Construction—an industry that’s been around for nearly as long as civilization—is long overdue for a change in the tools used to build the world. While technology has become more and more common on a jobsite, most of it has been focused on taking companies from pen and paper to digital data and drawings. This is a step forward, but still requires a significant amount of manual effort and calculations to be effective. One tool alone may not completely transform an industry, but the right technology in combination could unlock the secret to more profitable and productive projects. That’s where machine learning comes in.

When you hear the term “machine learning” or “AI” (artificial intelligence), your mind probably goes straight to what you’ve seen in movies and television. While there isn’t a terminator on a jobsite (yet), construction companies are beginning to leverage an entirely new generation of technology to further reduce manual effort and increase visibility and insights.

3 ways machine learning leads to faster digitalization

Mapping project progress

A lot of the existing construction technology leverages visualization software to overlay captured data onto a 3D design. While this helps add an extra layer of visibility, it won’t tell you much more about true progress without someone having to look through every photo and laser scan. When given the choice, most jobsite managers would rather walk around and measure progress manually than spend even more hours doing it on the computer.

Computer vision-based progress tracking takes it one step further. By letting the AI automatically analyze visual data, construction companies are able to measure installed quantities and inspect quality—without having to sift through data or manually record the entire jobsite. What used to take someone hours is now an automated, real-time progress and quality report they can access anytime.

Imagine being able to automatically track more than 75 different construction stages and generate progress, down to the materials installed, and all it takes is a 360° camera, BIM, and AI-powered platform.

Increasing visibility

This automated progress tracking isn’t just for the project teams. Traditionally, if an owner wants a project update, they either have to physically come to the jobsite or rely on the reporting of project managers and subcontractors. This reporting takes valuable time, and is often incomplete and delayed (or missing entirely) depending on how busy the team is.

AI platforms take the burden off of project teams by enabling them to capture more detailed data, faster. Artificial intelligence can essentially act as a digital surveyor to capture hundreds of thousands of square feet on a project every week—freeing field crews up to focus on making progress, not reporting on it. Those uncomfortable OAC and weekly trade coordination meetings where progress isn’t clearly measured or communicated can quickly become a thing of the past.

Real-time project visibility allows companies to spot potential issues or overruns faster, and gives them enough time to make changes before it’s too late.

Managing schedules and risk

In construction, the four biggest factors to a project’s success are time, money, quality, and productivity. The right balance of these factors could mean the difference between coming in on time, under budget and losing money on a project. The increased visibility and reporting that AI-based software gives managers can directly translate to real-time feedback on schedule, budget, and quality.

Machine learning provides companies objective schedule and cost budget analysis to ensure everything is progressing to plan, and can prevent costly rework or delays. It isn’t enough to be able to see what’s happening as it happens—companies need to be able to look into the future of a project using predictive forecasts, too (another AI specialty).

The future of construction technology: Saving time and money

Real-time feedback and insights have the power to take construction companies to a new level of project success. Machine learning isn’t about replacing people with machines. It’s about leveraging automated, artificial intelligence to increase productivity and visibility so teams can make better business decisions, faster.

‍

In his February 5, 2023 opinion piece in the New York Times, Ezra Klein rings the alarm that the $1.6 trillion U.S. construction industry has not shared the productivity gains of other industries. He cites Goolsbee and Syverson’s paper “The Strange and Awful Path of Productivity in the US Construction Sector,” which explains that construction productivity has decreased since 1950 while manufacturing productivity, for example, has increased ninefold. I appreciate Mr. Klein’s alarm as well as his humility in admitting he has no idea how we get construction productivity rising again. Two decades into a career focused on bringing productivity gains to construction, I do have an idea.

But before I get to my idea, let’s consider Mr. Klein’s prime culprit – regulatory “paperwork, and paperwork, and more paperwork.” No doubt regulation impacts construction productivity; regulation impacts most industries. While Syverson’s paper does not provide data connecting productivity declines to increased regulation, it does note that the construction industry invested 46 percent less in R&D and software purchases compared to the broader economy in 2020. And, a separate paper by Syverson, “The Slowdown in Manufacturing Productivity Growth,” (my fellow construction colleagues will take solace in knowing we are not alone in facing Syverson’s economic scrutiny) explains that information technologies (IT) were the main driver for productivity gains in manufacturing from 1994 to 2005.

