Throughout 2019 and into the new year, the challenge of keeping construction costs contained has remained front and center for developers and general contractors.

According to Deloitte’s 2020 Construction and Engineering Industry Outlook, various cost-related factors will continue to bedevil the industry this year. These include long-standing issues, such as labor shortages, but also project complexity and supply-chain constraints. Building material prices are also still on the rise. How to blunt the impact of rising costs? One way is new technologies. In a business that is traditionally slow to adopt them, many developers and contractors are looking to PropTech to help manage costs.

Kwant.ai Chief Operating Officer Kelsey Poinsatte-Jones

Cost overruns and delays occur on most projects. Sometimes, with more than 40 contractors on a project, a lack of coordinated effort among tradesmen results in greater than 25% of total project loss.  PropTech platforms reduce the guesswork related to productivity loss and safety incidents by passively collecting real-time data in the field and using accurate information to predict safety and cost delays.  For example, real-time data collected from the field using the emerging Internet of Things — wearables, sensors, mobile phones — and robot such as lidar scanners and drones, can collect accurate information about materials installed, quality of work, safety incidents, environmental data and man-hours.  Such accuracy and speed of data collection wasn’t possible even a few years ago, when a superintendent would be walking around a job site with a notebook on a monthly walk-through. This data are now powering artificial intelligence algorithms, together with 3D Building Information Models implemented using Lean Principles, to make better decisions.  New York-based Kwant.ai is a construction analytics platform using Internet of Things and AI.

Keep reading on BISNOW.com

Find more news here

Find events calendar here

Find media kit here