Page 60 - Green Builder Magazine May-June 2021

Staying put. Changing
work and living styles,
with more people staying
home, are leading to
remodels of existing
houses and rethinking of
how to build new ones.
CREDIT: RIDOFRANZ/ISTOCK

in order to create more efficiencies and effectiveness in some very
specific niche areas. I’ll include more information on this topic
in subsequent Green Builder articles this year.
Secondly, I say that AI will soon have far-reaching implications
because it will come to us rather seamlessly on smartphones and
in much of the software that we already use, from spreadsheets
to remote site viewing.
The topic of AI in the AEC has increasingly been included in
recent industry conferences. I’m also seeing the beginning of
major industry-wide initiatives in the AEC to connect the separate
silos of software used across the AEC. The goal is to make it easier
for the end-to-end transmission and use of data (both visual and
text). Increases in efficiency will benefit those incorporating these
advances, as they come along.
I am interested in AI that “assists us” in doing our jobs better
and more efficiently. The AEC will become more of an AI-assisted
industry, as many other industries have in recent decades. We will
each experience increases in the efficiency of our own businesses.
By no means has AI made inroads in every aspect of the AEC. But
we’re beginning to see some significant “digital transformations”
that incorporate AI, and which promise to increase the needed
improvements and advances in efficiency and effectiveness
throughout the AEC and the green building industry. GB

Terry Beaubois, M.Arch, is CEO of BKS: Building Knowledge Systems in Instant messenger. Innovations such as drones are being used to acquire
Palo Alto, California. He can be reached at tbeaubois@gmail.com. project data and send information to clients. CREDIT: ANDY DEAN PHOTOGRAPHY/SHUTTERSTOCK

58 GREEN BUILDER May/June 2021 www.greenbuildermedia.com/internet-of-things-smart-cities