Incremental Innovation in Construction

 The example of concrete

 

Construction of the built environment has an interlocking set of economic, political, legal, and social barriers that make innovating difficult. As long as current technology meets the expectations of clients and users for prices and dominant products, there will be significant market imperfections such as network economies, lumpiness, split incentives, requirements for collective action, and transaction costs that inhibit diffusion of more efficient, advanced technologies. There is also an institutional structure that imposes regulatory hurdles or other policy disadvantages, favours existing technology or discourages new entrants, and a financing system based around incumbents. Educational curricula, career paths, and professional standards use existing technology. And because organizations, people and technical standards are embedded within a production system, the tendency is for technologies to develop along defined trajectories unless or until deflected by a powerful external force.

 

Construction of the built environment is a project-based system of production with complex professional, organizational, contractual and working relationships, and is geographically distributed. Moreover, the context is one of wider networks containing many small and medium size firms with a range of organizational and institutional relationships, where external contracting is common. All these factors are seen as inhibiting, although not preventing, innovation and diffusion of new technology. Within such a system incremental innovation improves industry products and processes without affecting the structure of the system. 

 

In construction, many technical advances have come from materials suppliers or component, plant and equipment manufacturers, who have been responsible for the introduction of new products and equipment, such as excavators, cranes, facades and lifts, using incremental innovation directed at improving existing products and processes. Across the construction supply chain firms don’t create new industrial networks to develop or exploit new technologies such as lifts and elevators, glass facades, and interior wall systems, instead these firms become part of the existing network, which is the modern construction production system. As a well-developed industrial system many of its sub-markets are expected to be concentrated and oligopolistic, with a few large, well-established firms exactly like those economic historian Joseph Schumpeter suggested would be most likely to engage in R&D, invention and innovation.

 

The process where inventions are developed, tested and extended, and finally put into production is one of incremental innovation. Firms refine specific parts of a production system, usually in response to something changing elsewhere in the system as production and distribution methods evolve over time, step by step. Although this form of innovation is incremental, it should not be dismissed as unimportant. Examples are the increase since 1950 of mining truck loads from 4 to 400 tonnes and the increase in lifting capacity of tower cranes to over 1,000 tonnes. Another example is the development of computer-aided design (CAD) software, which went on for two decades before Autodesk was started in 1982, one year after the first IBM PC. Over the decades Building information models (BIM) have advanced through 2D and 3D versions to the 4D (schedule) and 5D (cost) iterations today. Now software linked to cameras on helmets or drones can provide real time augmented reality (AR) images from a building site linked to the BIM model of the project.

 

Building and construction products and processes are the outcome of a long development path. Many of the industry’s global leaders are well-established, Bechtel for example is over 100 years old, and other firms like Hochtief, Skanska, and AECOM can trace their origin stories back over a similar period. Shimizu is over 200 years old. Most of today’s manufacturers also have their roots in nineteenth century firms. It’s a remarkable fact that construction today is a production system that has been developing for more than 150 years, since the arrival of steam, steel and concrete, using incremental innovation to gradually improve products and processes. 

 

In the industry life cycle, after emergence and the initial growth stage, technology stabilises around standardised products and processes. In many cases industries are oligopolistic, with a few specialized firms in market niches or layers in the supply chain. Consolidation leads to industry concentration with large firms dominating their markets, the car industry is an example. Construction materials like cement, concrete and glass, and components like building management systems, interior walls, plumbing fixtures, lifts and elevators are all oligopolistic industries in an established supply chain.[i]

 

 

Incremental Innovation: The example of concrete 

 

The development of concrete is an example of how effective incremental innovation in construction can be. By the 1880s the increasingly widespread use of concrete had changed its status from hobby to a modern industry, as scientific investigation into its material properties revealed its shear and compressive characteristics. With the development of reinforced concrete there was change in architectural concepts of structures and approaches to building with concrete. The industrial standards of concrete technology influenced ways of thinking based on building systems and standardized building elements. These became identified with what was known as the Hennebique System, a simple to use system of building with reinforced concrete columns and beams patented in 1892. By 1905 Hennebique’s system had spread across Europe and elsewhere and his company employed 380 people in 50 offices with 10,000 workers onsite.[ii]

 

Concrete then set the agenda for the development of construction as a technological system over the next hundred years driven by the modernist movement in architecture, as it explored the possibilities of these material for increasing the height and scale of buildings, and modern construction materials and methods.[iii] For over one hundred years, since Hennebique, there has been ongoing refinement and development of the world’s most widely used construction material, as shown in Table 1.

