AI. It's everywhere in the news, and it's no surprise that it's making its way into homebuilding too. For those who are unsure what AI really means, and more specifically what it means for homebuilding, here's a quick primer.
There are three areas where AI is taking root in the construction world:
1. Image-Recognition: This is a subset of AI that's more accurately called "Machine Learning,” and this is the tech behind recognizing your face to unlock your phone. But in the construction world, this is:
Enhanced Security: By installing a sophisticated camera on your site, companies monitor threats or theft and notify you (or the police) when someone enters your jobsite off-hours and assess whether they are a threat by what they're carrying. (You may have already seen these systems in a Lowe's parking lot.) Want to learn more? IVIS Security
Safety/Inventory Systems: A video feed can also automatically attain logistics on how many people are entering/leaving a site and whether they're wearing the right protective gear. It can discern how many cars are parked in a lot, and when they come and go. Oracle's Construction Intelligence (previously Smartvid.io)
Estimating: Image recognition can also be trained to observe construction issues and make reports about them. Here’s one company has a tool that uses drone-footage to estimate roof repairs (a dangerous and time-consuming task for humans): Roofer.com
Think about it! Anywhere you need to look at and assess something (and where it wouldn't be a privacy concern to stick a camera) could be a use-case for image recognition.
2. Interpreting Real English: AI makes it possible to have complex conversations with a machine that understands the nuances of language. For construction, there are many uses popping up:
Writing contract language is repetitive and time-consuming. Why not just write down notes on the essentials and have an AI draft your estimates/contract? Tackle
Some data systems can now interpret common-sense questions and turn them into charts. Instead of messing around with Excel for a few hours, it's nice to just ask the computer, "Show me a chart of the last year of customer reviews organized by community.” Here are platforms that do this: Amazon QuickSight, Power BI Q&A, Salesforce Einstein
Just like AI can take a sentence and return a work of art, there are also companies working on programs that turn a conversation into a house design. Poliark
Think about it! Anytime you feel like "This takes so long, I wish I could tell it what I want and get results,” that's where we're headed.
3. Organizing Complexity and Making it Accessible: AI is particularly good at looking at huge sets of data and making it more accessible. There are several systems looking to take advantage of this:
An automated code-approval process based on site-plans: AutoReview.AI
Construction document organization and quick information retrieval: Digs
Think about it! Any time you have a massive amount of information that's difficult to process, AI can help you get answers without page-turning, file folders, or even searching and scrolling.
Many of these examples are being used in construction today, but not yet with production homebuilders. Where do we start?
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