You鈥檝e heard of ground-breaking algorithms 鈥� what about algorithms breaking ground? A new AI system that can plan the construction of buildings is being piloted on several projects in the US, with the hope that it will speed up the process.
is the Californian firm behind the technology. Their system is able to digest a 3D model of a proposed building and spit out a detailed schedule for how it should be constructed. This includes specifying聽in what order particular structures need to be fitted together during the build, such as ceilings to walls, or when specialist tools, such as cranes, need to be on-site.
The system is called Artificial Intelligence Construction Engineering or Alice, and around 20 US companies are now experimenting with it, as well as a major property group in Thailand.
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鈥淚t鈥檚 a breakthrough in our minds,鈥� says at Mortenson, a large US construction firm currently testing Alice on three multi-million dollar projects in Chicago and Seattle.
In an initial pilot last year, the firm used the technology to plan a schedule for a hospital in Denver. As the build had already started, they only partially implemented the proposed scheduled. But it still helped to cut construction time by a couple of weeks, says Khan.
Millions of ways to put up a building
The system works by coming up with聽hundreds of聽millions of potential schedules, or ways of assembling a building. These are generated in as little as a day. It then chooses a tiny handful of those schedules that could work based on certain parameters, such as how many cranes you have available at particular locations, or the project鈥檚 cost limitations.
Firms that use Alice have to feed it 鈥渞ecipes鈥� of how they typically construct certain things, from walls to columns. But once this is done, the system automatically works out how those components slot together, a bit like puzzle pieces, says creator Ren茅 Morkos.
鈥淚t figures out which element supports which element,鈥� he explains. An in-built physics simulator also helps the tool understand what structural supports are needed in a building.
Morkos says he got the idea for Alice after working as a construction project manager on US military bases in Afghanistan.
He was given a team and told to repair grenade attacks on base鈥檚 runway. 鈥淚鈥檓 sitting there till sunrise trying to figure it out how I sequence these people to finish it faster,鈥� he says. After leaving the military, he tried to find a tool to do this but couldn鈥檛, so he built his own.
Other firms are bringing AI to the building design and construction process. Take US-based Building System Planning, a firm that is designing a system to automatically map out machinery and plumbing in large buildings automatically. And Komatsu, a Japanese construction company, is developing a tool that can analyse drone footage of a building site and spot potential safety issues.
Automation in scheduling will likely be adopted 鈥渋n weeks and months, not years鈥�, says at engineering group Ramboll.
However, when buildings are constructed on particularly high value land, for example in central London, the need to customise a building to make better use of the space might make automation less useful in the scheduling process, says at Arup, an engineering and design consultancy. But for more 鈥渞epeatable鈥� builds, such as schools, hospitals or warehouses, it could provide significantly improved efficiency.
