Giving notes and information about the artificial intelligence and machine learning usage and impact on the construction industry and how does it help the engineers/architects in automating their repetitive tasks through the project life cycle

1. AI techniques in
construction industry
LC Cairo
6/21/2020
Khaled Gharib

2. AI Techniques
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Introduction:
About 7 percent of the world’s labor force is employed in the
construction industry, so it is a major sector of the world
economy. Individuals and businesses spend 10$ trillion per year
on construction related activities. So, we must improve our AEC.
In the last 20 years our architecture, engineering and
construction industry have been transformed upside down. The
companies that work in AEC become looking for experts that
have an engineering background with a creative digitization skills
that could be able to face the improved technology.
In this research, we will talk about how does the artificial
intelligence and machine learning would be the future of the
construction field and what are the applications that are already
delivered to us.
What is Ai / ML?
First of all we need to know what is the artificial intelligence and
machine learning. Do they are the same? Our question is
definitely no.
The AI and ML have a lot of in common that may confuse a lot of
us. The AI and ML is how can we train the computers to solve
the problems by its own and to detect any problem. Machine
learning is a statistical technique that makes the computer learn
from data. The AI have three major fields: Artificial narrow
intelligence, artificial general intelligence and artificial super
intelligence. Until today, we does not achieve any progress
except in the ANI. The following Venn diagram could help you to
differentiate between the AI/ML and data science.
AI
ML
DS

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Design and planning:
Design and planning processes are critical parts in a
construction project's lifecycle.
In the large construction projects such as infrastructure or
railway, the designers consume a lot of time in checking for
statically determinate systems and to achieve the safety in their
design. In this process, there is time wasted in repeating a lot of
tasks and also that leads to inaccurate planning and a lot of
clashes and mistakes. All of this repeated tasks could be done
nowadays by automation and AI.
This is where generative design, an AI based design exploration
process, comes into play. An AI based system, with access to a
database of many plans of buildings that have been built before,
is able to develop design alternatives based on the knowledge it
gains from the plans in the database. This is a major improvement
over the old-fashioned scripting as it allows for many more
parameters and permutations to be considered. All the designer
or engineer has to do is to choose the most desirable design out
of the alternatives available. It also increase the quality of the
product and decrease the cost much.

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AI and ML for smart construction:
Machine learning is like a smart assistance for the AEC experts
that could help them to climb the mountain of data in the field. It
can also give alert for the project managers to avoid fatal
mistakes or clashes.
A recent report forecasting that the construction industry will
spend more than 4.51 billion dollar on AI by 2026.
AI makes jobsite more productive:
According to the lake of skilled labors, there is a lot of companies
that started to manufacture self-driving construction machinery
to do repetitive tasks more accurate than humans such as
concrete pouring and curing. The excavation works would be
done by autonomous or semi-autonomous bulldozers that are
controlled by the engineer with the specifications required in the
design. This frees up the time of the labor for the construction
work itself and also it will reduce the time needed for the project
and will decrease or may mitigate the risk of the rework. This
shortage in skilled labors will led to low productivity so the
companies have to invest in data science and artificial
intelligence. A 2017 McKinsey report says that the construction
firms could boost their productivity by 50 percent through real-

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time analysis of data. This analysis and some sensors in the site
could tell the project manager where is the areas that have
enough workers and where is the least area of productivity.
Also there is a new trend in the construction site supervision
which is the drones. The drones could be automatically
connected to the engineer in the office to be aware of every task
developed in the site. There is also a robotic construction
workers that should be ready to work starting from 2030, Experts
expect that construction robots would be much more effective
and productive that the human labors.

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Artificial intelligence in BIM:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytk67SIZMDg
The BIM is a new technology that increasing the efficiency and
the quality of the construction products. BIM is much deeper than
the design phase only but it could be also a management tool that
helps the stakeholders and owners to be all involved in the
project from its early beginning.

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Creating a BIM model enables those involved in the project to
make their decision before going anywhere near the construction
site. More recently, BIM software companies begun to use AI in
the BIM process to improve these models and the process of BIM.
BIM is a digital description of the model and its information in a
lot of dimensions. The BIM has 3d, 4d, 5d, 6d and 7d dimension.
The 3d is the design model of the project and when we add the
schedule and the time of the project it becomes 4d model. By
adding the cost estimated for the project it becomes a 5d model.
6d is about the sustainability and the project life cycle and 7d is
more sophisticated phase which has the facility management.
The AI would help much more than before as we have big amount
of data in the project so it could detect the clashes and give the
engineers some note to take care about. AI and BIM also could
predict the whole life cycle of the project before going to the site
so we could save a lot of money and effort

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After all of this explanation, we could say that the future is of the
AEC industry is concerned by AI/ML/DS and the leaders of the
future would be the ones who can join the track of technology and
apply it to our field. A report says that the chance of replacing
structural engineers/Architect by 2030 does not exceed the 1.7
percent but all of this depends on their ability to improve their
skills and to mitigate the risk of being outdated.

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References
1. Galay, M., 2020. [Online]
Available at: https://www.kreo.net/blog/how-ai-is-improving-bim-and-
helping-the-construction-industry
2. Rao, S., 2020. constructible.trimble. [Online]
Available at: https://constructible.trimble.com/construction-industry/the-
benefits-of-ai-in-construction
3. Stefan, K., 2020. rolandberger. [Online]
Available at: https://www.rolandberger.com/en/Point-of-View/Artificial-
intelligence-in-the-construction-industry.html#