AI and Construction

May 3, 2023

There’s been a lot of buzz in the last few years around AI, and with the launch of Chat GPT, the conversation has really exploded with everything from doomsday predictions that AI will become our overlords to utopian dreams that humanity will never have to work again (which might actually be a nightmare!).

What is AI, and how is it different from standard computing? What use cases are there for AI in construction companies? What should my company be doing to embrace these solutions and be ready for the changes AI will bring? We are going to dig into these questions in this week’s blog post.

What is AI, and how is it different from standard computing?

AI stands for “Artificial Intelligence”, and it refers to the ability of machines to perform “human” tasks like problem solving, language processing, and most notably, learning. A typical machine can be programmed to pretty much anything, but it will never be able to do something that it wasn’t programmed to do. Since AI can “learn”, it has the potential to do more than just what it was strictly programmed to do.

If we try to boil that down to an overly simplistic example, we might look at a calculator that was only designed and programmed to do addition. No matter how hard we try, we won’t be able to get that calculator to do multiplication or subtraction unless we do some more programming on that calculator. If that calculator had been set up with AI capabilities, however, we could potentially feed it a bunch of examples of subtraction and multiplication, and it could use that data to “learn” how to do subtraction and multiplication, much like we as humans could learn how to do subtraction or multiplication by reviewing examples.

This has huge potential for being able to feed AI large amounts of data and have it be able to process it and pick out patterns that would take humans huge amounts of time and energy to go through.

What use cases are there for AI in construction companies?

Because of the vast amount of possibility in AI, it is impossible to come up with a comprehensive list of all the potential use cases for AI in construction. Instead we will focus on a few use cases for AI in construction (and really for everyone in the first case) that are already being used across the industry.

1. AI as a personal assistant.

This is something anyone could (and maybe should) be doing. Not only can it provide valuable assistance, but it is also a great way for people to start familiarizing themselves with AI and what some of its capabilities are. You can sign up for free at openai.com, and start using it for everything from proof-reading emails to putting together business trip itineraries and getting travel recommendations to figuring out the best way to let someone go.

2. Legal Document Review

This comes with all the disclaimers about not being a lawyer and not giving legal advice, but AI has some huge potential for being able to process legal documents (if you do a lot of commercial work, you probably sign a lot of contracts!), and pick out any red flags or other issues at a significantly better price than paying your lawyer hourly. Document Crunch is one company that is offering this service: the CEO of Document Crunch is a lawyer who got his Bachelor’s degree in Construction Management, so they know their stuff!

3. Predictive Maintenance

If your construction company has a fleet of trucks or other machines, AI can process the usage data from them and predict failures based on the data. This allows you to plan ahead and replace parts before they become costly and wasteful situations on the job. It should be noted that setting up something like this will require a lot of IT infrastructure and maintenance to have all that data streaming seamlessly from your fleet into a centralized location for the AI to process it.

4. Data Analytics

Because AI has the ability to process a lot of data quickly, there is a lot of possibility for using AI for data analytics. Companies could potentially feed in all their data from past projects, and then use AI on current projects to pick out patterns, predict overruns, and perform other analytics on projects.

5. Scheduling

Scheduling is pretty straightforward for smaller projects and companies, but as projects and companies get larger, scheduling effectively becomes more and more challenging. ALICE Technologies is a company that uses BIM data to simulate the myriad different approaches a company could take when scheduling a large project to determine the most efficient and cost effective way to do it. This ENR Article digs more into a specific case study of a business using ALICE for a project in San Francisco. Although scheduling for single family home builders or for trades is much simpler than large projects like that one, there could be potential for optimizing schedules using AI for all types of projects and companies in the future.

6. Visual Data Processing

Many large construction projects are already utilizing cameras for “reality capture”. The idea is that if they can record everything that happens on a project, they will be able to look back at the data and figure out what went wrong if something does happen. This is useful for safety incidents as well as for losses in efficiency, etc. The only drawback with this is that it is retroactive instead of proactive: it doesn’t stop the thing that went wrong from going wrong. While it would technically be possible to have multiple people on every project monitoring all the camera feeds 12 or 24 hours a day, it would not be super realistic (or an effective use of time!). Companies like alwaysAI will work with businesses to set up AI monitoring on all their cameras. The AI can be set up to look for safety incidents, track materials, look for inefficiencies, and notify relevant decision makers of issues in real time - before something goes wrong.There’s definitely a “big brother” aspect to this, and no one loves to be told they are being watched, so companies that implement something like this will want to make sure they get their messaging around it right! At the same time, this is the world we live in, and it might be better to have a machine tracking things than to know you’ve got a bunch of people constantly monitoring you?

These are just a few of the use cases for AI that are already being used by construction companies across the world. While many of these are only going to be realistic for larger companies right now, the technology is growing and changing quickly, and it will be valuable for ownership and executives of companies of all sizes to have these and other potential use cases for AI on their radar even if they might not be implementing all of them in the near future.

What should my company be doing to embrace these solutions and be ready for the changes AI will bring?

Like we mentioned previously, the first thing you can do to start familiarizing yourself with AI and its capabilities is to start using Chat GPT at OpenAI as a virtual assistant. The other area most companies might be able to benefit from today is using a service like Document Crunch for legal document review, especially if you are already paying a lawyer hourly to review contracts, etc. Beyond that, it is really going to depend on the size and complexity of your operations. Large general contractors should definitely be exploring the options around Data Analytics and Visual Data, and large dirt contractors could probably benefit from Predictive Maintenance. Smaller companies probably aren’t going to benefit from trying to set up AI assisted scheduling (at least for now!), and if you don’t have a fleet of trucks or other equipment, predictive maintenance probably won’t do much for you. This does not mean you should just ignore these and other use cases for AI: the technology is growing and changing quickly.

One thing that all companies should be doing to prepare for some of the possibilities AI will bring is ensure they have streamlined methods for collecting and storing data. One of AI’s biggest advantages is the ability to process data and pick out patterns and other insights. If you don’t have any data, or if it’s all on hand written daily reports in a filing cabinet, you are not going to be able to do anything with that data. If you’ve got that data in a centralized database, you’ll be poised to use that data when the opportunity arises.

Related to this is CAD (Computer Aided Design) and BIM (Building Information Modeling): there is a lot of potential around Cad and BIM data and using AI for everything from value engineering to scheduling to tracking how a project is going and notifying decision makers of potential problems and delays before they become an issue. While these kinds of things are more realistic for large general contractors with deep pockets right now, it won’t be long before single family home builders and others will have access to similar tools. Getting started using CAD and BIM for your projects now (if you are not already), will set you up to take advantage of AI capabilities as they become available.

AI is a big topic right now, and there are many people who are saying it will change our world more than the internet or smart phones did. Construction businesses will do well to be aware of the potentials for AI in their operations, and to start implementing AI where it makes sense to!