Canada’s construction industry has been slower to get on the digital transformation train. Yet virtual design and automation presents serious opportunities for the industry to evolve with digital transformation. 

Research shows that more than 80% of construction companies have room to improve their data capabilities, and the most commonly cited benefits of digital transformation were increased productivity, customer experience and staff safety.

One company that made it happen is Gilbane — a U.S.-based real estate development company worth more than $6.5 billion, with family roots that persevere to this day. In fact, they even have employees in the family’s sixth generation. Despite the “legacy” mindset in the company’s fabric (it’s 153 years old) and business industry, Gilbane boosted risk management and productivity under a brand new modular IT infrastructure. 

Here’s how they did it (and how you can, too):

Unify all digital initiatives under one leader

The company created a position that was responsible for overseeing the progress on multiple tech initiatives, including AI, analytics, IT, and cybersecurity. This helped them avoid the risk of wasted budgets through silos and miscommunication. 

“We believe this structure is the most effective to bring together our data and technology resources to drive transformation and get a real return on invested capital.” — Karen Higgins-Carter, Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO)

Invest in analytics and AI for risk management

Safety is a primary concern in the construction industry. Despite improvements in safety measures, equipment, and training, the construction industry still experiences high rates of death and injury. In fact, in 2022 the National Safety Council ranked the construction industry in the top four most dangerous, noting that it experienced the most workplace deaths.

Gilbane’s team is investing in analytics and AI with large language mode experiments to help them identify similar trends that indicate potential unsafe characteristics on a worksite, Higgins-Carter told CIO. “In construction, our teams are managing the construction of hundreds of projects happening at any one time,” she said. “Our analytics capabilities identify potentially unsafe conditions so we can manage projects more safely and mitigate risks.”

“To help us manage risk, I need to understand the leading indicators of risk on a job, like attrition or high volumes of change order.” — Karen Higgins-Carter, Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO)

Automate payment processing with operation-specific triggers

Higgins-Carter told CIO the company recently piloted an automated payment program for Gilbane to pay subcontractors more efficiently. Powered by videos and photos of work completed as triggers, payments are automatically dispensed to the necessary parties. 

Educate the entire team and inform new processes with their experience

Hold meetings and training sessions to ensure executives and employees  understand the benefits and functions of any new tech or business processes. 

“We can’t deliver technology if we don’t understand our employees’ experience. If I go out to a job site once a month, then my team will too.” — Karen Higgins-Carter, Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO)

Read the full article on CIO here.

Veronica Ott

Veronica Ott is a freelance writer and digital marketer with a specialization in finance and business. As a CPA with experience in the industry, she’s able to provide unique insight into various monetary, financial and economic topics. When Veronica isn’t writing, you can find her watching the latest films!

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Long before David Mitchell founded XYZ Reality, he was entrenched in the construction industry — and developing an obsession.

Having worked in residential construction with his father on the west coast of Ireland, Mitchell was well-versed in the sector from a young age, and eventually became an experienced builder with commercial projects around Europe.

But in the background of a seasoned career, Mitchell became fixated on paperless construction, XYZ Reality’s mission critical director Waleed Zafar told DX Journal. He wanted to find ways for companies to skip the 2D drawing process altogether.

The UK-based software development company would go on to introduce Augmented Reality (AR) to the building sector in 2019 with the Atom headset, which has workers build from holograms.

It’s a wearable technology that allows for “connected workers” — on-site or remote employees who, according to Visual Capitalist’s Katie Jones, use digital technologies to assist them with day-to-day duties.

“We task our trades today to look at a 2D drawing, and conceptualise a 3D asset from that,” said Zafar. “And the most challenging part is to position that information out on site, within millimetre accuracy.”

If the process were streamlined, Zafar recalls Mitchell saying, “it will change the game forever.”

The award-winning headset allows construction companies to increase their accuracy, efficiencies, and workplace safety while decreasing margins for error and the likelihood of rework, Zafar said.

It’s just one example of how hands-on industries are being transformed by connected worker technologies — and a market for devices that is reportedly set to “explode” within the next 20 years.

