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Artificial intelligence, digital twin technology and building information modeling — these are three technologies that will converge and drive the industry forward, according to Alex Belkofer.
Belkofer is a senior director of VDC for St. Louis-based McCarthy Building Cos. He recommends that builders take their time with the adoption of the technology as experts continue to build out best practices.
Here, Belkofer talks with Construction Dive about the key programs that contractors are using today, what’s made his life easier and his predictions for the future.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
CONSTRUCTION DIVE: What emerging technologies are contractors using today?
ALEX BELKOFER: I think what's critical right now in the construction technology space is building on all of the success of what building information modeling has done for us, and going beyond that.
What I mean by that is, the shifts that we've seen in the last 20 years went from taking drawings from 2D and now we have models, and what can you do with them?
It’s the evolution of using the core foundation of technology, and now finding additional uses for it.
With that being said, BIM has unlocked a lot of gates for construction technology. BIM as a tool allows us to do things downstream, such as doing on-site layout, which used to be with total stations.
Now we're doing it with robots, right? And 3D printers? BIM unlocks the gates to prefabrication.
What technologies have made your life easier in the past year?
BIM collaboration software programs Revisto and Autodesk Tandem are two good ones. They're putting information into a better vehicle to get more people to visualize, understand, collaborate and exchange with that information. It gives the end user a better picture of how these digital technologies can benefit them.
Data is the new oil in the construction industry, and that's what people want access to.
What are some emerging technologies that you want to learn more about?
Everyone is obviously talking about AI and digital twins. I think the question is, how do we apply AI in the right manner to construction uses?
We know that things like AI require a robust data set that is good quality data. That's what everyone's trying to figure out right now — how do I get my information collected, curated, formatted in the right manner, so that whatever AI engine it gets plugged into, it can really use it, harvest it, put it into something that can be really generated from?
I also feel like more and more asset owners are understanding what digital twins can mean to them in the life cycle of that built asset.
Whether it's a product they're investing in, or even just the concept of digital twin, it all comes down to what data you want, who's going to use that data, and how that data is going to be received and maintained by those end users.
Some people are all for AI, and some people are very skeptical about it. Where do you stand?
I'm squarely in the middle. I'm very optimistic, but I know it's going to take time to get there, so we have to take it in bite-sized pieces.
We're already using technology today that has AI elements built into it. Certain vendors that we work with are already doing it right. And so we are trying to find the right use cases at the right level, and starting to chip away at that.
I'm very encouraged by AI, as long as we can get our arms around things like curating a strong data set. But we don't want to boil the ocean, right?
I also don't believe AI is going to take my job tomorrow. We still need humans to do what we do, so I'm not afraid of it. We're definitely embracing it, and that's part of what McCarthy’s strategy is right now, embracing AI strategy, incorporating it into our BIM strategy, or VDC strategy.
I believe there's going to be a strong convergence of BIM, digital twins and AI. I think those three things are coming together very rapidly. What the output of that looks like is going to be very interesting.