 

Concrete shows how incremental innovation in materials played a significant role in the reorganization of site production methods as mixers, pumps and chemicals were refined and developed in a long process of interconnected innovations. One of the characteristics of a successful technology are these spillover effects, with advances in one industry leading to complimentary developments in related industries. 

Table 1. Incremental innovation in concrete since 1800

Source: Jahren, P. 2011. Concrete: History and Accounts, Trondheim: Tapir Academic Press.

Innovation is continuing today with 3D concrete printing (3DCP). Research into 3DCP has focused on developing the equipment needed and the materials used, and by 2019[iv] over a dozen experimental prototypes had been built. By 2022 the commercialisation of 3DCP was underway, with two types of systems available. One using a robotic arm to move the print head over a small area, intended to produce structural elements and precast components, the other a gantry system for printing large components, walls and structures. 3DCP combines BIM models, new concrete mixtures and chemicals, and new printing machines. Again, a combination of new materials and new machinery is required for this technology to work.

 

In 2022 the Additive Manufacturing Marketplace had 34 concrete printing machines listed, ranging from desktop printers to large track mounted gantry systems that can print three or four story buildings. Companies making these machines are mainly from the US and Europe, and Table 2 also has details on the type and size of a selection of machines. There are also several companies offering 3DCP as a service at an hourly or daily rate.[v]

 

Concrete printing is only one part of the development of additive manufacturing. In mid-2022 the Additive Manufacturing Marketplace listed 2,372 different 3D printing machines from 1,254 brands. The number of printers and materials used were: 364 metal; 355 photopolymers; 74 ceramic; 61 organic; 34 concrete; 24 clay; 20 silicone; 19 wax; and 19 continuous fibres. Many of these printers could be used to produce fixtures and fittings for buildings. Producing components onsite from bags of mixture avoids the cost of handling and transport, and for large items avoids the load limits on roads and trucks. There are also printing services and additive manufacturing marketplaces being set up. These link designers to producers with the materials science, specialised equipment and print farms capable of large production runs and manufacture on demand. Examples are Dassault Systems 3DExperience, Craft Cloud, Xometry, Shapeways, 3D Metalforge, Stratasys and Materialise.

Table 2. Some companies making 3D concrete printers

Source: Additive Manufacturing Marketplace, 2022. 

 

 

Conclusion

 

Innovating in a complex, long established industrial sector like construction of the built environment can be difficult. The institutional architecture can impose regulatory hurdles or other policy disadvantages on new technologies, and government expenditures often support existing technology. Lenders are risk averse. There are subsidies and price structures that favour incumbents and ignore externalities like the environment and public health. Educational curricula, career paths and professional standards are oriented to existing technology. The dominance of existing technologies is further reinforced by imperfections in the market for technology such as network economies, lumpiness, split incentives and the need for collective action.[vi]

 

The construction industry has become used to incremental innovation and a gradual rate of change since the modern industry emerged over the last few decades of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a great deal of resistance to change: ‘the older assembling industries like engineering were slow to change. Each firm took a proprietary pride in its own work’, and the trades were ‘fearful of technological unemployment and fought all changes in conditions of work.’[vii] Nevertheless, by the 1920s construction had reorganised the system of production around concrete, steel and glass. 

 

We are at a similar point today. The development of digital construction using combinations of BIM, offsite manufacturing, 3DCP, drones and robots, is an emerging new system of production, and the adoption and adaptation of these technologies will depend on incremental innovation continually improving their performance, which can only happen if they are put to use. There is a strong case here for public clients, who will be major beneficiaries of the improved efficiency of digital construction, to sponsor demonstration projects that use these technologies and measure the improvements in waste, carbon, defects, time and cost that are delivered. 

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[i] Syverson, C. 2019. Macroeconomics and Market Power: Context, Implications, and Open Questions, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33, 3, 23–43. Syverson, C. 2008. Markets: Ready-Mixed Concrete, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 22, 1, 217–233.

[ii] Pfammatter, U. 2008. Building the Future: Building Technology and Cultural History from the Industrial Revolution until Today. Munich: Prestel Verlag.

[iii] Cody, J. 2003. Exporting American Architecture 1870-2000, London: Routledge. 

Huxtable, A. L. 2008. On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change, New York: Walker Publishing Company.

