Buildots Launches Intelligence Lab, an AI-Powered Project Data Research Hub
As some vendors hold construction data close to their vests, Builtdots builds a hub for sharing project data
Buildots' helmet-mounted cameras capture every action on a jobsite, while its AI function analyzes deliveries, placements of work and other project components to determine potential of schedule hiccups.
Photo courtesy of Eyal Toueg for Buildots
Buildots released June 25 the Buildots Intelligence Lab, an artificial intelligence-powered research hub with project data ranging from metrics to scheduling scenarios.
Buildots vice president of industry transformation, Amir Berman, says the Lab’s mission is to provide construction with freely available data to help individual contractors and the entire industry achieve operational excellence and support decision-making with objective, real-world benchmarks.
"We are serving the industry, and we see ourselves as part of it," he says. "Honestly, construction is one of the largest industries that, at the same time, is one of the last one to actually run truly on data. We have gut feelings based on intuition and experience, but at the same time we do have decades old benchmarks and statistics, and what we noticed, Buildots as a company, is that we're serving construction intelligence and we're data first and we simply have better access to data."
Buildots' main product uses head-mounted cameras to record site conditions and offers insights through artificial intelligence-driven analysis of reality capture imagery. Berman says the AI-backed construction management platform anonymizes all of the project data that goes into the lab and all predictions and recommendations that come from it maintain user privacy. Users will need to opt in to the Lab before Buildots adds their anonymized information to its database.
Questions such as "how much MEP [mechanical, electrical, plumbing] work can realistically be delivered in a week?" and "how do you evaluate the productivity of your trades?" are answered in the lab by drawing on aggregated, anonymized data from global projects.
“The construction industry has always lacked a source of macro-level truth,” said Roy Danon, Buildots co-founder and CEO.
“We believe this is a core factor holding back performance and a key contributor to stagnating productivity," Danon added. "After all, organizations lack the data to answer even relatively ‘simple’ questions about output, trade productivity, scheduling, etc."
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The Lab's published findings are structured around three pillars: metrics, standardized metrics that replace subjective estimates with rigorous data; benchmarks, global comparisons categorized by sector, region, and trade; and Insights, ‘nuggets’ of information that reveal hidden patterns and early-warning indicators.
The Lab’s early research has already shown results: data center construction faces a massive 20-50% gap between planned weekly MEP output and what is actually delivered, revealing a major cause of delays. Another insight that might be a known metric is that the final 20% of an activity takes 27% of its duration.
The Lab will publish research regularly. Academics, analysts, media, and construction professionals are invited to submit hypotheses, share on-site observations, and request data-driven answers to specific questions.
By remaining neutral and freely sharing what the data shows, the Lab serves the entire industry, giving everyone a common, objective language for the first time.
