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COMMENT
Industry insight
KARTHIK VENKATASUBRAMANIAN ORACLE CONSTRUCTION AND ENGINEERING
Curb risk and improve decisionmaking with predictive AI
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utomation efforts have accelerated by many engineering and construction (E&C) organizations as they feel the squeeze of growing risk, strained supply chains, and narrowing margins continue to increase. Traditionally organisations have focused on achieving operational improvements through the use of technology to refine processes and procedures, but putting the data collected from digitisation to good use can sometimes be an afterthought. AI holds enormous potential to help E&C organisations optimise their decision-making and to drive project success by proactively unlocking new predictive insights from project data. Vast amounts of data are being generated by the construction industry as digitisation is embraced, and with it, there is a significant opportunity for teams to learn from and use this data to create better estimates, plan smarter, and reduce risk. Historical data provides a starting point for organizations to analyse their business. The ability to gain insights from historical data and apply them to current projects is key to creating organisational baselines and benchmarks which can help prevent the same mistakes from being repeated and ensure there is a focus on driving continuous improvements. At the very least, it prevents the “copy from a past project and paste onto the current project” mindset, which can be common when
July 2021 | MEConstructionNews.com
team members are under time constraints. Until now, the focus of business intelligence (BI) technologies have generally been on lag indicators, things that have already happened on the project. While these insights are valuable, new developments in AI can unlock a new level of project intelligence, where the focus is on lead indicators based on realtime data, driving predictive insights that can bring about better outcomes. These AI technologies use machine learning (ML) to power active intelligence, helping organizations learn from their past data while continually assessing the present. This use of ML enables organisations to regularly monitor developments and adjust plans using up-to-date predictive insights. For example, such a system can learn from historical schedule data and make predictions about potential delays on current projects. These systems become smarter over time with increasing data quality, improving in accuracy. Active intelligence yields predictive insights that add value to nearly every aspect of construction project management, including critical areas such as schedule, cost/ budget, quality, safety, risk, and collaboration. AI can provide an effective early warning system that surfaces potential issues like project delays, cost overruns, defects and rework, etc. long before they boil over. Active intelligence leverages rich internal and external data sources to continuously improve prediction accuracy and precision. When combining these along with external data, such as weather forecasts/history, supply chain disruptions, and workforce disruptions, it is possible to create a more accurate schedule and manage them proactively to reduce risk. The Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and the rich data they can provide are additionally set to play a growing role with how active intelligence can improve quality of work, site safety, and tracking progress onsite. There’s a lot that can be learned from the past, but the real benefit of active intelligence is in its ability to predict the future and make the decisions needed to change the course of a project before it’s too late. Karthik Venkatasubramanian, vice president of data and analytics at Oracle Construction and Engineering.
SARA DEVITT AECOM IRELAND
Today’s digital world is driving global demand for more data storage space
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escribed by some industry commentators as the ‘new oil’, data is expected to increase 10-fold worldwide between 2017 and 2025, with 75% of the global population interacting with data every day, according to International Data Corp. Driven by the growing use of mobile technologies and cloud computing by both businesses and consumers, this relatively ‘new’ global data industry is growing, and fast. To cope, more data storage space is needed. This has led to a boom in data centre construction, bringing about significant opportunities for further investment in this alternative but growing asset class — globally, data centre construction is set to expand by more than 8.24% to US$32.37bn between 2018-2025. In the Middle East alone, rapid digitisation of ‘smart cities’ is spurring the data centre market, which is expected to grow annually by 7% between 2018-2024. To keep up with demand for ‘white’ or data storage space, the data centre industry is under
Globally, data centre construction is set to expand by more than 8.24% to US$32.37bn between 2018-2025”