[iv] Sanjayan, N. and Nematollahi, B. (eds.) 2019. 3D Concrete Printing Technology: Construction and building applications. Butterworth-Heinemann.

[v] https://www.aniwaa.com

[vi] Bloom, N., Van Reenen, J. and Williams, H. 2019. A toolkit of policies to promote innovation. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33(3), 163-84.

[vii] Hughes, T. P. 1989: 495. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870-1970, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Construction

 Technological Change and Constructing the Built Environment

I was once attacked by a colleague for, as he put it, ‘not considering the great mass of people employed in construction’. We were working for a government inquiry into collusive tendering and discussing recommendations to improve productivity and efficiency in the final report. At the time there were significant changes affecting the Australian industry that had far more impact than the legislative and regulatory reforms the inquiry led to. The industrial relations system was moving from a centralised award based one to a more decentralised system with enterprise bargaining and site agreements. International contractors were entering the market and the larger engineering and architecture practices consolidating. As the industry began to recover from a speculative office building bubble and the economy rebounded from a deep recession, construction employment increased and continued to grow for the next few decades. Construction as used here refers to all the firms and organizations involved in design, construction, repair and maintenance of the built environment.

 

Where these longer run trends were going was not obvious at the time. There have been significant changes in the range of activities and types of firms involved in construction of the built environment over the last few decades. Two trends underpinning those changes were the increasing use of multi-disciplinary project teams as the boundaries between professional disciplines became less distinct, and the inhouse versus outsourced decision about provision more common. Facilities management is an example, an activity that used to be done internally but is now often outsourced, sometimes but not always to construction contractors. Consultants bid for work as contractors, and contractors do consultancy and project management. Urban planning was once primarily associated with design, but is now linked to real estate and development. The process of structural change in industry occurs as technology, institutional and firm capabilities develop and change over decades.

Figure 1.

When considering the relationship between construction of the built environment and technological change the past is really the only guide available, so the starting point for this discussion is the first industrial revolution in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century when modern construction and its distinctive culture began to form, followed by the twentieth century’s attempts to industrialise construction. This history is important because, after more than 200 years of development, construction of the built environment happens today within an established system of production based on a complex framework of rules, regulations, institutions, traditions and habits that have evolved over this long period of time.

 

But how useful is history and how can it be used? Are there appropriate historical examples or cases to study to see if there are lessons relevant to the present? The answers depend to a large extent on context, because a key characteristic of the history of technology is the importance of institutions and the political and social context of economic outcomes. Also, understanding how policies were developed in the past and how effective they were requires understanding the changing context of policy implementation. However, as economist Paul Samuelson pointed out ‘history doesn't tell its own story and ‘conjectures based on theory and testing against data’ are needed to uncover it. Drawing the right lessons from history is a nuanced exercise. 

 

Over time industries and products evolve and develop as their underlying knowledge base and technological capabilities increase. The starting point for a cycle of development is typically a major new invention, something that is significant enough to lead to fundamental changes in demand (the function, type and number of buildings), design (the opportunities new materials offer), or delivery (through project management). Major inventions give a ‘technological shock’ to an existing system of production, which leads to a transition period where incumbent firms have to adjust to the new business environment and new entrants appear to take advantage of the new technology. Economist Joseph Schumpeter called this process creative destruction, and it leads to the restructuring and eventually consolidation of industries. That is what happened to construction and related suppliers of professional services, materials and components after the first industrial revolution. 

 

The drivers of development for industries in the twenty-first century are emerging technologies such as augmented reality, nanotechnology, machine intelligence, digital fabrication, robotics, automation, exoskeletons and possibly human augmentation. Collectively, these digital technologies are described as a fourth industrial revolution, and their capabilities can be expected to significantly improve as new applications and programs emerge with the development of intelligent machines trained in specific tasks. Innovation and technological change is pushing against what are now long-established customs and practices of the industries in the diverse value chain that designs and delivers the projects that become the built environment.

 

How technological change affects these industries differs from more widely studied industries like computers, automobiles or aerospace because of the number and diversity of firms involved in designing, constructing and managing the built environment. With the range of separate industries these firms come from, construction of the built environment is the output of a broad industrial sector made up of over a dozen individual industries. Not an ‘industry’ narrowly defined, but a broad industrial sector that is organised into a system of production with distinctive characteristics. A second difference is the age of these industries, many of which are mature industries in late stages of their life cycle. These differences create a different context for questions about industry, innovation and technological change, about how firms compete and how the system of production is organised as fourth industrial revolution technologies like digital twins and drones spread through construction and the pace of digitization increases. 

