Dive Brief:

• PCL Construction and CopperTree Analytics Inc. recently announced their partnership to embed data and energy analytics services into new and existing buildings during the construction process.
• CopperTree’s building analytics software will be married to PCL’s Job Site Insights (JSI), a cloud-based construction platform that came about from a recent partnership between the Edmonton, Canada-based contractor and Microsoft.
• The ubiquity of internet of things (IoT) sensors and need for more useful organization of data creates an opportunity for the partnership, according the statement, which PCL says will meet demand from all of its customers for simplified building management as well as reduced maintenance and energy costs.

Dive Insight:

Construction sites generate huge amounts of data, and until relatively recently, contractors weren’t easily able to remove it from silos and structure it into useful insights. With a growing number of business intelligence products on the market, companies like PCL are increasingly turning to dashboard products, or developing their own, to take advantage of the swaths of information they’re gathering across jobsites each day.

Pivoting to the cloud through its earlier partnership with Microsoft helped make this sort of analysis possible, and resulted in what the companies called a “software platform for the building itself.” The technology tracks workers, materials and environmental conditions during construction and uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to increase jobsite efficiency. Plus, once the project is handed off to the owner, it can monitor energy usage and help create more comfortable environments for occupants, the companies said.

This further addition of CopperTree’s software “will improve Lean construction, enable smarter buildings and cities, and increase both productivity and quality, while reducing our carbon footprint on our projects and our [customers’] assets,” said Mark Bryant, PCL’s chief information officer, in the announcement.

While not all contractors are exploring custom tools for these purposes, it seems a growing number of companies are warming up to sustainable construction methods, in particular. A Procore survey of 400 users released this week found that 92% of respondents wanted to make their jobsite more environmentally sustainable, with 54% saying they believed they’d win more work if they provided green building or sustainable services.