Why did IT so dramatically impact manufacturing, but not construction? In both construction and manufacturing, IT can improve productivity once information about the real world is transformed into data. Consider an assembly line producing widgets. The assembly line has sensors that send data to machines to respond in real time and to plant managers who learn of bottlenecks and continuously improve the assembly line. This investment in sensors produces the data that powers IT and drives productivity increases.

Applying IT to construction is not so easy. While a factory produces millions of widgets, a construction project is the assembly of millions of different components to produce only a single facility. A single sensor cannot automatically monitor the installation of thousands of square feet of walls or linear feet of ductwork. And that limitation means that IT is starved of data that would help construction workers and managers gain insights to continuously improve their processes. Thus, until recently, investment in IT has been limited to the design phase and certain aspects of construction administration. Yet, labor is the greatest cost on any project in the U.S. And, IT has had virtually no impact on the productivity of that skilled craftworker laying a brick or welding a beam to a column.

But, that reality is changing. With artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision, leading builders are transforming 360 video into near real-time measurements of construction processes. This near real-time reality capture of the construction site acts like sensors in a factory, feeding IT with data that empowers project teams to increase productivity. For example, a construction superintendent constructing a retirement community recently used this automated progress tracking technology to identify that a certain duct installation activity was not yet complete on the 3rd floor. Ceilings were set to be installed the next day. Without this insight from technology, the unfinished ductwork would have been covered up by the ceiling trade partner. And, when they later discovered the oversight, they would have had to rip open the ceiling. That rework would have put a big dent in their productivity. Instead, the AI-powered IT indicated the ductwork was not 100% complete. Augmented with this information, the superintendent applied his expertise in coordinating trades to get the ducts installed right away to avoid the rework. And, the general contractor and retirement community owner no longer had to explain to residents why they were going to be moving in two weeks late.

This technology is new; we only began building it in 2015. But we’re seeing results. At Doxel, we’ve created automated progress tracking for construction that reduces time spent manually tracking progress by 95%. This automation creates data that is now fueling productivity gains from IT just like in manufacturing. And, it gets data to decision makers 5x – 10x faster, which gives 5x – 10x the opportunities to unlock the full potential of construction teams to accelerate schedules and deliver projects under budget. We’re not alone in augmenting construction team expertise with AI; companies such as Procore, Autodesk, Oracle, Dusty, Rhumbix and dozens of others have built technology that makes construction easier for millions of workers every day. And, forward looking facility owners are hungry to adopt solutions that reduce their risk and make the job easier for superintendents and trade partners, because they know the investment will translate to projects that are on time and on budget.

Of course, an industry’s health depends on more than a single metric. Construction provides nearly 11 million jobs in the U.S., including many high paying roles that do not require a college degree. They are rewarding jobs that contribute to society. But, the work is not easy. It frequently requires complex problem solving or complex physical skills. These are great jobs, partially because they can’t be easily automated to increase productivity. Still, productivity is an important metric not just for economists, but because it tends to correlate with the industry’s per capita income. According to Syverson, construction pay could be 10% higher if the industry’s productivity gains tracked the economy as a whole. Society needs construction to be easier, too. As we face challenges supplying healthcare, delivering energy, and investing in infrastructure, construction will either be a bottleneck to change or it will be a catalyst to change. AI augments the experience and skills of construction teams, so they have better data and tools and owners have the confidence to invest in projects that solve society’s 21st Century challenges.

Written by Reid Senescu, California Licensed Professional Engineer and PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. He is the Vice President of Product at Doxel.ai in Menlo Park, California. His research focused on how technology can improve construction team collaboration. At Doxel.ai, his products use computer vision to help teams collaborate and deliver projects on time and on budget.

Doxel, an AI-based construction technology solution that enables proactive risk mitigation of projects and portfolios, announced its integration with Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM), the solution for globally prioritizing, planning, managing, and executing projects, programs, and portfolios.

The Doxel and Oracle integration will enable customers to track construction progress continuously and automatically against their Oracle Primavera P6 schedules. Unlike manual methods of progress reporting that can be subjective or delayed, Doxel’s AI technology enables Oracle’s customers always to have real-time, objective visibility into their schedule performance.

The impact?

Proactive mitigation of delays and identification of opportunities to accelerate construction—enabling customers to deliver their projects faster while collecting valuable benchmark data for future planning in Oracle Primavera P6 EPPM.