 

As well as the contractors, subcontractors and suppliers for new builds, there are also many firms and people mainly engaged in the alteration, repair and maintenance of the built environment. The broad base of small firms is a distinctive feature of construction, and these family-owned firms engaged in repair and maintenance work will largely continue to use the materials and processes they are familiar with. Old technologies can survive long after the innovations that eventually replace them arrived, such as the telegraph, fax machine and vinyl records with telephones, email and CDs. Stone, tile, brick and wood have been widely used materials for millennia, and industrialized materials like corrugated iron and concrete are ubiquitous. For maintaining and repairing the existing stock of buildings and structures, many of the skills, technologies and materials found today will continue to be used far into the future. That does not mean firms mainly involved in repair and maintenance will not be affected in some way by the fourth industrial revolution. 

Figure 2. 

Construction of the built environment has characteristic organizational and institutional features because it is project-based with complex professional and contractual relationships. How firms utilise technology and develop technological capabilities differentiates them within this location-based system of production. Emerging technologies in design, fabrication and control have the potential to transform construction over the next few decades, possibly less, and the book suggests firms will follow low, medium or high-tech technological trajectories, determined by their investment in the emerging technologies of the fourth industrial revolution. 

 

A broad view of what future construction might look like is based on successful solutions being found for the many institutional and technical problems involved in transferring fourth industrial revolution technologies to construction. Without downplaying the difficulty of those problems, similar challenges have been met in the past, but those solutions led in turn to a reorganization of the system of production. 

 

There are very many possible futures that could unfold over the next few decades as technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), automation and robotics develop. However, the key technology underpinning these further developments is intelligent machines operating in a connected but parallel digital world with varying degrees of autonomy. These are machines that have been trained to use data in specific but limited ways, turning data into information to interact with each other and work with humans. The tools, techniques and data sets needed for machine learning are becoming more accessible for experiment and model building, and new products like generative design for buildings plans, drone monitoring of onsite work and 3D concrete printers are available.

 

Intelligent machines are moving from controlled environments, like car manufacturing or social media, to unpredictable environments, like driving a truck. In many cases, like remote trucks and trains on mining sites, the operations are run as a partnership between humans and machines. There are also autonomous machines like autopilots in aircraft and the Mars rovers. As well as rapid development of machine intelligence, technological change in the form of new materials, new production processes and organizational systems is also happening. Sensors and scanners are widely used, 3D concrete printing is no longer experimental, cloud-based digital twins are available as a service, and online platforms coordinate design, manufacture and delivery of building components using digital twins. 

 

A period of restructuring of construction occurred in the second half of the 1800s when the new industrial materials of glass, steel and reinforced concrete arrived, bringing with them new business models, new entrants and an expanded range of possibilities. The development of modern construction was not, however, a smooth upward path of progress and betterment. It went in fits and starts as new inventions and innovations arrived, slowly then quickly, often against critics of the modern system of production and workers, fearing technological unemployment and lack of government support during a time of technological transition, who resisted new technology and sometimes sabotaged equipment. The issue in the past, like today, was in fact not the availability of jobs but the quality of skills during the diffusion of new technologies through industry. 

 

The only previous comparable period of disruptive technological change in construction of the built environment is the second half of the nineteenth century. Between 1850 and 1900 construction saw the rise of large, international contractors, who reorganized project management and delivery around steam powered machinery and equipment. In particular, the disruptive new technologies of steel, glass and concrete, which came together in the last decades of the century, led to fundamental changes in both processes and products. If that is any guide, we can expect technological changes to operate today over the same three areas of industrialization of production, mechanization of work, and organization of projects that they did then. And today, just as in 1820 when no-one knew how different construction would be and what industry would look like in 1900, we can’t see construction in 2100. That is a long way out, and we can only guess at the level of future technology. We can, however, use what we already know from both history and the present to form a view of what is possible over the next few decades based on what is currently understood to be technologically feasible.

It should be clear that the role of fourth industrial revolution technologies will be to augment human labour in construction of the built environment, not replace it. Generative design software does not replace architects or engineers. Optimization of logistics or maintenance by AI does not replace mechanics. Onsite construction is a project-based activity using standardized components to deliver a specific building or structure in a specific location. The nature of a construction site means automated machinery and equipment will have to be constantly monitored and managed by people, with many of their current skills still relevant but applied in a different way. Nevertheless, in the various forms that building information models, digital twins, AI, 3D printing, digital fabrication and procurement platforms take on their way to the construction site, they will become central to many of the tasks and activities involved. Education and training pathways and industry policies with incentives for labour-friendly technology will be needed.

