Software firm Autodesk made a $2.7 million investment on Feb. 2 in Qualis Flow, a London-based company known as QFlow that offers a platform that aims to improve the way construction material and waste data is captured, verified and used on project sites.
The San Francisco giant has diversified its investments in construction areas such as prefabrication and materials management in recent years. QFlow’s AI-enabled platform helps contractors identify material and supply chain issues before design and analyze their use on jobsites. Material quality, quantity and real-time supply chain intelligence are added to design data using QFlow’s platform.
The company says it can help contractors identify and resolve material-related issues before they cause delays, rework or budget overruns.
“Too often, material and waste data is captured manually, fragmented between systems or reconciled long after the fact,” Sid Haksar, Autodesk vice president and head of construction strategy and partnerships, said in a statement. “This can limit the accuracy of sustainability reporting, mask opportunities to reduce rework or over-order materials, and create inefficiencies in quality control and supplier payment processes.”
QFlow. which remains an independent company, said its partnership with Autodesk’s cloud-based construction management platform launched the process that became the eventual investment.
“Construction teams are being asked to deliver more than ever before: better margins, lower carbon and stronger compliance,” said Brittany Harris, QFlow co-founder and CEO. “However, they cannot do this without better site data. This investment from Autodesk is a strong endorsement of our approach and vision of the role that construction phase data and intelligence must play in building more responsibly.”
DeWalt Unveils Down-Drilling Data Center Robot
Equipment manufacturer Stanley Black & Decker’s DeWalt brand also unveiled a new downhole drilling robot, in collaboration with international mobile robotics company August Robotics. It’s the first hover-capable downward drilling robot that enables efficient concrete drilling that would speed up data center construction, DeWalt said Jan. 20 at the World of Concrete show in Las Vegas.
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As the race to meet global AI processing needs intensifies, the company said the robot has completed 10 phases of data center construction across 10 projects, helping to significantly increase the work output of one of the world’s largest hyperscalers, which it did not identify. Throughout the ongoing pilot program, the robotic driller was able to drill at speeds up to 10 times faster than traditional methods and reduced construction timelines by 80 weeks on the hyperscaler projects. The use of the robot is said to have reduced the cost per hole drilled, while also providing 99.97% accuracy for locating and drilling.
“Our customers consistently emphasize that speed of construction is critical,” said Bill Beck, president of Stanley Black & Decker’s tools and outdoor unit. “The robotic drilling solution meets this need directly through schedule acceleration, cost savings, near-perfect accuracy and improved jobsite safety.” The robotic platform will be available by the middle of the year, DeWalt said.
Buildots: More ‘Work in Progress’ in North America
In analyzing thousands of high-rise units under construction in both the UK and North America, Buildots, an AI-powered construction project management and forecasting platform, has found key differences in project teamwork in the two regions.
Bultdots researchers sought to determine the accuracy of the long-standing industry axiom that teaches most construction crews to move faster, limit concurrent “work in progress,” and deliberately reduce the number of active work areas, units, or tasks that are open at the same time on a project. What they found, however, showed a wide gap between North American and UK projects in concurrent tasks and speed of delivery.
“North America tends to have more [work in progress] areas than the UK, but still finishes a higher proportion of open work faster,” said Amir Berman, VP of Industry Transformation at Buildots. “It wasn’t what we expected to find. We go into this kind of research with a hypothesis in mind, and suddenly we started to uncover more and more layers to it.”
In both geographies, the researchers found that the same intensification took about 16 weeks for a high-rise residential project to find its flow, he said. “After week 16, projects reached a ‘steady state,’ consistently completing about 43-50% of ongoing units every 30 days. That’s when the gap emerged,” Berman said.
Despite the much higher work-in-progress figures, data from Buildots showed US projects outperforming UK projects by a significant margin. Teams completed more total units per week and converted a greater percentage of work-in-progress into finished units.
The US completion to work-in-progress ratio was 15 to 20% higher than the UK, on average.
Berman said Buildots will continue the research and look to isolate what drives North America’s higher efficiency numbers and the ability to put more work into projects simultaneously, applying the lessons learned to those of UK users.
Doka will display the formwork platform at ConExpo
Concrete formwork and scaffolding giant Doka unveiled its booth at the triennial ConExpo trade show in Las Vegas, which ran March 3-7, promoting the expanded Doka360 platform, which it said now includes all aspects of formwork for contractors.
“Doka offers more than formwork and scaffolding these days,” said Michael Kennedy, executive vice president of Doka North America at the Feb. 2 preview. “Doka 360 is a new digital platform for planning, ordering, site operations and return logistics in one place.”
The company will showcase its SuperDek Slab Formwor which Kennedy said perfects slab forming with faster cycles, fewer components and a simplified setup. The company will also show Xlife top, Doka’s first formwork sheet with a core made entirely of recycled plastic.
