Unlocking the Data Treasure Chest
Date Posted: September 7, 2016
Posted In: Ideas,
From Engineering News-Record: Construction technology leaders and software developers are preparing for a massive storm of innovation as the industry moves its data and processes to the cloud. The trend is breaking down data silos and opening company operations to penetrating, real-time analysis of the rivers of data flowing from traditional software processes, as well as newer ones supported by an explosion of field-collected data and mobile devices. The data is revealing how construction actually works and how projects really get built.
“In the next five years, the industry is going to be transformed through data. It’s an unprecedented, perfect storm of cloud, mobility and an incredible amount of collectors and data science converging together,” says Pat Keaney, director of BIM 360 Enterprise Products at Autodesk. “It’s really going to move the needle in ways we couldn’t have dreamed of five years ago.”
The delivery of construction software and services via the internet, or software as a service (SaaS), exposes the industry’s vital signs. Developers say data patterns are emerging that can improve software, designs, project management, supply chains and safety. And the magic is only just getting started.
Early benefits—all in development or pilots now—will include real-time sensor-based production feedback to help craftworkers streamline processes; predictive assessments to warn superintendents every morning of specific risks likely to arise that day; jobsite defect and safety-hazard flagging that is automatically derived from a background analysis of job-cam, smartphone and drone imagery, and performance-based contractor safety ratings that feed directly into each company’s personal insurance-rate calculations.
And that doesn’t include the gains of producing better designs by drawing recommendations from the post-construction outcomes of thousands of previous designs. Ever more accurate estimating, using vast amounts of connected data and experience, also is among many advantages experts say are starting to rain from the cloud.