Figure 3.

 

Because construction involves so many firms and people the technology driven changes discussed here will have significant and profound economic and social consequences. This would be a good opportunity for government and industry to work together to develop policies and roadmaps for those firms, and to support ‘the great mass of people’ employed in construction of the built environment who will be affected by them. The future is not determined, although technological change and creative destruction continue to reshape and restructure industry and the economy, decisions made today create the future.

 

 

From the Introduction to my new book available from Amazon on technological change and construction. 

The digital construction production system

Where is the technological frontier in Construction?

 

 

The fourth industrial revolution has already affected the construction industry through demand for structures for renewable energy and buildings like data centres, warehouses, ‘dark’ kitchens and supermarkets for online delivery services. Some of these buildings and structures already use forms of applied AI in their management and operation.

 

The construction industry is wide and diverse, and the various parts of the digital construction production system are in various stages of development. Over time the development of AI and associated digital fabrication and production technologies will reshape the existing industry, led by fundamental changes in demand (the function, type and number of buildings), design (the opportunities new materials offer), and delivery (through project management). However, these developments are  

 

Automation technology is at the point where intelligent machines are moving from operating comfortably in controlled environments, in manufacturing or social media, to unpredictable environments, like driving a car or truck. In many cases, like remotely controlled and autonomous trucks and trains on mining sites, the operations are run as a partnership between humans and machines, or as Brynjolfsson and McAfee put it “running with the machines not against them”. These innovations might reasonably be expected to affect site processes and project organization, as concrete and steam power did in the past. Table 1 has examples of where the technological frontier was in 2020 for plant and equipment and construction materials, as an indication of the range and extent of this wave of innovations. Missing from these lists is smart contracts using blockchain. 

 

Invention and innovation based around BIM, digital twins, digital fabrication and advanced manufacturing technology is starting to fundamentally affect the construction production system through economies of scale. Over time this will alter the balance between on-site and off-site production of building modules and components, and how they are handled, assembled and integrated. Because there are many different types of building in many places, production methods vary widely across the industry, so the use of these new materials and technologies will be varied. 

 

Transport costs have always been important, but the option of site production has been limited due to standardization of mass produced components. The combination of BIM, online design databases and digital fabrication allows on-site production of some building components. Combining robotic and automated machinery with digital fabrication and standardized parts opens up many possibilities. 

 

Past technological changes in construction operated over the three dimensions of industrialization of production, mechanization of work, and organization of projects. Automation and AI can also be expected to work along these dimensions as the fourth industrial revolution reconfigures them by linking data through the life of a project. The role of AI enhanced cloud-based platforms that integrate design, production and delivery of components and materials with digital production technologies that allow mass customisation will be significant in the production of components and materials.

 

Table 1. Examples of the construction technological frontier in 2020

Plant and equipment

New materials

Autodesk BUILD Space – Boston UK construction manufacturing hub Exoskeletons – Esko, HULK Remote control equipment – CAT, Komatsu Drone monitoring – Skycatch, Icon, Vinci Smart helmets –  Trimble Hololens, Daqri Platforms – Katerra Apollo, Project Frog Build autonomous skidsteer FBR Robotics ‘Wall as a service’  Otis ‘Elevator as a service’ Sensor fitted cranes Automated engineered wood factories

3D concrete printing with boom system – ICON, Aris, 3D Constructor 3D concrete printing with gantry suspended nozzle – D-Shape, BIG, US Marines Onsite metal printing – GE, MX3D, Aurora  3D printing of combined steel and concrete Roller press printing of smart fabrics  4D printing of shape memory materials  Molecular engineering of materials   Improved concrete additives and sealants Components with cloud-linked sensors Cloud-based fixtures and fittings

Source: Company and industry reports.

 

For mechanization, the characteristic changeability of construction sites is challenging for automated and robotic systems, and it might take decades of investment for machines able to do site work or for humanoid robots to do human tasks. In some case a human supervisor operating a team of robots or several pieces of equipment, each with limited autonomy, might work better. A worker with a smart helmet could monitor these machines both on the project and in the site model. Beyond site preparation however, there may not be many tasks left if site processes are restructured around components and modules that are designed to be assembled in a particular way, and machines to assemble those components and modules can be fabricated for that purpose. For an industry with an aging workforce there is the potential of exoskeletons for site work, a form of human augmentation that combines human skill with machine strength.