“This integration with Primavera P6 is by popular demand from our mutual customers, and we couldn’t be more excited,” says Saurabh Ladha, chief executive officer of Doxel. “Nearly 100% of our customers use Primavera P6 for scheduling, and this unification of workflows will supercharge our customers’ abilities to manage their projects and portfolios proactively.”

Doxel, based in Menlo Park, California, has built a widely adopted platform that applies AI and computer vision technology to 360-degree video of construction sites and measures progress in a granular, real-time, and automated fashion, and then contextualizes actual progress against Primavera P6 EPPM plans.

Through Doxel’s cloud-based dashboard, customers can instantly see where they’re ahead and behind, informing their decisions with data that can always be trusted and delivered in time for proactive actions that ultimately land projects on schedule and budget.

“We see project teams use Doxel AI and Primavera P6 side by side in construction trailers. P6 is an amazingly powerful scheduling and planning tool and requires information from the field that can accurately, objectively, and with higher frequency measure and constantly update progress. Because if you don’t have high-quality data feeding into it, its value diminishes exponentially,” says Garrick Ballantine, Doxel’s chief revenue officer.

He adds, “General contractors and owners use the combination of P6 and Doxel to objectively partner with their trade partners on a week-to-week basis, bringing the field and office on the same page with our cloud-based visual dashboard and to make payment decisions on billions of dollars’ worth of construction nationally. This integration has happened because the industry demanded it.”

Frank Malangone, Oracle’s executive director of innovation and industry strategy, said, “Our customers continue to look for ways to objectively and accurately measure progress to update the schedule for reliable insights. This connection between Primavera P6 and Doxel speeds up this process without constantly having to be at the job site and improves communication and coordination between the office and the field.”

This article original appeared on Oracle’s blog.

With inflation and rising cost of materials, it’s critical for healthcare companies to keep construction projects on schedule and within budget. Here are 4 ways to help verify your construction billing and keep your project on budget.

1. Reduce overbilling and cash outflow

Automated construction progress tracking provides an objective view into exactly where the project stands, which can help mitigate contractors overbilling for a higher percentage of completion. Companies that use a single source of truth for progress tracking (like Doxel) can reduce monthly bills by up to 10%.

With money still left on the table, contractors will be more motivated to finish the job so they can get paid.

2. Gain better visibility into change orders

Change orders are inevitable—but transparency around them should be, too. Before a major healthcare provider started working with Doxel, they estimated 4% of their total spend was caused by inaccurate progress tracking. These additional COs are passed onto the healthcare company, and are avoidable with the right solution in place.

Leveraging AI-powered progress tracking takes the mystery out of CO estimates. While using Doxel, one healthcare company found their typical change order estimates were inflated by at least 10%. That money is going out the door, and eventually it will add up. With more accurate project tracking, companies can more accurately pinpoint where change orders should be and reduce unnecessary spend.

3. Make the most of HealthTrust materials

Due to the unpredictability of material requirements, HealthTrust Contracts run the risk of being underutilized, and healthcare companies miss out on potential rebates and discounts offered. Doxel helps drive 100% contract utilization with more accurate, objective, and standardized measurement of materials installed across projects—which in turn allows more materials purchased through HealthTrust and greater financial savings.

For one Doxel healthcare customer, that meant the ability to purchase 10% more through HealthTrust, and the savings added up to a whopping $18.56M annually through discounts and rebates on materials.

4. Save contractor time and improve productivity

Time is money. When a project’s progress is manually tracked, the process itself to collect and report on the data takes valuable time away from contractors and field teams. What used to take 60+ hours of manpower a week to manually assess progress now takes a mere 3 hours per week using an automated solution like Doxel. All that time can now be focused on safety, quality control, and coordination of trade partners.

See why healthcare companies (and contractors) choose Doxel

Doxel’s image recognition gives healthcare facilities objective progress data and real-time insight into materials installed. With automated project tracking, everyone wins—contractors spend less time counting and reporting, and healthcare companies have better control over project costs and governance.

Healthcare facilities using Doxel are delivered earlier with increased safety, less expense, and higher quality. To learn more about how they do it, schedule a demo today.

Healthcare projects are not typical commercial construction. Aside from the complexity and cost, healthcare carries a higher level of risk and liability with patient care depending on the outcome of the project. With more at stake, accuracy and predictable outcomes are paramount to the success of the project.

