Industry Seeks the Best in Tech at Annual ENR Conference

Demonstrations included the wireless, IoT-connected jobsite lighting system from MFlux, developed by Michael Filippakis.

*PHOTO BY TOM SAWYER FOR ENR*

Industry technology professionals gathered in San Francisco June 3-5 to study the future of construction technology. ENR FutureTech attracted more than 700 attendees who came to shop for new technologies, gain insights to help make strategic decisions and learn how other firms are innovating and solving problems.

Jayanth

Interest and investment in construction technology has grown steadily in recent years, and professionals came to find out what innovations are worth their time. T.G. Jayanth, capital projects expert for McKinsey & Co., updated attendees on the database of research his firm has been building about construction technology.

When reporting at FutureTech in 2017 after a year of research on 1,000 companies, McKinsey identified three data clusters with the greatest activity—project execution, digital collaboration and back-office work. Further research in 2018 on 2,500 companies identified growing activity around artificial intelligence and advanced analytics.

“Our update for this year is not complete yet,” Jayanth said, but for “early results, one thing we are seeing that’s very encouraging now is that integration is happening.” He pointed to open APIs doing an “enormous favor to our industry,” with even completely separate technology systems now exchanging data. He also noted that a big chunk of the investment in construction technology is in acquisitions. “When I’m an Autodesk acquiring PlanGrid, or Bentley buying Synchro, one of the first things that they’re trying to do is to integrate their solutions. That’s good for all of us,” Jayanth said.

Sharing data for the greater benefit of the collective industry was a theme at FutureTech, where presenters spoke of the benefits other market sectors have found in pooling their data to look for clues to better performance.

In her keynote speech, Suffolk executive vice president and chief data officer Jit Kee Chin explained how predictive analytics—a statistical technique that mines data to make machine-learning-based predictions—will play a crucial role in worksite safety efforts in the next five years. Predictive analytics can also help organizations anticipate schedule problems due to unforeseen events, quality control issues, supply-chain pricing fluctuations and asset management, she said.

Chin noted there are limits to the power of predictive analytics because the tool recommends actions that address aggregate, rather than specific, risk gleaned from large amounts of data organized and assessed over months and years. In a follow-up panel with a group of companies volunteering their data to be analyzed by predictive analytics, Barton Malow vice president of systems Lindsey Rem saw great potential in the initiative.

“We can’t do it alone, and we believe that industry change, true transformation in the construction industry, is not going to happen by any one company, any one technology,” Rem said. Panelists say participating companies’ data is scrubbed for confidentiality—and the more companies that participate and reveal their worksite experiences, the better odds that the analysis will accelerate industry-wide advances in business practices and safety.

But it’s not all fun and sharing in the world of construction. Malicious hacking and ransomware are growing threats to the industry, and a panel of experts agreed that construction is lagging in cybersecurity best practices. “Construction doesn’t take [cybersecurity] as seriously as it should,” said Scott Takaoka, vice president at Aon Cyber Solutions. “Risks are changing—not just loss of data, but critical systems. Data can be taken down for a day, week or month … have your team ready before a breach.”

On the hands-on side of technology, a panel on “Blue-Collar BIM” drew some strong opinions on ownership of the model. Robert Kipp, general superintendent with Satterfield & Pontikes Construction, emphasized the need to get builders on the construction site involved in BIM. “The way to save money is to figure things out in the field,” he said. “Most modelers are not builders.”

Many attendees expressed concern about the skilled labor shortage, and a market update from Dodge Data & Analytics put things into context. Economic tailwinds remain strong for the construction market, with 39% of contractors surveyed saying their backlog has increased and 60% planning to hire more workers in the next six months, said Steve Jones, Dodge’s senior director of industry insights research. However, labor shortages—especially in the concrete and electrical trades—are causing contractors to pile more work on existing employees. “This is not a scalable solution,” Jones told the crowd.

Additionally, rising materials prices, trade tensions and increasing trade deficits will likely lead to a cyclical downturn in the construction market later in 2020 and into 2021, Dodge projects. But this dip isn’t “going to be long, or deep,” barring any surprises, Jones adds.

Judging by the crowd’s reaction, many attendees came looking for solid solutions to systemic problems, rather than quick tech fixes. An online poll run through the FutureTech app during the event found attendees most concerned about the impact of modularization and improving decision-making in preconstruction, while increased use of robots and automation are seen primarily as a way to close the skilled labor gap and bring costs down.

By Jeff Rubenstone, Erica Berardi, Jan Tuchman, Aileen Cho and Scott Blair

Jeff Rubenstone is Deputy Editor for News and Technology at the Engineering News-Record. As news director of ENR he oversees the publication's news coverage, and also covers emerging technologies and innovations in the construction space. With well over a decade of experience reporting on the industry, Jeff has a broad background in engineering and construction journalism. He is based in New York City.

Erica Berardi is the former editor ENR California and ENR Northwest.

After serving as editor-in-chief for 20 years, Jan Tuchman now is executive editor, leading content development for Engineering News-Record's wide-ranging series of live and virtual events. These include the Groundbreaking Women in Construction, the Emerging Leaders Forum, FutureTech and infrastructure forums in the New York/New Jersey region and Los Angeles. Tuchman is the 2023-24 chair of the American Society of Civil Engineers Industry Leaders Council, she is a member of the Columbia University Center for Infrastructure, Facilities and Public Spaces, and she is active in The Moles, a heavy construction leadership organization. Her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism are from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Industry honors include the Ted C. Kennedy Award from the National Academy of Construction and the service and supply award from the Beavers. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and enjoys singing in the Brooklyn Community Chorus.

Aileen Cho, ENR's senior transportation editor, is a native of Los Angeles and recovering New Yorker. She studied English and theater at Occidental College, where a reporter teaching the one existing journalism course encouraged her to apply for the LA Times Minority Editing Training Program. Her journalism training led to her first stories about transportation, working as a cub reporter with the Greenwich Time. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. Many of her experiences with engineers and contractors have inspired material for her alternative theater productions way, way off Broadway. For ENR, Aileen has traveled the world, clambering over bridges in China, touring an airport in Abu Dhabi and descending into dark subway tunnels in New York City. She is a regular at transportation conferences, where she finds that airport and mass transit engineers really know how to have fun. Aileen is always eager to hop on another flight because there are so many interesting projects and people, and she gets tired of throwing her cats off her computer in her home office in Long Beach, California. She is a very conflicted Mets/Dodgers fan.

Blair leads day-to-day operations of the ENR editorial team to ensure brand quality and further best practices. He spearheads ENR's various competitions, including Best Projects and the Award of Excellence, and organizes editorial content at events including the Top Young Professionals conference. A Jesse H. Neal, Construction Media Alliance and AZBEES-award-winning writer and videographer, Blair frequently contributes to ENR’s burgeoning video channel with project tour videos and interviews with industry leaders. He is also a frequent speaker and moderator on topics such as diversity and inclusion, design and jobsite technology, construction means and methods and marketing.

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60% of workers are exposed to heights greater than 5 ft daily, and workers' compensation from injury is more than $7B - it's time for construction leaders to take measures to reduce risk and create a safer work environment. We'll explore how technology can improve construction site safety and help prevent accidents before they happen.