 

For organization of projects digital platforms providing building design, component and module specification, fabrication, logistics and delivery can be expected to become widely used. Platforms provide outsourced business processes, usually cheaply because they are standardized, and are available to large and small firms. Also, platforms use forms of AI to monitor and manage the data they produce, the function of intelligent machines. Examples are Linkedin (matching jobs and people), Skype (simultaneous translation of video calls), AWS and other cloud-computing providers, and marketing, legal and accounting software systems. Cheap, outsourced, cloud-based business processes can lower fixed costs and thus firm size, because firms can focus on their core competency and purchases services as necessary as they scale, leading to more entry and more innovation. If these digitised business processes are cost-effective and become widely used, they can provide much of the data needed to train machines as project information managers.

 

The BIM model of the project links the design and fabrication stages to the site and the project[i]. Digital fabrication produces components and modules designed to be integrated with on-site preparatory work and assembled to meet strict tolerances. Project management would be more focused on information management, and the primary role of a construction contractor might evolve into managing a new combination of site preparation work and integration of the building or structure with components and modules, some of which may be produced on-site in a Fab if economies of scale permit. 

 

In this case, the industry would, perhaps slowly, reorganise around firms that best manage on-site and off-site integration of digitally fabricated parts. With outsourced business processes and standardized site and structural work, that would be a key competitive advantage of a construction firm. Firms would become more vertically integrated if they become fabricators as well, reinventing a business model from the past when large general contractors often had their own carpentry workshops, brick pits or glass works and so on.    

 

While firms involved in construction of the built environment are facing technological advances that will affect many aspects of the technological system, this is a process that happens over years and decades. It takes 30 to 50 years between invention of a major new technology like cars or computers and its use becoming widespread, examples are discovering the double-helix and biotechnology, the dynamo and electricity, and the first electronic computers in the 1940s. 

 

How long a transition to a new production system largely built on automation and digital fabrication coordinated by AI takes might take is unknown. While machines can replicate individual tasks, integrating different capabilities and getting everything to work together is another matter. Combining a range of technologies is needed for workplace automation, but solving problems involves specific technical and organizational challenges, and once the technical feasibility has been resolved and the technologies become commercially available it can take many years before they are adopted. 

 

This suggests there will be many new roles emerging in construction over coming years, for project information managers, BIM supervisors, integration specialists and other fourth industrial revolution workers. Because these jobs will be primarily on new projects, they will not quickly replace the many existing jobs in the industry that maintain the built environment. 

 

Nevertheless, the technological frontier is moving again, and new construction projects will generally utilise the most cost-effective technology. Current AI technology provides services such as GPS navigation and trip planning, spam filters, language recognition and translation, credit checks and fraud alerts, book and music recommendations, and energy management systems. It is being used in law, transport, education, healthcare and security, and for engineering, economic and scientific modelling. Advanced manufacturing is almost entirely automated. 

 

In the various forms that AI and digital fabrication takes on their way to the construction site, they will become central to many of the tasks and activities involved. In this, building and construction may no different from other industries and activities, however the path of AI in construction will be distinct and different from the path taken in other industries. This path dependence can vary not just from industry to industry, but from firm to firm as well.

 

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[i] In 2019 the International Standard 19650 was released, providing a framework for creating, managing and sharing digital data on built assets. https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:19650:-1:ed-1:v1:en 

Construction and Advanced Technologies

US Survey Data and the Construction Industry 

 

The previous post was on the United States Census Bureau Annual Business Survey (ABS). In 2018 the ABS included a technology module with three questions about the extent of technology use between 2015 and 2017: the availability of information in digital format (digitization), expenditure on cloud computing services, and use of a range of advanced business technologies. The first results were released in a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research in January. There were 583.000 responses to the survey, and two thirds of the firms employed under 10 people and were less than 20 years old.

 

The survey links technologies across firm size and age categories, as well as the co-presence patterns for the technologies at the firm level. It also identifies which technologies are in the early stages of diffusion as indicated by the rates of testing versus the rates of actual use of technologies by firms. The survey shows construction is not significantly lagging other industries in the US in digitization and use of cloud services, however it is doing less testing and development of advanced business technologies.