Endless potential, game-changing solutions

The proliferation of smart devices transformed remote work and allowed employees to “remain fully connected” through technology, noted Visual Capitalist’s report.

In businesses like construction, engineering, or manufacturing, those remote workers can include operators, field workers, engineers, and executives who are connected to data in real time — and through technologies like platforms, interfaces, and wearable devices.

According to a 2021 article by Forbes contributor Sundeep Ravande, companies are using strategies to connect workers so they can “promote mobile collaboration between front-line workers and decision makers.”

The goal is to help workers get jobs done faster, better, more safely, and “let management and front-line workers use real-time operational data gathered digitally in the field to make informed, knowledge-based decisions,” he wrote.

As for which industries are expected to provide the bulk of the market for connected worker technologies, Visual Capitalist predicted that the top five will include oil and gas, chemical production, construction, mining and minerals, and airlines by 2039 — and there’s data to help explain the interest and demand.

Connected workers are reported to reduce operational spending by 8%, it said, while wearable devices are reported to increase productivity by 8.5%.

“With seemingly endless potential, these devices have the ability to provide game changing solutions to ongoing challenges across dozens of industries,” the report said.

Solving the golden triangle

Forbes contributor Alana Rudder and editor Kelly Main wrote in 2023 that the “golden triangle” of project management is defined by three constraints that must be in balance: cost, time, and quality. 

These constraints also helped guide the challenges XYZ Reality looked to solve with its headset, Zafar said, and the first the team sought to address was quality. 

To improve the accuracy of installations, they had to make sure the headset met construction tolerances in positioning the 3D model on site.

“We’re pleased to say we can position models with three-millimetre accuracy,” said Zafar.

In 2020, that accuracy would prove its worth when a presentation solved a real-world problem: the headset was demonstrated for a quality manager on a job site that was early in development, where concrete foundation pads had been poured.

But the headset displayed a hologram of cement that was perfectly overlaid, and the newly poured concrete was about 500 millimetres over the AR hologram.

“They’re like, ‘Wait a second. Have they done an overpour of concrete on that pad?’” Zafar recalled.

They had — and most critically, Zafar said the headset alerted the construction team to the overpour immediately. Without this, it likely wouldn’t have been discovered until later in the project’s development when steel was to be placed on top.

“It wouldn’t have fit, and that would have actually caused a three-week delay to the entirety of the project,” he said. “But because we caught it the moment the pour happened, it meant that they could actually fix it real time, without … a huge problem in terms of logistics.”

The example highlights the device’s ability to improve accuracy and, by eliminating the need for rework, improve efficiencies — and also, Zafar says, safety.

Safety, visibility, and ‘a lifeline to a real person’

About 30% of all construction activities are rework, which means a third of human capital — or “time” in the golden triangle — is allocated to fixing issues that wouldn’t exist if initially done properly, Zafar says.

Meanwhile, over three-quarters of health and safety issues are related to fixing rework problems.

“Building things right the first time … produces that product faster, more cheaply, and more importantly, the production process is safer,” Zafar said. “And that’s what we ultimately need as an industry.”

While some connected worker technologies indirectly make projects safer, others are being developed to directly enhance worker safety — and Blackline Safety’s Christine Gillies says that in some instances, they could mean the difference between life and death.

The company produces gas detectors, area monitors, and lone worker devices that can provide real-time visibility into the wellbeing of employees, according to chief product and marketing officer Gillies.

They also provide immediate situational awareness as incidents are progressing, which facilitates quicker reaction times in emergencies.

With connected safety technologies, Gillies said there’s approximately one minute and 40 seconds between the time a device detects a hydrogen sulphide emergency to the time a site evacuation is initiated — including sending help for a downed worker.

But without them, it takes up to two hours for someone to notice a worker is missing and initiate a search, and even longer to find them.

“An increase in connected workers means [they] will feel more confident and safety incidents will be addressed sooner, with fewer catastrophic outcomes and consequent labour disruptions,” Gillies said.

