in the coming months and tried to prepare accordingly. Careers were built off this methodology, which came with both successes and failures.

Today’s supply chains are much more accurate because they’re digitally interconnected, helping to take the guesswork out. From a construction perspective, this comes into play because contractors are often either storing supplies or waiting for supplies, which can lead to delays and cost overruns.

AI optimizes the supply chain by connecting the entire ecosystem and extrapolating data from it, helping more accurately predict when materials will be available. This can help keep projects on track, improving productivity and strengthening the contractor-to-project owner relationship by providing a sense of predictability.

As we’ve been hearing across the media landscape, AI is here to stay. While most people are aware of the digital-first uses of AI for things like ChatGPT and NFL analytics, AI has and will continue to transform traditional industries like construction as well.

However, the stakes are much higher, and the impact could be even greater as AI is used to change the nature of the physical world. This includes helping everyone from architects and designers to contractors and project owners more efficiently build and maintain our most important assets—from the homes we live in to the buildings we work and play in every day.

Source: Forbes