How AI can drive the most value for construction

A McKinsey & Co. study released earlier this year predicted that the engineering and construction sector will be slow to embrace artificial intelligence (AI), but despite this slow adoption, presenters during a webinar hosted by Engineering News-Record said it can help E&C companies expedite early processes, create the best plans for projects and identify if a project is starting to go awry. Rob Otani, chief technology officer at structural engineering consulting firm Thornton Tomasetti Inc., explained that AI is already all around us -- for example, look at Gmail's suggested replies, which are inputted automatically without the users' involvement as part of a pattern-learning algorithm meant to save the user time. The key is finding where to leverage AI in professional capacities, Otani said. When designing structures, for example, AI can automate mundane and repetitive tasks, thereby allowing engineers to spend more time creatively solving problems, he continued. AI's ability to process and analyze millions of data points also means it can understand patterns and even detect ones a human can't, he added. Thornton Tomasetti, which has been studying machine learning for three years, developed a software application called Asterisk that it claims performs structural design of a building in seconds.