According to this expert, if the construction industry is going to make the best use of artificial intelligence, it must draw upon reliable data, smart analytics and people comfortable with change.
Rogier Roelvink is aware that the construction industry has sky-high expectations for artificial intelligence (AI). But he also sees widespread misconceptions rooted in how AI works and where it draws its knowledge from.
“Expectations range from realistic and quite achievable to a belief that AI will be a magic wand that will solve every single problem we’ve ever seen in the construction and engineering industry,” he said.
“We’re in a state of flux where everybody working on a construction site thinks AI is just around the corner and we should be using it already. They’re wondering if AI can do their job for them.
Roelvink is the Asia-Pacific Industry and Customer Engagement Director at Oracle Construction and Engineering, and while he doesn’t believe AI will be laying bricks or raising a scaffold anytime soon, he does see immense opportunity for its use in this industry.
“Benefits can come from AI enhanced designs and virtual modeling before we hit the construction site,” he said.
“That generates time savings and cost savings. We can use AI to augment health and safety monitoring, which helps protect everybody working on a construction site.”
These are real opportunities that see AI not as a panacea but a tool that can offer businesses realistic gains around increased safety, reduced risk, lower costs and increasing productivity at all levels throughout their organisation.
“A lot of that will be translated as increasing accuracy: running scenario analyses and models to come up with initial design ideas that take the legwork and other time-consuming, laborious and repetitive work out,” Roelvink said.
Taking the long view
It’s a sober-minded approach to a potentially transformative technology: one that doesn’t promise the world but does see clearly how AI is being applied in the construction and engineering sectors to offer real improvements for schedule certainty, project delivery and risk management.
And depending on the definition of AI, Roelvink said, the technology has already been in use in the construction industry for 10 to 15 years.
“If AI is a form of advanced analytics, it’s been around since we started using technology tools and had data available from construction sites,” he said.
“If your definition of AI is a tool that provides meaningful insights by connecting multiple data sets when based on a conversational interaction with some kind of agent, then I’m not even sure we have that today.”
That form of generative and agentic AI, Roelvink predicted, is still some time away.
“What people are missing is the fact that you need to have a baseline of reliable, trustworthy data that works at two levels,” he said.
“One specific to your organisation and your project or service: your own reliable data. And you need to be able to augment that with external data that is also reliable. That’s where the problem lies; you can see how AI works with your own data, but we don’t have those reliable external sources at the moment.”
Preparing for now, preparing for tomorrow
That doesn’t mean the industry should disregard AI as a technology whose moment is yet to arrive. Rather, it shows that organisations can already be taking steps to maximise the future potential of AI and introduce it into their business without major disruption.
“The first step in order to benefit from AI is to actually look at how you’re currently generating data,” Roelvink said.
“How does it get generated? Where does it sit? Can you trust it? Can you rely on it? Does it make sense?
“Then, nine times out of 10, that process results in some form of digital transformation, which is obviously very beneficial for the organisation.”
The benefit is twofold: organisations find themselves better prepared for an AI future, but also find solutions to current-day problems arising from siloed sets of data and unconnected point solutions.
People, processes and change management are as critical as the technology, Roelvink added.
“Every new and innovative technology needs to go with change management; without that, it’s bound to fail,” he said.
“People need to be comfortable with the change; they have to understand how the change is beneficial to them, what it means for their role or tasks or responsibilities.”
The most important aspect, Roelvink said, is being open to learning about the new technology.
“What are we trying to achieve and is it actually delivering us a benefit right here, right now?” he asked.
“We need to understand the clear, actionable ways to deploy AI for better project delivery and risk management, and demonstrate how to move from theory to real-world, measurable results.”
Find out about integrating artificial intelligence into construction projects at the Oracle website.