“Lone workers are [also] less isolated, with connected safety tech giving them a lifeline to a real person when working out of sight.”

How companies can implement connected technologies

When it comes to implementing connected technologies, Gillies said it’s key for companies to secure buy-in from workers on the need or rationale.

This could mean emphasising life-saving benefits, or immediately addressing employee concerns, like privacy.

As for tech like XYZ Reality’s headset, Zafar said companies need to walk before they can run, and step one is making sure to first have a decent model and schedule.

“Provided you have that … you’re good to run, basically,” he said.

“You’re good to be able to adopt these new technologies that can then kind of help bridge the gap, and connect the two data pieces together.”

And while neither Gillies nor Zafar had concerns about over-reliance on connected worker technologies, Forbes’ Sundeep Ravande cautioned that digital worker platforms generally function through wifi — so unstable connections are a potential issue to be mindful of.

“Unless the platform offers an offline mode that syncs once a connection is made, a connected worker platform will be of little use in such a situation,” he said.

DX Journal Staff

DX Journal covers the impact of digital transformation (DX) initiatives worldwide across multiple industries.

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The content featured in this article is brand produced

In the building industry, convergence is a blurring of lines between technology, process, and sectors such as architecture, manufacturing, and entertainment. 

The goal? Finding better ways to design, build, and make space.

“Architects and builders are looking to manufacturing to make the construction process more like industrial assembly lines — modular, repeatable, and efficient,” Autodesk University writes. “And they’re finding ways to use standardized parts and digital tools to improve safety and accelerate project timelines.”

As VP Industrialized Construction at Autodesk, Amy Marks says construction business models are shifting to meet demands from a growing client segment called “convergence customers.”

“When you think about what a convergence customer needs, it’s very different than what just a general contractor needs, or just an architect needs, or just an owner needs, or just a building product manufacturer needs,” says Marks. 

“They need a platform of connected data. They need the interoperability between many different ecosystem partners, whether that’s in services, or technology, or products. They’re looking across the silos — they’re basically burning them to the ground at this point. And I think that changes everything.”

During her keynote address at the Advancing Prefabrication 2022 conference, Marks said 82% of the audience considered themselves convergence customers. 

But they’re not explicitly asking for convergence solutions, Marks notes. 

Rather, clients tell her they are looking for integrated support because their business models are changing and “there are forces on my business, and the way in which I do business, and how I make money that have changed.”

So if a contractor responds to an RFP by offering up an evolved framework that incorporates a convergence of prefabrication, technology, and advanced processes, the customer feels better enabled to achieve their project goals.

How convergence in construction actually works

Marks touches on two key ways convergence takes place in construction.

The first is a “horizontal” integration of different — but often adjacent — business types that merge, or incorporate another offering, to increase their shared value. “Architects are buying [pre]fab shops, and general contractors are becoming makers and makers are becoming designers of things,” she explains. 

We’re seeing “vertical” compression too, according to Marks. “Whether it’s the GC or the mechanical, electrical, or plumbing subcontractor, or the traditional building product manufacturer — they are merging together as makers.”

For example, she describes how an electrical contractor might not actually produce anything that’s included in the electrical skids they supply.

Instead, they function as a “product and system integrator” of the manufactured items provided to clients. Or the building product manufacturer who creates those items offers the entire skid as an aggregated solution. 

If you think bigger, Marks says, this type of convergence can enable the creation of smart buildings and even whole smart cities that function as vertically integrated environments. 

Envision future cities where “platform companies like Meta and Google own undersea cables to emerging geographies. The data center will be owned by them, the infrastructure that gets built around them potentially…I’m sure they would like it to integrate with their platforms down to the end use in their home,” says Marks. 

“And so I think it’s a very interesting conversation about convergence and platforms that’s much more far reaching than we think.”

Shared context is key to evolve your business model

Merging previously separate industries or processes is not a simple task. To make it work, all the stakeholders involved must learn how to speak different languages (in a figurative as well as terminology sense) to bridge contextual gaps, Marks says.

