Latest Research: How AI Can Revolutionise Construction Information Management

Understanding Construction Information: What is it and Why does it Matter?

Construction information encompasses a broad spectrum of data relevant to a construction project, ranging from design drawings and contracts to progress reports and safety records. Essentially, comprehensive documentation for every facet of a project’s journey.

The significance of well-defined and accessible construction information cannot be overstated, as it:

• Facilitates Collaboration: By providing a centralised platform for sharing information, construction data promotes seamless collaboration among project stakeholders. This ensures effective communication, coordination, and decision-making, thereby minimising errors and delays.
• Boosts Efficiency: Access to accurate and up-to-date construction information empowers efficient project planning, resource allocation, and scheduling. It reduces the need for rework and enhances productivity across the project lifecycle.
• Manages Compliance and Risk: Construction information is instrumental in ensuring adherence to regulatory standards and industry protocols. It aids in identifying and mitigating risks proactively, fostering a safer working environment.
• Encourages Knowledge Management: Serving as a valuable knowedge store of lessons learned and best practices, construction information facilitates continuous improvement. By leveraging insights from past projects, organisations can make informed decisions and enhance future endeavours.

The Transformative Potential of AI in Construction

Now that we grasp the importance of construction information, let’s explore how integrating AI with this wealth of data can revolutionise the construction landscape.

The advent of AI presents boundless opportunities to reshape the construction sector. AI can be applied in various areas, including:

• Rapid Design Iterations: AI algorithms can swiftly generate concept images and multiple floor plans, optimising space layout efficiency.
• Construction Progress Monitoring: AI can analyse videos and images to track project progress, optimise schedules, and detect defects, even in hard-to-reach areas using drone footage.
• Streamlining Information Access: AI simplifies the process of accessing construction information by directly providing answers to queries. This democratizes information, reduces errors, and saves time and money.

AI has the ability here and now to completely change how we think about and use all of our construction project information.

Our current systems often require all stakeholders on a project to be trained to understand complex document metadata. Whenever we rely on someone to apply detailed information to correctly ‘file’ a document, we add in costs (someone has to do this) and the likelihood of errors (a document can be misclassified; we can, of course, add in additional costs where someone also checks the data).

Rather than utilising complex filing systems that increasingly rely of human inputs to provide the correct information about a document we have the option of being able to access all available information in a much more intuitive way.

When we seek out information, we are nearly always trying to answer questions:

• What is the floor finish in the entrance lobby? Where are the fire doors on the ground floor?
• What is the maximum and minimum temperature of the hot water in the public accessible toilets?

If we think about the steps required to answer a simple question such as ‘What is the floor finish in the entrance lobby?’

1. We would have to first access drawings: To do this we would need to know who is responsible for specifying the floor finish and on which drawing that information is located.
2. When the correct drawing is located, it is very likely that the answer will not be on the drawing. Instead, it will provide us with a specification reference where we can locate the manufacturer and the product details.
3. And finally, we may also need to look at the finishes schedule for the colour.

AI can eliminate all the steps after the question and just provide the answer. It can do this for every question. Providing everyone with the answers they need, making information more fair and open, minimising mistakes and enhancing efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Operance’s Innovative Approach to Enhancing Construction Information with AI

At Operance, we’ve harnessed the power of AI to develop a cutting-edge construction information management solution: Goldenai. Our automated workflow seamlessly integrates AI capabilities to provide accurate responses to project-related queries.

Here’s a brief overview of our process:

1. Data Extraction: Operance analyses and extracts information from every item added to the platform, including scanned documents using OCR technology*.
2. Document Embeddings: We utilise AI to create associations between words within documents, which are stored as multi-dimensional vectors in our database.
3. Question Submission: Users can submit queries related to their projects.
4. Question Embeddings: AI analyses and converts the language within the question into multi-dimensional vectors.
5. Document Retrieval: The system retrieves documents closely matching the query.
6. LLM Analysis: The question and relevant documents are presented to our AI model for analysis.
7. AI Response: Leveraging its vast knowledge base, combined with the relevant project information the AI model generates accurate responses to user queries.

Operance Goldenai ensures that accessing relevant construction information, understanding its interconnections, and drawing actionable insights are no longer daunting tasks. With our innovative solution, you’ll never again struggle to find the information you need to make informed decisions in your construction projects.