Reading Isn’t Deciding
To anyone on a project today, it’s pretty clear construction doesn't have an information problem. In fact, there’s never been more drawings, more specs or more data. But what we do have is a decision problem, and every additional byte is making it worse.
So how do we take this overwhelming amount of information and turn it into something people can actually act on? Well right now, it certainly seems to be the most popular promise of utilizing AI.
But let’s be clear, that machine should not get the final word.
Garbage In, Sugar Cookies Out
The six most expensive words in business are “we’ve always done it that way.” But for construction, that’s just a Tuesday. And all too often it’s our go-to response for shutting down any conversation about change before it starts.
For someone like Orion, who comes to construction from the outside with genuine curiosity and a unique perspective on data, that answer just doesn’t cut it. Not when we have pigsties of data wrought with hidden variables.
You see, despite the fact construction has survived centuries behind the curve of tech adoption, change is coming.
And it’s coming whether we like it or not.
The Wrong Battle
We keep asking the wrong question about AI in construction, who wins and who gets replaced.
And funny enough, it seems we’re all building our AI adoption strategies around that specific belief. However, when you talk to Girish Bhatia, founder of ConstructMind.AI, he will tell you that this is the wrong belief.
You see, the thing is, it was never really about us versus them to begin with.
The AI Mirror
For twenty years, your data has been a mess. You know it. I know it. Every PM who's ever looked for the final budget knows it.
But it never really mattered. Because humans were doing the interpretation, making the mess tolerable and ultimately invisible. Construction quite literally runs on tribal knowledge layered over top of broken systems.
But then AI showed up and it asked to read the data. All of a sudden, the emperor has no clothes.
AI Isn’t a Miracle, But It Will Change Construction
A few weeks ago, I threw a rock at all the AI talk in construction. Saying what a lot of folks were thinking, it seemed to hit a nerve.
The fact is, it hit a nerve because it’s true. We’re throwing around the phrase “artificial intelligence” like it’s capable of doing magic while we still can’t get drawings that don’t contradict themselves.
So, let’s slow down, breathe and figure out what AI actually is, and what it isn’t so that we choose our future wisely. At least, before we just throw a chat-bot at a laborer because it sounds smart.
The Data Wars: How We Screwed Up Construction’s Future (and How to Fix It)
I’ll be super honest with you, for a long time I helped build this siloed data monster. While the idea was noble (one platform, one place, one set of data), what I didn’t realize is that we were really just building a single source of control.
And now, almost 15 years later, we’ve institutionalized a massive data imbalance.
It’s become a detriment to every phase of construction, negatively impacting owners and contractors alike. So, how do we fix it?
