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Anita Nelson wants to start small with artificial intelligence.
The main strategy officer of the Skanska USA building, the north -American arm of the Swedish builder and developer, Nelson discussed the AI product suite that the contractor has published to his employees, What Sidekicks calls.
Security companion, Skanska’s new internal offer, helps employees access Skanska data on security and conditions of workplace. Helps employees planning talks and gossip and gives them a resource at their disposal.
Here, Nelson talks about the immersion of construction on the origins of Safety Sidekick, adapts to the current AI suite of the company and the tips it has for builders who seek to incorporate AI into their own work flows.
Publisher Note: This interview has been published for brevity and clarity.
Construction Division: How did the idea of Skanska Safety Sidekick come about?
Anita Nelson: We saw the need to make these immediately and more shareholders in the jobs. These data are not often used in real time. Sidekick allows us to look at this data specifically.
Using the AI formed in Skanska -specific security data and workplace conditions, it allows us to offer personalized talks on toolbox, safety observations and proactive suggestions for workers.
Anita Nelson
Permission granted by Skanska USA
Day by day, this means that workers can ask questions related to the safety of AI tools through their mobile or desktop and obtain instant support for planning a morning or facing a new danger.
Beyond the text, if you have an image of the conditions of the place that day, you can ask questions related to this image. The tool is also incorporated into our flow of work, so it is not an added step a day, it is very easy to use.
Safety Sidekick is one of the AI offers that has skanska. How do you adapt to this?
Our data solution team, in collaboration with information technology, have developed four secure intern tools.
There is Skanska Sidekick, which is based on the GPT-4O model of Openai. It is a general chat boat that protects users’ company data so you can ask -anything inside our organization or outside our organization.
Then we have three “expert” side companions.
It’s called My Skanska Sidekick and looking for key documents in our internal intranet site. Therefore, if you are looking for a risk management protocol or our sustainability report or whoever is the leader of something, you can ask.
Then we have a side of operational risk, which is one of my other favorites, for our people in the countryside. It consists of thousands of case studies and experiences in different types of construction projects and systems. It gives you strategies and mitigation plans for the risks existing at workplaces.
Safety Sidekick is the most recent member of our suite.
What obstacles do you have to delete to make available to your team this IA?
Since we had developed others, it was a matter of ensuring that we had the documents in their place.
Our first users constantly give us comments in real time about what works and what is not. We do not launch things, you know, to all the employees of the construction of more than 3000 years immediately. We take time to pilot, see what works, see what doesn’t.
I don’t think we were with obstacles in this particular launch, because technology is there.
I do not mean that it is as easy as the plug-and-play, because my data scientists would tell me that it is more complex than this. But really, many of our challenges will deal with the quality of the data and if our data warehouse has the right information.
What have been the benefits?
Our first users definitely report the time saved when preparing security information and improving the participation of the workplace. I think this is critical.
When you are preparing for a morning, maybe prepare for this last night. You may be planning that day before your displacement.
This makes it really easy for people. They do not reach the trailer and discover. They do not stay late the night before to find out.
What advice would you give to a smaller contractor who wants to implement this type of technology?
Start with the data you know. It begins with the low hanging fruit. When you are looking for IA or generative languages, if you have documents and you want to scan and create a chat boat on top.
But if there is no infrastructure in which you invest in to do it, this is where you will find problems.
In addition, we have been able to build it ourselves. Don’t think you have to build it yourself.
We have a large enough organization and many of our own systems and protocols that require it. But there are products outside the shelf. I would not be able to list them or the places, but I know they exist, so you can start trying something.
I think we started with operational risk for us. We started with General Skanska Sidekick to play with these things, to answer immediate challenges. Security was not the first tool. Although it was on top of the list, we wanted to ensure that we have this right, because you do not want to have the wrong security information.
You want to walk before running.
