As ENR FutureTech 2020 rolled into its fourth and final day, presentations offered a sense of emerging construction technologies and what comes next for developers and users amid a pandemic hit marketplace. Steve Jones, senior director of Dodge Data & Analytics, said that despite a significant decline in office and retail construction, there are bright spots for some non-residential market sectors, including healthcare and warehouses for e-commerce fulfillment. There are also hints of a shift toward renovation over new construction, which he described as a sign the construction economy is slowing. "We are in a cyclical business. This is just what it does," said Jones.

Whether you use artificial or augmented with intelligence, AI (artificial intelligence) is catching on in the industry. Recent announcements include its use in field and office alike. For example, Black & Veatch is implementing Zinier's intelligent field service automation platform, ISAC, (Intelligent Service Automation and Control) to deepen realtime visibility into the field, to anticipate service disruptions through AI-driven recommendations, and to improve operational efficiencies by automating manual front-office, backoffice, and field-office tasks. ISAC will help ensure faster, more seamless communication among Black & Veatch's extensive field services workforce. According to Zinier, ISAC is the eyes, ears, and algorithms that analyze an organization's past and present.

From leak detection to forecasting usage, artificial intelligence has the potential to completely transform the water utilities sector. A sea change in the way utilities operate is underway thanks to the sector's tech-savvy players, who are adopting artificial intelligence (AI), machine-learning and new data analytics to bring better efficiency and resilience to the water utility value chain. While a wait-and-see approach predominates, those taking the plunge are moving quickly to overhaul utilities from the ground up and drive the understanding and adoption of digital solutions through exciting initiatives. It's about creating value, not just putting forward things thought to be technologically cool Incredible computational power and advanced algorithms are helping to translate data into targeted, actionable intelligence. Meanwhile, the worldwide appetite for AI is projected only to grow.

Black & Veatch, an employee-owned, global leader in building critical human infrastructure in energy, water, telecommunications, and government services, is on a journey to leverage AI-assisted bots, called virtual experts, to better capture and interact with engineering knowledge and standards. The goal of this emerging effort is to experiment with ways to better capture knowledge and expertise within the company. Ultimately, this initiative would lead to a reduced amount of time required to locate desired information and create an opportunity for continued innovation to better support the future. Knowledge and standards were generally captured in written form, which led to an abundance of Microsoft Word documents that were difficult to search and a burden to continually refresh. Up to this point, access to content was through best practice document and folder organization and traditional search functions.

Black & Veatch, an employee-owned, global leader in building critical human infrastructure in energy, water, telecommunications, and government services, is on a journey to leverage AI-assisted bots, called virtual experts, to better capture and interact with engineering knowledge and standards. The goal of this emerging effort is to experiment with ways to better capture knowledge and expertise within the company. Ultimately, this initiative would lead to a reduced amount of time required to locate desired information and create an opportunity for continued innovation to better support the future. Knowledge and standards were generally captured in written form, which led to an abundance of Microsoft Word documents that were difficult to search and a burden to continually refresh. Up to this point, access to content was through best practice document and folder organization and traditional search functions.

Tasked by their CEOs to use technology to better align the business with shifting customer preferences, CIOs across every industry are leveraging the now-standard social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) technologies to modernize, stabilize and accelerate digital transformations. But those tools will get some company from augmented and virtual reality, the Internet of Things, blockchain software and advanced analytics over the next 18 to 24 months. These emerging technologies are fueling new products and services, changing the way businesses operate and interact with customers, Bill Briggs, CTO of Deloitte Consulting, told CIO.com. "Every company is a technology company at its core," says Briggs, who wrote the report, whose theme is "Innovating in a Digital Era." "Technology is the most strategic asset. Briggs says the real value of IoT, in which sensors attached to everyday machines send data to other machines, is that it enables companies to reimagine business processes by automating previously manual.