AI-driven robots may not be taking over construction sites anytime soon, but the technology is percolating into the administrative side of the industry.
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As Big Tech pours hundreds of billions into building out data centers for artificial intelligence, the technology is increasingly being used by development teams for everything from site selection to navigating the request for proposal process.
Alice Technologies, a company that has offered ways to optimize construction schedules since 2015, is launching a new AI tool that CEO René Morkos says makes plans easier for contractors to navigate and analyze.
The Insights Agent chatbot debuting in the Alice suite Monday allows users to ask questions about their schedules and get straightforward answers backed up with sources that justify its reasoning.
The product “almost doesn’t hallucinate,” said Morkos, referring to a common phenomenon in which generative AI models present inaccurate information.
“That was very tricky to do,” he said. “It’s part of the secret sauce.”
Insight Agents can analyze the difference between two different schedules to help contractors figure out which path they should take.
Alice can save customers 17% on project durations, 14% on labor costs and 12% on equipment costs, the company says. It also reported that Insights Agent can cut the manual effort required to analyze schedules by about 50%.
But Morkos said the suite’s real potential for construction companies is allowing them to minimize risk by analyzing different approaches.
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Traditional construction planning techniques generally allow contractors up to three schedules, he said. Alice can do that same work over and over again.
“Imagine you can build your product 50 times before you build it,” Morkos said. “That’s what this technology unlocks.”
Alice’s team started tinkering around with the idea behind Insights Agent about a year ago, he said. It took six months to build and has been in a beta phase with about a dozen clients this summer.
One of those clients is Suffolk Construction, a national contracting firm with over 3,000 employees and $8B in annual revenue. Suffolk Vice President of Operations John McKernan said in a statement that the product “brings a new level of planning and scheduling sophistication.”
“Its ability to generate intelligent analysis and reports goes beyond documenting changes,” he said. “The agent helps identify opportunities and shape strategic conversations with stakeholders. This kind of intelligence positions us to deliver advanced services and greater value to our customers on their projects.”
Morkos declined to share how much a subscription costs.
About one-third of construction firms use AI, but that rate roughly doubles to 64% for businesses with 10 employees or more, according to a survey conducted by the software firm Houzz in May.
The report found that almost three-quarters of AI users in construction and design firms were satisfied with their experience using the technology. Fifty-eight percent reported that it improved their workflow moderately or significantly.
But Houzz also uncovered an education and training gap, with 92% of contractors having no formal instruction in how the technology can be applied to their work.
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