 

The main finding of the survey was “Despite increasingly widespread discussion in the press of machine learning, robotics, automated vehicles, natural language processing, machine vision, voice recognition and other advanced technologies, we find that their adoption rates are relatively low. Furthermore, adoption is quite skewed, with heaviest concentration among a small subset of older and larger firms. We also find that technology adoption exhibits a hierarchical pattern, with the most sophisticated technologies being present most often only when more-basic applications are as well.” 

 

 

Size and number of firms in US construction

 

The structure of an industry is the number of firms categorized by size, typically the number of employees. Firms are classified as small, medium or large, with the numbers used varying by country and industry, as the tables below show. Data on firms (often called enterprises in the statistics) is presented using the International Standard Industrial Classification. Section F in ISIC includes the complete construction of buildings (division 41), the complete construction of civil engineering works (division 42), and specialized construction activities or special trades, if carried out only as a part of the construction process (division 43). Also included is repair of buildings and engineering works. Although there are national variants on the Standard Industrial Classification format SIC codes therefore represent industries, and firms are classified (or often self-classify) to industries on the basis of common characteristics in products, services, production processes and logistics.

 

In the US the Census Bureau collects data on industries and enterprises, the latest data for 2012. The website has this notice: “Due to limited resources and competing priorities of critical programs within the Census Bureau, the Enterprise Statistics Program has been suspended.” Reflecting the scale of the American economy, the size range of firms is much greater than the EU and the largest firms much larger. Over 95 percent of US firms are small, in this case with less than 100 employees, and have on average five or six employees. However, there were 212 firms with 1,000 or more employees that had a total 630,000 employees, of which nearly 160,000 were employed by the nine largest firms. 

 

Table 1. US Construction 2012

Enterprise employment size	Number of enterprises	Sales or revenue $1,000,000	Annual payroll $1,000,000	Number of paid employees
All enterprises	581,601	1,349,346	260,606	5,006,131
Less than 100 employees	576,272	812,924	154,461	3,336,286
100 - 499 employees	4,788	226,818	46,899	817,823
500 - 999 employees	na	82,320	14,787	222,481
1,000 - 2,499 employees	141	79,475	14,968	211,141
2,500 - 4,999 employees	45	62,749	10,516	145,875
5,000 - 9,999 employees	17	38,072	7,497	113,133
10,000 employees or more	9	46,988	11,476	159,392

Source: US Census Bureau 2012, table 2; na is not available due to sampling issues. 

 

The data, which emphasises the number of firms, is deceptive because of the very large number of small firms the entire industry is often characterized as unconcentrated. Viewing the construction industry as predominantly made up of small firms supports the view of the industry as fragmented with the characteristics of perfect competition. That description is too broad, some segments are much less fragmented than others. Competition among large contractors and among specialty supplier firms is oligopolistic, while small contractors are closer to perfect competition. There are few significant barriers to entry to the construction industry for small firms, so labour-intensive subcontractors and small contractors can be assumed to operate under perfect competition. There are relatively few contractors capable of managing large projects, and the barriers to entry at this level in the form of prequalification are significant, based on track record, financial capacity and technical capability.

 

 

Technology testing and diffusion

 

The testing-versus-use rates across different technologies are used to assess which technologies are in earlier phase of diffusion, that is, where testing is high relative to use. From the survey data the Construction industry is neither a leader nor a laggard in the availability of information in digital format. Manufacturing, Information and Professional Services are the industries with the highest rate of adoption of digitization, with firm size the primary correlate of adoption. For expenditure on cloud computing services Construction is lagging, with use rates below the average and well behind Professional Services. Overall, cloud services purchases have much lower diffusion rates compared to those for digital information. On these two questions of digitization and cloud usage Construction is comparable to the Agriculture, Retail and Transport industries on the extent of adoption, which is significantly lower than the rate in Information, Professional Services and Health Care industries.

 

Where Construction is well behind is in the testing and use of a range of advanced business technologies. The butterfly chart below shows sectoral diffusion rates for all business technologies considered together. Manufacturing leads with about 15% of firms indicating use of at least one business technology, followed by Health Care (14%), Information (12%), Education (11%) and Professional Services (10%). The lowest diffusion rates for the technologies are in Construction, Agriculture, Mining and Utilities, Management and Administrative, and Finance, Insurance and Real Estate sectors. 