“As you’re starting out and these business models are first changing, you have to understand the language of the genesis of the original core competencies. And then you have to understand the language of your adjacencies.” 

For instance, “the DfMA in a manufacturing setting has different interpretations than DfMA may in an architectural setting. You’re converging with and reconciling the [industry] language to make sure that you both mean the same thing.”

Merging with other specialties requires an appreciation of diversity and perspective to create shared understanding, and perhaps in the future, even a new language, Marks says. 

Randee Herrin, Senior VP of Construction Technologies & Manufacturing at TDIndustries Inc., says her construction and facilities services company utilizes a “model-led workflow” to spark collaborative understanding.

With this approach, all stakeholders come together to make shared decisions earlier than usual in the construction process, producing a virtual model (thank you, technology) for the project. 

“You have to step outside of just [your company], and engage the entire team — the general contractor and the owner or the other key subs — that means those decisions between the entire team need to happen earlier. And it needs to be much more cooperative and a partnership upfront, to have a better outcome at the end,” Herrin explains. 

Perceptions of industrialized construction have evolved too

“The future is about data. It’s enabled by the [virtual] model and…by offsite manufacturing,” says Herrin, who thinks the construction industry is in the midst of a renaissance, as future-oriented firms rethink their approach to building spaces.

After all, who doesn’t want their job to be made easier and to access greater project certainty through data, she says. 

“To me, it’s how many constraints can we remove? We’re managing a workforce that’s hard to find right now — a declining workforce. And we could sit with that problem or we could say ‘how can we solve it through off-site manufacturing?’”

In addition to the obvious benefits of industrialized construction, some old-school misconceptions are also being debunked, says Marks.

She scoffs at the idea that manufactured building products — a key element of construction convergence — are not considered beautiful or that architects and designers say, “I will not have prefab on my project.” 

“Those kinds of things are so 10 years ago,” she says. Now there’s widespread interest and acknowledgement of industrialized construction. Project stakeholders just need help understanding how to incorporate prefabricated solutions into their construction plan. 

One way or another, every building now incorporates manufactured products in construction, she points out. 

“So yeah, I think at the end of the day, the word prefab won’t exist. It’ll just be products.”

This article originally appeared on Make Space, DIRTT’s editorial platform that shares perspectives from the design and construction industries.

DIRTT

DIRTT is a global leader in industrialized construction. Its system of physical products and digital tools empowers organizations, together with construction and design leaders, to build high-performing, adaptable, interior environments. Operating in the workplace, healthcare, education, and public sector markets, DIRTT’s system provides total design freedom, and greater certainty in cost, schedule, and outcomes. DIRTT trades on Nasdaq (DRTT) and on the Toronto Stock Exchange (DRT).

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J&B Excavating owner Brenen Newman was facing a labour shortage. To avoid a slowdown in the business, he needed to get his 19-year-old son working on excavating operating equipment fast.

Problem was his son had little experience. But thanks to advances in digital and IoT tech, Brennan’s son had no trouble getting up to speed.

“He picked it up the first day,” Newman said. “The second day he dug a basement by himself without a grade checker. I don’t know that a guy with 20 years of experience could do that.”

Unlock decades of experience

The machine Newman’s son was working on was a Cat 300 series excavator that includes Caterpillar’s IoT technology and services toolkit called Cat Connect. The tech allows for services to increase efficiency and improve performance, like Grade with Assist. Grade with Assist allows operators to reach grade quickly and accurately, by offering guidance for depth, slope and horizontal distance to grade.

Related: Stepping into digital with IoT – 14 Case Studies

Both Newman and his son appreciated the simplicity of the tech. “This machine is a trainer,” Newman says. “You can put an inexperienced operator in it, and the machine will train that operator how to dig flat and how to hold grade.”

Caterpillar says this Cat Connect feature and others — such as Cat GPS, Cat Link, Cat Payload and others — increase operating efficiency by up to 45 percent.

For example, another construction company, Hemphill Construction, has been able to cut down on surveying, reduce project cost per hour and, working with their Cat dealer, perform predictive maintenance and protect the value of their assets.

