CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

BY MATTHEW KREBS | VDC TECHNOLOGY MANAGER, INTECH CONSTRUCTION, LLC

Opportunities to advance construction technology continue to expand at an incredible pace. Looking back to McKinsey's 2016 article on "imagining construction's digital future", we still have plenty of room for continued evolution of how we utilize technology to become more efficient and ultimately deliver a better project for our clients. Continuing to find new and more dynamic ways for our organizations to utilize Building Information Modeling, enhancing our expertise in reality capture, learning to appropriately leverage data and, of course, integrating Artificial Intelligence into our processes are just a few of the trends I'm watching closely over the next few years as the VDC Technology manager at INTECH Construction.

The Architecture, Engineering, and Construction industry as a whole has been talking about Building Information Modeling (BIM) for well over a decade. While some of the large industry players have fully adopted BIM, many midsize to smaller construction managers, general contractors, and subcontractors still need to recognize the incredible benefits of BIM and the associated technologies. This means looking beyond the widely adopted Mechanical, Electrical & Plumbing (MEP) coordination process and using models to assist with tasks such as progress tracking and efficient sequence planning. Because our industry continues to face both elevated labor and material costs, some of the additional benefits of BIM, such as direct cost and schedule reductions, continue to provide an avenue for relief.

One piece of BIM related technology to look forward to is Augmented Reality (AR). While it is a relatively new piece of technology that may still need to mature before being widely accepted, it is ripe for adoption by those firms already familiar with BIM-enabled workflows. Taking the model viewing concept to the next level by introducing geolocation and the ability to overlay modeled conditions versus installations can empower our teams to be able to perform installation inspection based on our already 3D coordinated models by visualizing them in-place, rather than relying on physical measurements from known locations.

With firms like Argyle, GIS and XYZ Reality moving this technology forward, I feel as though we're on our way to seeing Augmented Reality become a mainstay in the industry.

One trend I'm actively entrenched in is Reality Capture and the associated technologies.

Utilization of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (sUAVs), Laser Scanning, and more advanced photo documentation such as 360 degree photo libraries - continue to play important and expanding roles in our projects. Documenting existing conditions in both point cloud and photographs help us by providing point-in-time documentation of a structure or space.

Reality Capture has the potential to assist both construction managers and their clients, from historic preservation projects where both interior and exterior point clouds can aid in maintaining the aesthetic and historical accuracy of a monument, to standard residential project handover where a set of 360 photos can act as a visual record of construction that helps with future building maintenance and management.

A lesser discussed technological benefit of the digitization of the construction industry that seems to be under-utilized by much of the construction market, outside of some of the larger organizations, is harnessing the power of our data. There can be a lack of understanding of just how much value the quantity of data our organizations produce on a daily basis can provide. Through a robust data-cleaning and standardization process, we can use this data to identify market trends, project performance, and overall firm health. If our industry wishes to begin to harness the power of newer Al models on those datasets, that robust clean up and standardization process is going to be even more of a priority.

Speaking of Al, we all know it's coming. Rather than looking at it as something that is going to take our jobs, view it as providing an opportunity to become more efficient at completing simple tasks so that we can focus on the complicated areas of our work that need our dedicated attention. Many of us have been using siloed Al models through our career already in the form of iterative design tools for green building analysis and facade optimization. By using newer, more complex Al models to automate timeintensive manual efforts, we have an opportunity to allow us to refocus our attention away from the mundane and onto larger, more complicated decisions and processes throughout our industry.

As more developers and organizations dive into the construction space, I'm sure these technologies will become yesterday's news in rather short order. That in itself is one of the challenges those of us in technology implementation roles face: selection of platforms with staying power. This is a small sampling of the current technology available in construction.

Personally, I believe that to properly take advantage of this rapidly changing landscape, a shift in mindset is required, to stop looking at technology as a cost item, but to see it as an investment in improved efficiency and productivity. Everyone needs to start this technological revolution journey somewhere - this is where I'll be starting mine. Good luck!