At the foundation, there are three pillars to success for any healthcare project: transparency, risk management, and benchmarking.

Let’s take a look at each of these pillars—and at how automated progress tracking can help companies meet these requirements to help teams complete projects on time and under budget.

Build Transparency and Communication Into Every Process

Transparency between owners, general contractors, and subcontractors is critical in hospital construction because it ensures every step of the way that the project is following the schedule, budget, and required quality standards.

Clear communication and the sharing of real-time information makes it easier to identify and resolve any issues that may arise during the construction process, which can prevent delays and cost overruns.

Additionally, proper transparency makes sure all parties are working towards the same goals and that everyone is aware of the project’s progress and any necessary changes. In the case of hospital construction, it’s important that transparency is maintained to ensure the safety and well-being of the patients, staff, and visitors—both during construction and after it’s completed.

How can construction companies improve transparency among all stakeholders? Here are five processes that can help.

• Use autoated progress tracking software: Utilize progress tracking software that has real-time updates and progress tracking capabilities. This will enable both the owner and GC to access the same information from the same place, so everyone can stay on top of the project status. Also, make sure the solution is tracking all visible trades so that your data has the granularity needed to effectively manage the project
• Share progress reports: Send regular progress reports to all stakeholders, including the owner, the GC, and other members of the project team. Reports should be easy to read and understand, and should clearly show the progress of each task, any issues that came up, and any changes that were made.
• Communicate effectively: Establish standardized digital communication channels, such as email or instant messaging, to share updates and progress reports. This will eliminate the risk of a message getting lost while ensuring that everyone is on the same page so problems can be identified and addressed quickly.
• Use visual tools: A picture or graph speaks louder than words. Leverage visual tools such as Gantt charts, timelines, and progress bars to provide a clear and easy-to-understand view of the project status. This helps teams reduce misunderstandings and increase transparency.
• Schedule regular meetings: Implement a consistent cadence of meetings between the owner, the general contractor and other stakeholders to review progress, discuss issues, and plan for next steps.

Mitigate Risks For Better Outcomes

Due to the costs and complexity of healthcare projects, it is crucial to mitigate risk to ensure safety, quality, and compliance. Risk is inevitable in construction, but there are steps you can take to reduce and ensure better outcomes for your projects.

• Develop a comprehensive project plan: This should include detailed project scope, schedule, budget, and risk management plan. Doing this helps make sure that all parties are aware of the project’s goals and objectives, and have a clear understanding of where the project’s progress should be at all times.
• Communicate consistently: Identifying and resolving any issues that may arise starts with effective communication. The faster all parties are alerted to potential risk, the quicker everyone can spring into action to mitigate or eliminate it from becoming a bigger problem later down the road.
• Use automated progress tracking: AI-powered progress tracking can provide real-time information and analytics on the project’s progress, and helps identify areas of risk without relying on the manual efforts of the project team.
• Conduct a thorough risk assessment: Identify potential risks and proactively develop mitigation strategies to reduce the likelihood of those risks occurring.
• Establish a quality control program: Implementing a comprehensive quality control program ensures that all work is performed to the required standards, and leveraging technology to check for quality means any problems are found faster.
• Make it easy to access Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools: Utilizing BIM can improve communication and collaboration, and provide a visual understanding to better maintain quality and standards.
• Continual monitoring and review: What you don’t know could come back to haunt you. By continually monitoring and reviewing project progress at every phase, it’s easier to make adjustments as needed for the project to stay on track and within budget.
• Implement an effective change management process: Establishing a collaborative change management process means that any changes to the project are properly documented, reviewed, and communicated, so everyone can adapt quickly as needed.

By following these steps, healthcare construction projects can manage risk and improve outcomes. Even better, there’s technology that alleviates the manual component to many (if not all) of the steps needed to mitigate risk.

By pairing 360-degree video capture with AI-powered progress tracking, teams are able to objectively measure progress of work in place with every data capture, every week. This provides healthcare construction projects with real-time information on the progress and quality of what’s been completed.

Automated progress tracking is the best way to bridge everything together to keep project teams on the same page and catch potential issues faster with enough time to fix them—ultimately preventing delays and unnecessary overruns. This greater degree of transparency and accountability helps to ensure that all parties are meeting their obligations and building to the required standard of the project.

