• ACE Club
  • Posts
  • šŸŒ† ACE Club Digest - AECā€™s AI Future šŸ¤–

šŸŒ† ACE Club Digest - AECā€™s AI Future šŸ¤–

Thereā€™s no more exciting time to be in AEC than today.

Happy Thursday!

In todayā€™s issue Sawyer responds to Procoreā€™s latest podcast about AI in construction, and we take a look at upcoming AEC conferences (New York Build, anyone?)

The End and New Beginning of AEC Tech

In case you missed it, Procore just released a podcast episode titled Are Construction Financial Systems Ready for NextGen Technology? You should give it a listen because Samantha Cook, CFO at Brinkmann Constructors, is a fantastic guest.

To say AEC (especially looking at you, C) is behind the times with technology is a major understatement. The contractors I work with day-to-day as consulting clients run their entire 7-8 figure businesses on a handful of spreadsheets, word docs and QuickBooks.

It makes sense, though, doesnā€™t it? Youā€™re in the field all day, working with detailed drawings and materials specs. Decisions are made in person or on the phone. Even if you logged every datapoint and SOP in a software platform, your subs and stakeholders probably wonā€™t use it anyway.

As someone who is embedded deeply in both the construction business and technology worlds, hereā€™s what I couldnā€™t stop thinking about as I was listening to the podcast ā€” AI agents are going to change everything (for the better).

I want to give a brief outline of why Iā€™m so excited about this, but for my full thoughts youā€™ll need to come to the next ACE Club event šŸ˜‰

First - whatā€™s an AI agent? An agent uses the same LLM tech as ChatGPT, but itā€™s special because it combines knowledge with the ability to plan and take action towards a goal. Imagine a bot that understands your contracts (knowledge), anticipates potential errors with change orders (planning) and then flags COā€™s that are already covered by contract scopes to a PM (action).

This sounds great and all, but why is this different from all the other software you already have?

Hereā€™s where it gets really cool - AI agents donā€™t work like the software youā€™re used to where you have to log into an application and click or type around to make things happen. Agentic software can be accessed without an interface at all.

Agents use regular language as a universal input. You can send it an email, text it, or even call it on the phone - similar to how you interact with a person. That means you can get the benefit of an AI tool whether youā€™re at a job site, on the road, or at your desk.

These things can follow pretty complex and detailed instructions (though they do mess up every now and then). The most advanced ones can accomplish goals with many steps and quite a bit of ambiguity.

The most interesting thing is that the traditional barriers for bringing tech into the AEC workplace just arenā€™t there. Data migration, training, process development, etc are all so much simpler than with the last generation of tech like the old ERP systems.

As a result, Iā€™m pretty convinced that AEC is about to see a productivity Renaissance, of sorts. PMs, architects, CMs, estimators, etc will have roles that are never fully replaced by software, but are certainly augmented.

Thereā€™s probably no more exciting time to be in AEC than today.

Thatā€™s all for now - Iā€™d love your thoughts!

Nothing today, but stay tuned for a showcase of a project led by our very own member, Anna, coming next week!

Have you worked on a project that youā€™d like us to feature? Tell us about it!

šŸ‘Øā€šŸ« Upcoming AEC Courses

  • (1/29) - REPLAY - AI In Construction - Exploring AI with Technology Experts

  • (1/30) - Mastering the Tool Chest in Bluebeam - learn how the Tool Chest in Bluebeam can help you streamline your design workflow, increase collaboration efficiency, and boost your project speed.

šŸ“° Our favorite reads, listens & watches

Donā€™t forget to subscribe to ACE to get updates about meet-up and events

Until next time,

Emma & Sawyer

Reply

or to participate.