Cat’s been into IIoT since the 90s

Caterpillar launched its vision to leverage the internet for service in the 1990s. Now, the company has 186 dealers and about 500,000 connected assets worldwide.

Tom Bucklar, Caterpillar’s director of IoT and channel solutions, says their digital strategy is “customer-centric.” It’s not just focused on giving insights for Cat equipment, but all the equipment a customer may have in a “mixed fleet.”

“We started in the mid-90s connecting equipment, we now have one of the largest install bases of connected equipment, which gives us a lot of rich data to build customer solutions,” says Bucklar. “When we start to talk about our digital strategy, we really look at digital as an enabler. At the end of the day, we’re not trying to build a digital business. We’re trying to make our customers more profitable.”

[Download]: Stepping into digital with IoT – 14 Case Studies

Earlier this year, Caterpillar started using AT&T’s IoT services for the connectivity and management of their fleet of heavy machines in 155+ countries, which will bring 4G to Cat Connect services. “[It] will deliver near real-time information to Caterpillar, its dealers and customers about their equipment’s performance on a job site,” according to reports.

Well Positioned for the Future

In the next 3 years, Caterpillar is planning on “using augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) for sales, operations and service applications,” says Terri Lewis, digital and technology director at Caterpillar in this Automation World article. Possibilities include virtual rendering of products for sales conversations or machine performance data displayed via an AR overlay on a physical product via on a mobile device.

Bucklar says that all the data collected from Cat’s IoT devices means companies and consumers are able to access insights and analytics en masse.

[Download]: Stepping into digital with IoT – 14 Case Studies

“What IoT does is bringing all that data from connected machines into one place,” he says. “You can start to get massive amounts of insights, and with analytics can really start to build some rich solutions and customer value.”

DX Journal Staff

DX Journal covers the impact of digital transformation (DX) initiatives worldwide across multiple industries.

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Most human construction workers could disappear from building sites by 2050, according to a new industry survey.

International construction firm Balfour Beatty has predicted that by 2050 few humans will be working on building sites. Instead there will be an army of “automated builders”, and robotic cranes and diggers will carrying out the work instead.

Expect the approach to building to also change, they say. In place of the building being put up, from the first brick or piece of steel or timber, on location, most of the framework will soon be made in factories and moved into position as required.

A spokesperson for Balfour Beatty told The Daily Mirror: “Consider the complex tasks performed by robots in a modern factory and it is not so hard to imagine such a future for the construction site.”

Adding, “increasing use of robots and automation will mean that the industry becomes more productive, creating new roles for skilled workers in cutting edge areas, while reducing the need for those undertaking repetitive, manual tasks, such as bricklaying.”

With robotic bricklaying, a U.S. company called Construction Robotics has already developed a robot called SAM (Semi-Automated Mason), which can lay 3,000 bricks a day:

The bricklaying robot builds walls six times faster than a human bricklayer. Australian company Fastbrick Robotics has also developed a proof of concept for a commercial bricklaying machine called Hadrian X.

As for the people left working on construction sites, these workers will most likely be fitted with bionic “exoskeletons” that control robots as the workers move their arms and legs. These initiatives are good for building firms, and will lower safety risks. The news is less good, however, for future employment.

Tim Sandle

twitter.com/dxjournal

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The world of construction and building is changing fast thanks to the use of robotics. Robots have the potential to build faster and more accurately than people, and they signal the digital transformation of the industry.

There have been various innovations with robotics for the building industry. Robot bricklayers that seem to outperform any human. Drones can now build walls by transporting one brick at a time. Things are really set to change, however, through new technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Digital Construction Platform

The innovation is called the Digital Construction Platform (or simply ‘DCP’). It may not look like much to begin with, resembling a flattened crane-like construction equipped with solar panels. Yet it is the latest in both robotic tasks and 3D printing (and outfitted with wheels). The DCP is used to produce structures for building sites, from scaffolding to materials that go into the building itself. Many of the designs produced would have been very difficult for construction workers to fashion using traditional methods.

