Can artificial intelligence come fast enough to help us deal with our skilled labor shortages and supply chain problems? Can robotics take over the time-consuming tasks that don’t make good use of our workers’ time?
These questions and more filled three days of networking and building technology presentations and panels at the Hilton Union Square in San Francisco for ENR’s FutureTech conference May 4-6.
Artificial intelligence was again a hot topic among the more than 700 construction professionals, architects and engineers in attendance, but the program also saw a deep dive into robotics on construction sites, cloud-enabled workflows, 3D printing of structures and better relationships between all stakeholders.
“95% of AI pilots fail to deliver value,” said Alan Espinoza in his opening keynote. The founder of Reconstructive AI and a veteran construction technology expert with companies like Jacobs and Universal Creative, Espinoza offered hard-earned lessons on how to make new technologies work in project execution.
“Is it an implementation problem?” he asked “AI doesn’t fix broken workflows. Rather, it amplifies them… In construction, everyone is acting in their own self-interest and destroying the ecosystem they’re working in. The prisoner’s dilemma says that people will act in their own self-interest if they’re not incentivized not to.”
Espinoza added that many of the transitions from 2D CAD workflows to building information models led to poor data and communication practices in these cloud-based 3D workflows. “We digitized the mess [with point solutions],” and did not holistically address what designers and contractors were trying to achieve, he said.
“A strategic framework is what you need to do to start an implementation plan,” he said. “Align incentives, have whiteboard sessions, do whatever it takes to get them to want to do the work.”
And this work doesn’t have to be too dry and boring. Espinoza noted that one such session involved a “Dungeons and Dragons” themed workflow with a “coordinating quagmire” and stakeholders becoming warriors and wizards to help the team realize that building challenges can be broken down into the kinds of surmountable challenges players face in RPGs.
On a panel that considered the effectiveness of AI agents, David Lettereer, director of artificial intelligence at Hensel Phelps, said that artificial intelligence “is the new cloud” and that adoption is the hardest part. Proper data governance must come first, he said, and the autonomy of agents must be earned, like that of any new hire.
Enrico Bertucci, a vice president at McCarthy Holdings, said the company uses agent builder Glean and has already deployed about 25 agents to sites across the US after standardizing a process to approve them before they go to work.
Obtaining reality capture results
Trevor Owen, director of reality capture at Rogers O’Brien, showed how his purpose-built reality capture robots called Rosa and Mac are saving 10 to 60 hours a day once invested by workers taking pictures of contractors’ work.
Four-wheeled quadruped robots can take photos and laser scan. Highly mobile robots can navigate stairs and recover from trips or falls by themselves. Their data upload and exchange process was optimized by Owen and robot supplier Alpha Z to create faster updates of 3D models and construction documents, so data exchange is actually faster at Rogers-O’Brien sites.
“By documenting site conditions in real time, Mac enables project teams to make faster, more informed decisions,” said Owen.
3D printing at a Walmart
Zach Mannheimer, president and founder of Alquist 3D, said in his presentation that Alquist’s robotic arm 3D printing process saved Walmart more than $100,000 on a Supercenter project in Huntsville, Ala., and the company has already signed a deal with the retail giant to print buildings in the U.S. while talking about concrete construction and commercial construction. initially developed for residential housing, he explained that “we had to go commercial to do a project at scale.”
Mannheimer said the robotic arm system Alquist and his clients use today costs about a quarter of the gantry 3D printing system, which was originally thought to be the best way to print concrete.
