Good evening everyone myself biji sara binu.

Im from manipal academy of higher education dubai

and today im here to present on my research topic the transformative impact of AI in the
construction industry. These are the topics we are expecting to cover tonight but im not gonna
waste much time here so lets move on straight to my presentation.

Ai or artificial intelligence is a term that is gain a lot of recognition at current time. Tools like chatgpt,
jenni.ai, copilot etc has become a part of our day to day lives. The no of such websites are also
increasing at a very fast pace. I even came across a website called there is an ai for that which is a
search engine where u simply had to type down the task you want to do and it will give u the list of ai
tools that can do that task for you. Also note that AI is not just limited to that it has a wide range of
application in industrial level. It is widely being used in banking, healthcare, online shopping,
agriculture and all what you see here. And out of this the construction industry is not an exception.
AI has a wide range of application within the construction sector and today we will look into some
areas where ai can create a revolution.

To start with we have the risk and safety sector. Using ai technologies like computer vision and
predictive analysis ai can help to identify hazards, ensure safety compliances are followed, facilitate
instant alerts reduce human factor at site. Suffolk Construction had diploid an ai system into their
firm that was able to detect more issues and prevent damages even those that were missed out
during a manual inspection.

Another application of ai includes in the planning and scheduling system. The entire profitability of
the project depends upond how efficiently you optimize your workflow, schedules and resources. Ai
analysing a large amount of data on stock, purchasing, transportation and demand so that it can
provide an optimized output. Kajima Group, a leading Japanese construction company had employed
an AI-based project planning and scheduling software for their UK’s High Speed rail project. It helps
contractors to efficiently plan, bid and build large-scale infrastructure and commercial projects.

Site monitoring and inspection can employ drones and automated machines for inspections and
material testing saving time, allows remote access, ensures safety and contributes towards overall
productivity of the process. Technoloies like BIM, Vr and AR helps to identify clashes and improve
user experience reducing wastes and increasing profitability.

Another application of ai can be found in design and render processes. We know how much hours it
take to complete a drawing or bring a design from your head to a paper. But now with ai these hours
has been brough down to seconds. As u can see in this images I uploaded an emplty room and asked
to furnish it in an minimalistic design it did it for me. The I simple scrumbled a paper and asked to
convert it into a museum it did it for me. One of my childhood dream to build a mall in the shape of a
camel came to a reality just from a simple sketch I drew of it. Imagine how much time and cost saving
these technologies can bring in for architects and inderior designers.

This is the list of benefits we can gain from the emergence of AI. But does that mean that ai is all set
to go?

Well the answer is a no. There are several barriers to emergence of ai.

Now can u identify these people. Even if you don’t its fine because neither can i. All these images are
ai generated and look at its precision and accuracy. Technologies like deep fake and generative ai had
made such manipulations so simple that anyone can do it. You might be doing a video call with out
boss and you couldn’t even guess if its and ai who is on the other end. That brings us to the next
barrier to ai data security and lack of accountability. Ai doesn’t promise any data confidentiality and
is prone to hacking and cyber threats. Also the results can be variable and wrong again questioning
the accountability of ai.

Next barriers include the high upfront cost. Ai is very costly, and it also have operational costs like
security and maintenance, operators charges, etc. Also is you notice each of your prompts are a new
data and you need large servers to store this data nd large servers consumes large electricity and use
of large electricity results in higher cost and higher carbon emission.

Another barrier to ai is the changing site condition. Ai trives well is a controlled and constant
environment. But construction industry is very dynamic and most often we work in areas with low
connectivity or no electricity in such cases it is very difficult for machines to function.

Next we have the major factor to the ai which is the human resistance. We are all frightened with
one sigle question of will ai replace your job? Inorder to answer that let me give u 2 case situations.
The consultancy were im working in we use a software called Holobuilder. It’s a progress update
software were engineers have to go to different locations and capture images of the site. Then need
to repeat it on a weekly basis to see the progress at site. This seems like an easy task if the engineers
were just assigned to capture the photos. But with their actual duties like inspections, drawing
reviews, etc this is an overburden. But just imagine instead of a person going around if it was a drone
doing this. Now the engineers can focus on their work and the drone will do all the repetive and
boring tasks.

Lets take another scenario we have several structural analysis softwares like safe, etabs, stadpro etc
and if I train a high schooler to on where to input the data and how to run the analysis he will be able
to do it. However do you think any company will appoint a high scholler as a structural engineers not
matter how much cost saving it can bring. Well the answer is a no because if something go wrong the
highscholler wont be able to identify the error because he doesn’t know what he is doing. Similar ai
lack awareness of context. It can give precise outcomes based on the data it have but any deviation
from the norm can give wrong outputs.

So in this case do u think ai took away the job of experts or do you think it took away the
unnecessary burden from them to make their work more efficient. We all can agree it sthe second
case. Let also look into this table these are some of the new jobs that comes with the emergence of
ai. And if you carefully look into it most of the jobs arealready in existence but has ai integrated with
it. Example. Ai integrated construction mager, ai integrated estimator, ai integrated, designer, etc.
and several other new jobs are also brought it to the industry. From this we can conclude that ai will
not replace your job but instead people who use ai will replace your job. Ai can scale down the no of
people required for a task and if you are not flexible and doesn’t comply with the new demands of
the industry you will be replace. Therefore in this changing era we need to devolpe qualities that are
solely meant of humans and cannot be replicated by ai. Some of them include good communication,
problem solving, creativity and other shown here.

In conclusion ai does have a lot of limitations so does humans. So there is no point of debating which
one is better than the other. We need to under stan the symbiotic relationship between both. While
the machine does the machines job we need to embrace our human qualities. The construction
industry is generally slow to adoption of anything new but this cant promise that ai could never come
into the industry. Therefore we need to keep ourselves open to learning and flexible in this modern
era instead of resisting the change.