 

 

Figure 1: Extensive and Intensive Margin Measures of Use and Testing Rates for Business Technologies by Sector 

 

Across all AI-related technologies, the aggregate adoption rate for all firms in the economy was 6.6% meaning that approximately 1 in 16 firms in the US were utilizing some form of AI in the workplace. The AI adoption rate varies greatly by firm size. Adoption rates (defined as usage or testing) increase from 5.3% for the group of firms with the smallest number of employees to 62.5% for firms with 10,000+ employees. Scale appears to be a primary correlate of AI usage, and its use by large firms means the employment-weighted adoption rates (estimates of the fraction of workers employed by firms using the technologies for advanced business technologies) are five times higher than the firm rates (i.e. because large firms are using AI the number of employees working with AI is five time greater than the number of firms using AI). There is increasing concentration of both employment and advanced technology adoption in fewer, larger firms.

 

The analysis finds “In general, the business technologies explored in the module’s third question are more prevalent in larger and older firms. This skewness in technology prevalence suggests that these technologies may have a disproportionate economic impact despite their generally low adoption rates’ and “This may potentially have far-reaching implications on topics such as inequality, competition and the rise of “superstar” firms, especially if AI is shown to have widespread productivity benefits. If only a select group of firms are able to fully realize the benefits of AI, we can expect further divergence for the “frontier” and most productive set of firms.”

 

From table 1, in the US in 2012 there were 9 construction firms with 10,000 employees and 17 with 5-10,000 employees, employing nearly 280,000 people between them (out of 580,000 firms and 5 million employees). Although there will be small, young firms experimenting with AI and other technologies, the data suggests some of these large firms will be investing in advanced technologies like AI, robotics and augmented reality at a scale the rest of the industry cannot. This has already been seen with the use of BIM, which is spreading to smaller firms in the industry a decade after many larger firms began the process of implementation. Another example is the way some large contractors are already running their own platforms for procurement and project management, which their suppliers and subcontractors have to use. These are closed, internal platforms. However, there are also open platforms developed by digital systems integrators such as Project Frog. 

 

It seems clear that digital platforms providing building design, component and module specification, fabrication, logistics and delivery will become widely used. Platforms provide outsourced business processes, usually cheaply because they are standardized, and are available to large and small firms. Also, platforms use forms of AI to monitor and manage the data they produce, the function of intelligent machines. Examples are Linkedin (matching jobs and people), Skype (simultaneous translation of video calls), AWS and other cloud-computing providers, and marketing, legal and accounting software systems. Such cheap, outsourced, cloud-based business processes can lower fixed costs and thus firm size, because firms can focus on their core competency and purchases services as necessary as they scale, leading to more entry and more innovation. 

 

Table 2. Dimensions of Development

Dimensions	Construction and the fourth industrial revolution: Possible developments
Production of components and materials	Platforms integrate design and production with full visualisation of voice-controlled 3D models of buildings, components and location. Selection of components and modules from online design libraries, both open-source and private.  Developments in digital fabrication, design software and molecular engineering allow a range of new production technologies to spread through the industry. Economies of scale for on-site versus off-site production will determine where and what components are produced and how.
Mechanization and automation of tasks	Site workers have exoskeletons and smart helmets available.  Many on-site tasks can done by teams of robots and/or machinery and equipment, operated remotely with some autonomy. Assemblers can be designed and fabricated to install components and modules, which can be designed to be handled by assemblers.
Organization of projects	Cloud based platforms integrate delivery of the physical project with its digital model, with real-time data and monitoring of activities and tasks.  Standardized, outsourced cloud-based business processes are used, so contractors focus on integration of site work, site production and component assembly.

 

 

In the various forms that advanced technologies take on their way to the construction site, they will become central to many of the tasks and activities involved. In this, building and construction may no different from other industries and activities, however the development path in construction will be distinct and different from the path taken in other industries. This path dependence can vary not just from industry to industry, but from firm to firm as well. Because the construction industry’s technological system of production is so wide and deep this will affect a large number of firms and people, and through them the wider economy and society. Invention and innovation based around BIM, digital twins, cloud computing, digital fabrication and advanced manufacturing technology, will fundamentally affect the production system through economies of scale and scope. 

 

 

Advanced Technologies Adoption And Use By U.S. Firms: Evidence From The Annual Business Survey, by  Nikolas Zolas, Zachary Kroff, Erik Brynjolfsson, Kristina McElheran, David N. Beede, Cathy Buffington, Nathan Goldschlag, Lucia Foster and Emin Dinlersoz. 2020. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA Working Paper 28290 http://www.nber.org/papers/w28290