Building Design + Construction - October 2019

28 |BUILDING DESIGN+CONSTRUCTION | October 2019

term incident rates by 40%. The fi rm has also

used jobsite data to rewrite training manuals for

clearer communication with its workers.

ANALYTICS TOOLS PAVE THE WAY

Suffolk Construction is one of 17 AEC fi rms that

BD+C interviewed in late July and early August

about their practical applications of data. Those

conversations inevitably came around to the

question, “Why now?”

In its proposal for a presentation titled “Analyt-

ics for Operations: Putting Your Firm’s Data to

Work” that it would deliver at the recent AIA

conference, Leo A Daly noted that “virtually ev-

ery large design fi rm is sitting on a mountain of

practice data; 90% of it is placed on servers and

never looked at again.”

That’s no exaggeration, say other fi rms, and is

hardly a surprise when one of the biggest obstacles

for AEC fi rms continues to be fi le sharing among

project teams, according to recent Newforma re-

search based on 1,154 industry respondents.

What’s been changing over the past few years,

however, has been the proliferation in data analy-

sis technologies “that is getting people excited,”

says Zak Kostura, PE, Associate and Structural

Engineer with Arup in New York.

These analytical tools are helping Building

Teams and their clients spot problems and make

decisions earlier.

“It isn’t a tidal wave yet, but it’s building,” says

Jody Baldwin, Manager–Mid Atlantic division of En-

vise, a subsidiary of Southland Industries that pro-

vides open platform building management solutions.

Next up, Baldwin predicts, are better communication

systems and algorithms for machine learning.

Kelly Benedict, Lendlease’s Senior Vice Presi-

dent of Innovation and Customer Focus–Ameri-

cas, thinks the fact that more AEC fi rms are

putting their data to work is “recognition that if

we don’t do this, someone else will, and maybe

someone outside of the business.”

‘Too many fi rms have been collecting data as a box-checking exercise.

But we’re not just using data for the sake of using data.’ — JIT KEE CHIN,SUFFOLK CONSTRUCTION

AEC TECH^ |

CaptionCaption

KEY

GENSLE
R

‘

This graphic is a fl oor plan of

Gensler’s New York offi ce,

which is studying the use of

Internet-connected sensors

to track things like occupan-

cy, temperature, and energy

consumption in the space.