The chief application of DCP is to design and digitally fabricate multifunctional structures. This means a device like the DCP could transform the way that homes, offices and other structures are built, as the video below reveals:

The video shows how the DCP robot built an igloo-shaped building half the diameter of the U.S. Capitol dome. And it did so all by itself in around 14 hours.

How it Works

The DCP design may not look like much bit it’s effective. The robot, Science Magazine reports, consists of a large hydraulic arm on motorized tank like treads. Towards the end of the arm is a smaller electric arm for finer movements. These two systems implement a micro-macro manipulator robot architecture akin to the biological model of the human shoulder and hand. The arm takes swappable tools for tasks like welding, digging, and 3D printing. The combined reach of the arms is an impressive 10 meters.

Furthermore, the DCP is capable of light printing, excavation, welded-chain construction, and additive fabrication with the Print-in-Place process. With the printing, the robot has a maximum printable volume of 2,786 cubic meters.

What’s Next for DCP?

The brains behind DCP, Dr. Steven Keating, told TechCrunch where things will go next: “Our future vision for this project is to have self-sufficient robotic systems. Just like a tree gathers its own energy, our platform is being developed toward the design goal of being able to gather its own energy. We’ve shown that through photovoltaic energy. And being able to gather and use local materials.”

Robotics have been a little slow to come to the construction world, unlike with car production. Now, however, robotics is set to radically change the building trade through speed and innovation, at least according to CBC’s technology analysts. This comes with an initial hefty price tag. If you want a DCP device it’ll cost $244,500.

More details about the design and functionality of DCP are detailed in the journal Science Robotics. The research paper is titled “Toward Site-Specific and Self-Sufficient Robotic Fabrication on Architectural Scales.”

Tim Sandle

twitter.com/dxjournal

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One of the biggest and more immediate changes affecting construction are drones. From aerial reconnaissance and speedy deliveries to high-floor brick laying, drones are forever changing how construction gets done.

Drone + automation = more efficiency 

One technology company developing drones is the U.S. start-up company Skycatch. One company that has put the Skycatch drones to good use is the Japanese machinery giant Komatsu. Here Skycatch drones have been used to “provide the eyes for automated bulldozers”. The drones collect visual cues and send them to a computer and then the computer programs unmanned diggers to carry out production tasks.

Commenting on the success, Komatsu’s President, Akinori Onodera, enthused: “I’m very excited to be working with Skycatch moving forward…we now have the fastest, most comprehensive aerial data solution out there, which will give our clients a measurable advantage in remotely managing their construction equipment and operations.”

Drones + Intelligent Machine Control

For the construction industry the drones offer updates on local operation conditions plus intelligent machine control. Grant Hagen, who is the VDC Manager for the group, discusses this use of drones in construction in the video below:

Drones are a Time Saver

Another company making good use of drones on construction sites is Whitaker Contracting Corporation. A spokesperson for the company, John Davenport explains that by using drones he “was able to accurately measure the volumes of stockpiles at one of our quarries in just 10 minutes. Previously, it took me about two days of strenuous GPS work to cross-section those piles.”

The Whitaker Contracting Corporation are using a drone system made by Kespry, a California-based drone services company. The service offered by Kespry includes pre-construction topographic surveys, civil survey designs, project earthworks volume tracking, as-built surveys. The data is made available on-line for the client to view.

As well as carrying out land surveys and inventory checks, and assessing construction progress from height, things are moving close to drones replacing the traditional trade of brick laying. This technology is being considered by the infrastructure giant Balfour Beatty, according to a report published in The Daily Telegraph.

Drones appear poised to significantly impact traditional forms of employment, says Alison Carnwath, who is the chairman of Land Securities, the multi-billion FTSE 100 construction company. She told The Daily Telegraph: “Businesses are focusing on productivity, they want to reengineer how their people can work, they recognize that technology is upon us and is going to destroy thousands of jobs.”

Tim Sandle

twitter.com/dxjournal

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