To kick off its annual Groundbreak user conference, Procore founder and CEO Tooey Courtemanche introduced the software platform’s new integrated resource management platform and AI-powered programming and security applications. This includes new AI-powered agents and an AI-powered platform designed to improve project efficiency, improve decision-making and enable faster workflows.
More than 5,000 people attended the Procore Groundbreak conference in Denver on November 20-21. Procore’s cloud-based construction management platform has been helping contractors collaborate and streamline project management since the company was founded in 2002, but this year’s user conference marked a shift towards artificial intelligence for the platform.
“What excites me moving forward is that we are no longer in the business of convincing people that technology improves productivity; we’re in the business of partnering with industry to figure out how we can leverage technology to advance the industry on all fronts,” Courtemanche said at a Groundbreak press conference.
All in AI
Available next year, Procore agents will leverage AI to automate tasks, reduce manual data entry, and provide insights that allow construction professionals to focus on higher-value tasks. On Procore’s platform, the company said agents will streamline processes such as RFI management, scheduling and shipping, with the goal of automating tasks and reducing administrative overhead. The new capabilities will support users and workflows throughout the project lifecycle, Procore said.
AI-powered scheduling will integrate directly with contract schedules and field data in Procore’s construction management platform and flag potential risks, with the goal of keeping projects on time and on budget, Procore said.
Procore has also expanded the capabilities of its security agent. The AI-powered safety module will centralize safety tasks with new capabilities such as pre-task plans, workplace hazard analysis, certification tracking, on-site orientations and checkout chats of tools Security will be integrated with Procore’s project management suite and contractor wearable devices used by on-site personnel to promote better security outcomes.
“The message we’re trying to get across is that when you have a corpus of data like Procore has, across 3 million projects, you actually have the ability to apply generative AI to that data set. It has extremely powerful capabilities. I think the industry is still trying to figure out how it’s really going to work, and we’re demonstrating that by showing them the Procore CoPilot and now agents,” Courtemanche said.
CoPilot is a generative AI chatbot developed by Microsoft based on the GPT-4 series of large language models. Procore said CoPilot will allow users to retrieve information from project documents, summarize complex document and other data query results, and provide data-driven insights based on their retrievals.
Address workforce issues
Workforce development was a major theme throughout the conference. When asked for his suggestions for addressing the industry’s labor shortage, Courtemanche said that while there are no short-term quick fixes, Procore surveyed its customers and learned that they can execute 30% more construction volume when using the software platform. “Productivity translates into labor and helps them do more with less,” he added.
With the influx of young people interested in technology (augmented reality, for example, is very attractive, Courtemanche noted), awareness of new technologies will be key to attracting more young people to careers in construction.
Procore’s partner companies also attended the conference with new products. Sensera Systems announced its own AI-based updates during the conference. Sensera’s SiteCloud is cloud-hosted web-based software for viewing, monitoring and sharing visual data captured in the workplace, and its AI-powered object detection makes workplace images meaningful by increasing the scale at which visual data can be documented. validated and used for actionable intelligence, the company said.
EarthCam, a provider of live camera technology, content and services, introduced AI-powered material analysis on November 21.
EarthCam AI material analysis currently identifies 34 different types of building materials in real time, the company said. These include metal studs and insulation, plywood and drywall. Materials are automatically detected, compared to scheduled tasks, added in a visual log to daily reports, and reported via alerts that include Procore’s daily log in the Procore platform. EarthCam AI’s materials analysis will update the delivery record when specific materials arrive on site, and then report when those materials are installed, EarthCam said.