Benchmark For More Predictable Outcomes

Benchmarking in healthcare construction provides a way to measure and compare the performance of different projects. Leveraging benchmarks helps to identify best practices and areas for improvement, which can be used to set goals and targets for future projects. Benchmarking can also reveal trends and patterns across projects to identify any potential risks and opportunities earlier on.

Healthcare construction benchmarking can inform decision making and contribute to the success or failure of a project. For benchmarking to be most impactful, project progress should be collected in a standardized and repeatable way. Implementing an automated way to analyze project progress in real time helps save time and ensure meaningful insights—ultimately leading to more predictable outcomes, as well as improved quality, cost, and schedule performance.

Leverage AI-Powered Progress Tracking For Project Success

Automated progress tracking works to streamline the three pillars for project success by providing objective information and greater visibility into the project’s progress. Between project teams and stakeholders, everyone is able to be more closely involved to make more informed decisions faster.

With all parties working towards the same goals, everyone is aware of the objective progress metrics as well as any changes needed. With the right solution in place, teams can increase efficiency, decrease risk, and save valuable time and resources.

Not sure where to get started? Click here to learn more about Doxel’s digital surveyor and analytic tools for healthcare construction today.

Identifying what’s still pending can feel like finding a needle in a haystack, especially when less than 10% of a particular trade’s work remains. Doxel has updated the Work In Place visualization to make it easier to find remaining work.

The Challenge of Tracking Unfinished Work

Managing a large construction project involves ensuring that millions of components are installed correctly, in the correct sequence, across many trade partners. Put simply, it’s easy to see what is there, it’s hard to find something missing. As more trades begin their installations, the not installed scope gets occluded, making it hard to visually see what’s left. This leads to a common problem in construction: unfinished in-wall MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing) being covered up by drywall teams, leading to costly and demoralizing rework.

‍

52% of rework is caused by poor project data and miscommunication. Meaning, $31.3 billion in rework was caused by poor project data and miscommunication in the U.S. alone in 2018.

[Autodesk + FMI]

‍

‍

The Easy Way to Find Remaining Work and Prevent Rework

Choosing “Not Complete” in Doxel’s Work in Place visualization is a straightforward approach to solving the challenge of finding remaining work. By isolating the components that are yet to be completed, Doxel enables teams to have focused conversations with trade partners and other responsible parties. This feature empowers site teams to:

• Clearly distinguish between installed and not installed components within each trade and stage.
• Identify any missing elements that still need to be installed.
• Enhance collaboration by providing all stakeholders with a complete picture of the project’s status.
• Prevent rework

How It Works

The Work In Place visualization helps site teams easily manage and track work installed by providing an automated, color coded 3D model of the structure, broken down by trade, zones, and stages of construction. Now you can select a trade, sort by “Not Complete” and see what is yet to be installed for that trade. This powerful tool answers the critical questions: “What is installed?’, “What is pending?” and “What is not done?” so that construction teams can appropriately manage labor, sequence trades, and hit project milestones.

How to find work not yet complete:

1. Open the 3D Work-in-Progress View: Navigate to the area of interest
2. Select the Trade(s): Use the dropdown menu to select the trade or trades you want to examine.
3. “Not Complete”: The view will show pending work in gray, making it easy to see what is still left to be done.

Prevent inspection and commissioning delays

Traditional construction progress tracking methods rely heavily on manual inspections and subjective reporting, often leading to errors and oversights. With the size and complexity of construction, it is simply too time-consuming and error-prone to accurately count each hanger, pipe, or panel.

Visualizing work in place allows teams to quickly identify remaining work and understand the reasons behind any delays. By sorting by “Not Complete,” superintendents and trades can better coordinate with each other, quickly identifying where they should be working next or identifying missing work. This improved clarity helps teams verify that all tasks are completed, understand their next steps, and ensure that all work is done in the correct sequence.

Additionally, knowing what is left to do is crucial for commissioning and inspection sign-offs. Failing to identify unfinished work can delay these critical milestones, impacting the overall project timeline. By using Doxel’s Work In Place visualization, teams can ensure that all necessary work is completed and ready for inspection, preventing delays and ensuring a smooth progression towards project completion.

Conclusion

Construction is complex and details matter. Doxel’s Work In Place visualization helps teams find the right information quickly. By providing a clear and accurate view of unfinished work, Doxel empowers teams to prevent costly oversights, improve efficiency, and enhance collaboration.

‍