Editor's Note: In Issue 14

After a long period of relative indifference by the construction industry, it appears that the industry has finally started to emerge from the Tech Adoption Curve's "innovator/early adoption" stage. At the annual AGC Tech Conference in Chicago this past month, attended by more than 300 people, mostly general contractors, it was clear that AI is, if nothing else, on everyone's minds.

Welcome to the second installment of our eBook series, "AI-Powered Construction Management Part 2." In this chapter, we focus on the construction phase. As projects move from planning to execution, the complexities and challenges of managing timeframes and budgets intensify. The construction phase, characterized by its dynamic environment and unforeseen variables, demands not just precision but also estimation adaptability.

It is a struggle to find engaging ways to communicate important messages to people across different technical understandings and aptitudes. A technical document with facts and figures understandable to an engineer might cause the eyes of an ironworker to glaze over. Conversely, a jargon-heavy document discernible by a qualified tradesperson could readily baffle a young project manager. AI can help.

When it comes to successfully managing construction projects today and tomorrow, data is king and artificial intelligence (AI) is the secret sauce, according to panelists at the July 17 AI + Digital Excellence in Construction Virtual Summit. “If we aren’t giving data management it’s proper respect, then things don’t work well down the road,” said Kevin Soohoo, Director of AEC Practice, Egnyte.

As you approach the preconstruction phase of a project, you may not be thinking about the 2004 science-fiction film "The Butterfly Effect," in which a man travels back in time to change the future. But you should at least be cognizant of the concept, says Preston Robinson, Director of Pre-construction at The Haskell Company.

AI-Powered Planning, Scheduling and Safety Management

AI-Powered Progress Monitoring

AI Powered Project Management

As we continue to navigate through construction management, we will unpack the complexities of accurately forecasting timeframes and budgets before the actual construction begins, a task that has traditionally been riddled with uncertainties and educated guesswork.

This article follows Dunham's piece on the recently released Claude-3.5. Here David discusses Claude’s “Projects” feature and one way he's used it to add efficiency to some of his safety-related tasks. You can use it to save time on a wide range of text- and document-generation tasks.

Panelists at the AI + Digital Excellence in Construction virtual summit last month (July) told attendees that artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies are beginning to drive some construction projects directly and proactively rather than lingering on the sidelines as they have mainly in the past. 

Visual Artificial Intelligence (Visual AI) is a subset of artificial intelligence focused on enabling machines to interpret and understand visual information from the world, mimicking the human ability to see and process images.