Will AEC Disruption Follow Google’s Moonshot Approach? 10 Advances Likely to Change the Industry

In 2013, news emerged that Google X, the company’s secretive moonshot factory, had developed a technology called Genie to entirely disrupt the design and construction industry. Once completed and implemented, the platform would draw on vast storehouses of data to automate the process of developing a detailed, permit set building design to a level of detail that components can be fabricated and ordered right from the model. Not much was actually known about the secretive project, but from some of the reports, one could imagine that Genie would further draw on its aggregated data to develop an optimized budget, schedule and work plan, and to identify contractors best able to execute the work. And all of this would be done in minutes as opposed to weeks and months and wring hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and inefficiency out of the construction process. Architects, engineers and contractors would be forced to find new business models or die.

It sounded like science fiction back in 2013, and BuiltWorlds’ conversations about these topics were often deemed unworthy of serious business consideration for much of last decade, but as the industry’s tech sector has progressed these last 10 years, the vision is beginning to look increasingly prescient and the tipping point looks much closer. Increasingly, those in the industry who want to be leaders a decade from now are giving much more serious consideration to what a successful business model will look like years from now.

As we celebrate our 10-year anniversary this month, BuiltWorlds offers 10 predictions for how the industry could evolve over the next decade:

Ten Technical Advances That Will Disrupt AEC

1. Conceptual design will be automated (think ChatGTP/DALL-E for design)
2. The leap to detailed design and engineering starts to look pretty short from there.
3. Detailed designs will go directly to fabrication systems that are increasingly automated.
4. Identifying the best suppliers and supplier pricing will be significantly automated
5. That will lead to automated budget and schedule development.
6. Project management systems should also be able to update budgets and schedules in the instances of delay events or scope changes.
7. Reality capture should improve to the point that updating the models in an automated way will get better, and the design and construction models will finally be integrated with the asset management system.
8. Robots will become increasingly nimble and powerful such that we should see significant increases in commercialization of robotics on the job site both for site supervisors and craft purposes.
9. Maintenance will be automated through more powerful monitoring systems and predictive software.
10. More of the actual inspection and monitoring systems will occur via drones, robotics and other IOT devices.

Although none of the items outlined above has reached widespread adoption, all are in some stage of commercial development. We are much closer to the vision discussed a decade ago becoming a commercial reality.

Eight External Factors that Will Drive Disruption

Left to its own, the industry likely would never progress to a post-disrupted state. However, a number of external factors are expected to create ongoing and increasing pressure on the industry that will ultimately cause change.

1. The rise of large cap, sector-focused tech companies will drive change. As these companies acquire and integrate more features in their mix, they seem committed to integrating the features in a way that allows the data to flow more freely across project phases, and up and down the value chain.
2. Large cap tech companies are already aggregating and structuring the industry’s data to create easier pathways to more robust recognition, prediction and analysis capabilities based on vast amounts of historical data.
3. Increased government intervention in carrot and stick policies look more likely to come into practice around the world based on needs to address affordable housing, infrastructure adequacy and climate change concerns. It seems increasingly likely that we will see more government action focused specifically on the AEC sector aimed at pushing the adoption of technology advances like the one outlined above.
4. Consolidation in the AEC market will accelerate, as smaller firms will find they simply lack the capital, sophistication and even the will to change, while larger, better capitalized companies will look to increase size to better compete in the face of even further thinning margins.
5. New entrants that are unburdened by legacy systems and approaches will grow more quickly than incumbent operators and put more pressure on the market.
6. Major owners will develop more conviction around the direction of change in the industry and will begin to favor the firms that offer a more efficient approach.
7. As the sector’s investor community continues to grow, those people will bring additional capital to fund the further growth and development of new solutions, creating even more constituency for new methods.
8. Increasingly, the new generations of talent entering the industry will favor the more leading edge companies, bringing the most talent to the most progressive companies, while starving the companies that fail to progress in their systems and approaches of new talent.

It is unclear exactly how all of this change will play out, of course, and we are still years away from feeling the full impact of the change. However, the vision for a post-disrupted AEC landscape is becoming much clearer, while the time to prepare for that disruption is becoming much shorter. In turn, companies that are serious about protecting their franchises for the future are taking action—now.