On the Horizon
So what impact will these new technologies ultimately have on the construction industry, and what’s next in the years ahead? By all measures, automation will play an increasingly more prominent role, and the successful organizations will be the ones that leverage these new tools to realize greater efficiencies in their building projects.
“The growth of construction-focused, Internet-connected systems will continue to shape the way industry stakeholders approach projects, manage operations and leverage historical data on future projects,” Hollingsworth notes. “The proliferation of useful, previously unavailable data from a variety of sources, including workers, machines, tools, materials, and the environment, will be aggregated, monitored, and analyzed for real-time, actionable insights. As job-site technology matures, those companies that embrace it will see increasing ROI and those companies that don’t will lose their competitive edge.”
“There is so much to look forward to in the construction industry,” Millin says. He is most excited about the application of real-time drone data and foresees a future in which drones will be deployed on every job site, operating autonomously on schedules to collect aerial data in real-time that will significantly improve safety, lower costs, and help power business and construction design decisions on a daily basis.
While such visions of flying robots may seem more reminiscent of “The Matrix” than some might be comfortable with, Tocci says it’s not terribly important to be concerned with where technology is headed in the future because it’s out of our control.
“What you and I can control is how we’re going to engage with where that technology is going to take us,” he says. “Are we going to choose to be active participants and steering into the challenges and the risks and the missteps that the construction industry has typically taken? Or are we simply going to try to ride our bicycle faster when—let’s face it—we need to get on an airplane?”
New Technologies to Consider
Interested in the latest high-tech construction tools for building projects? Here are a few cutting-edge products the experts mentioned during interviews for this article:
BIM 360 Glue
Autodesk BIM 360 Glue is a cloud-based BIM management and collaboration solution that connects the entire project team and helps streamline BIM project workflows. With virtually anywhere, anytime access to the most recent project models and data and support for over 50 different 3-D model and data formats, BIM 360 Glue extends BIM to key stakeholders with “one-click” web and mobile access and empowers multidisciplinary teams to more quickly and effectively identify and resolve coordination issues. BIM 360 Glue enables builders, architects, engineers and owners across the globe to collaborate in real-time throughout the project life cycle.
FARO Focus Laser Scanner
FARO’s latest ultra-portable FocusS Laser Scanner series enable to capture fast, straightforward and accurate measurements of complex objects and buildings. The intuitive touchscreen of the FocusS models has been increased in size and clarity to deliver a better user experience. A built-in 8 megapixel, HDR camera captures detailed imagery while providing a natural color overlay to the scan data in extreme lighting conditions.
Leica BLK360 Laser Scanner
The Leica BLK360 captures full-color panoramic images overlaid on a high-accuracy point cloud. Using the ReCap Pro mobile app, the BLK360 streams image and point cloud data to iPad. The app filters and registers scan data in real time. After capture, ReCap Pro enables point-cloud data transfer to a number of CAD, BIM, VR and AR applications. The integration of BLK360 and Autodesk software dramatically streamlines the reality capture process thereby opening this technology to non-surveying individuals.
Matterport Pro 2 3D Camera
The Matterport Pro2 3D Camera captures 2-D photography and 3-D data from job sites and automatically stitches them into a complete, immersive 3-D model of a real-world job site that you can share, annotate, and export point clouds to Autodesk ReCap or Revit. The tool is quicker than 3-D laser scanning and more complete than handheld 3-D scanners.
Modelo VR
Present CAD and BIM models and designs in Virtual Reality (VR) with Modelo. Create immersive, digital experiences in the web and tour 3-D models on any mobile device. Modelo is compatible with the most common file formats already in use, including Rhino, SketchUp, Revit, Vectorwork and 3ds Max—meaning it enhances visualization and presentation abilities.
WebGL Software
WebGL is a cross-platform, royalty-free web standard for a low-level 3-D graphics API based on OpenGL ES, exposed to ECMAScript via the HTML5 Canvas element. WebGL brings plugin-free 3-D to the web, implemented right into the browser.
Developers familiar with OpenGL ES 2.0 will recognize WebGL as a Shader-based API using GLSL with constructs that are semantically similar to those of the underlying OpenGL ES API.
Photos: Drone Deploy