SUNNY ISLES BEACH, Fla. — A former U.S. Congressman in Florida’s construction industry believes that tools powered by artificial intelligence have the power to help solve the country’s affordable housing crisis.
On Wednesday, Patrick Murphy visited the beachfront site of the future Bentley Residences Miami, a tower in Sunny Isles Beach, to show how the technology was used to innovate construction processes.
Coastal Construction, the contractor working on the luxury residential project at 18325 Collins Ave., reported saving about $1 million during the first year of incorporating AI-powered tools.
“We have to do a better job as an industry to adopt more technology, and bring a better product at a lower price to the customers in the end,” said Murphy, Coastal Construction’s chief investment officer.
Murphy, who served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, believes that the adoption of AI tools in construction can make a difference, as housing demand continues to outpace supply.
Murphy said he grew up helping his grandfather do estimates with printed plans and a scale ruler. Everything that goes into a building has been manually counted.
“So traditionally, estimators are taking weeks if not months to do estimates on a job like this. Where they are historically using rulers or rollers to quantify all of the materials,” Murphy said. “Now today, we have AI that’s automating that quantification.”
Murphy said the efficiency of AI-powered tools has the potential to accelerate residential development and increase supply.
“Today, you upload the plans, you click a button, and you get those results instantly, with more accuracy than a human,” said Murphy, also the founder of Togal.AI, a Miami-based software company that aims to help builders.
To increase efficiency at the Bentley site, the new tech quickly provides information about blueprints through a ChatGPT-powered feature.
“A building like this, going through those plans, it’s hundreds of pages, all sorts of notes and details, things get missed on accident, but the AI can go down to the pixel level, and be extremely accurate,” Murphy said.
AI can be used to analyze vast amounts of project information, process visual data from drones, for cost optimization, and to automate scheduling. The technology is also being incorporated into construction equipment.
Also on Wednesday, Caterpillar announced a partnership with tech company Nvidia to increase AI automation.
The two are working on an AI system that is part of a mid-size Cat 306 CR Mini Excavator, used for digging and lifting jobs, that was on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
“Our customers don’t live in front of a laptop day in and day out; they live in the dirt,” Brandon Hootman, vice president of data and AI at Caterpillar, told TechCrunch. “The ability to get the insights and take the action that they need while they’re doing the work is very important to them.”
Doosan Bobcat also presented prototypes of smarter machines at CES. The list included an AI-enabled Jobsite Companion, a Service.AI platform, and a Collision Warning and Avoidance System.
Related links on the web
- American Institute of Constructors on ethical concerns: “Construction companies must consider how to gather, store, and analyze data without breaching privacy laws or exposing sensitive information from owners, subcontractors, and other third parties.”
- Construction Management Association of America on risks: “If the information in digital tools and apps is not brought together in a cohesive way, it increases financial, operational and safety risks.”
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