Dive Brief:
- In jobsite trailers across the country, Suffolk Construction builders may have a new voice at the table: an artificial intelligence engineer, per a new directive from the company.
- The initiative, dubbed “Jobsite of the Future,” will embed AI engineers at Suffolk construction sites around the country to help solve pain points in the building process, the contractor announced last week.
- As part of the initiative, AI engineers will sit in on project meetings and iterate on solutions in three core areas — design, schedule and process — per the June 9 announcement. John Fish, Suffolk’s CEO, cited cost increases and growing labor woes as part of the drive to create this program.
Dive Insight:
Jobsite of the Future builds on Suffolk’s ongoing investment in data and general technology, according to the firm. Over a decade ago, the company invested more than $100 million in data, technology infrastructure and innovation capabilities.
“We believe Jobsite of the Future and our use of artificial intelligence and data will fundamentally change that trajectory and redefine how America builds for generations to come,” Fish said in the news release.
According to Suffolk, the program has so far yielded AI-assisted design review tools that spot drawing conflicts and coordination gaps before construction starts, as well as AI-powered procurement and delivery tracking systems that help teams see into supply chain risks and lead times, among other improvements.
Suffolk also cited a multibillion-dollar project in the Midwest, where the Jobsite of the Future initiative helped the contractor build and pilot an AI-powered requisition process for monthly payment applications. The system aims to help reduce delays caused by missing documentation, approval bottlenecks and repetitive review comments.
Overall, the company’s investment in data has helped the builder create a groundswell of opportunities in its business. Its clean data lake, or collection of data, contains approximately 293 terabytes of structured construction data; the equivalent of roughly 75 billion pages of PDFs.
“Jobsite of the Future connects data, technology and operational expertise so our project teams can make smarter decisions, reduce risk and deliver projects with greater predictability,” said Jit Kee Chin, chief technology officer at Suffolk, in the announcement.
Indeed, the firm has established a reputation for being innovation- and tech-focused. The company’s industry-famous tech accelerator, BOOST, closed out its sixth cohort of member startups in December. The company has also aimed to put new tech solutions, both from outside firms such as Arrowsight and in-house developers for steel tracking, out into the field.
The push also coincides with other construction firms bringing these development initiatives in-house. New York City-based Turner Construction, for example, has questioned the value of hiring companies to build solutions for the firm, when the contractor could build the solutions on its own.
