The Truth About Tech in Construction: A Q&A with Suffolk Construction CTO Jit Kee Chin

When it comes to technology in construction—an admittedly broad and tough to tackle subject—there are few better suited to speak on the matter than Dr. Jit Kee Chin, chief technology officer for Suffolk Construction. She was named by Autodesk as one of the "Top Construction Influencers" in 2020. She was a BuildWorlds Mavericks Award winner in 2019. And in 2018, she was celebrated by Construtech magazine as one of the top Women in Construction. She also has a PhD in physics from MIT and is one of the co-founders and a managing partner of Suffolk Technologies.

In the lead up to our Venture East conference, for which Suffolk Technologies was a key partner in planning, we were able to sit down with Chin to pick her brain about the recent wave of technological innovation being seen across the buildings and infrastructure spaces, from the challenges of value chain fragmentation and pricing to the opportunities of incentivized tech adoption and emerging technologies.

Whether true or not, construction’s had a long reputation of being slow to adopt technology. Would you say that's an accurate, portrayal?

I used to think that was true and it is still the perception, but I have a more nuanced view now than I did in the past.

If you compare construction to other industries you might find the construction industry is typically slower to adapt, however, there are situations where the construction industry has been able to adapt quickly. For example, the construction industry tends to adopt technologies quickly when those technologies drive efficiencies for the user. For instance, we have seen strong adoption of time-saving tools like Green Badger for simplifying the process of obtaining LEED certification. Construction is also quick to pilot hardware or tools that add value in the field, such as robotics and drone solutions that save time and improve quality. Technologies and tools that increase efficiencies and productivity on jobsites are most common today because contractors must respond to workforce shortages and high cost of labor in our industry.

So, where is the industry slow to adopt?

In situations where significant process change is required, or where the benefit from adoption accrues to a different stakeholder, I see a lot more friction to adoption. For example, an insurance tech solution that reduces claims if implemented properly would create immediate value for the insurance company, but not necessarily for the general contractor that must implement the solution. The solution would create value for all stakeholders long-term because it could mitigate the cost of insurance, but in the short-term the incentives are misaligned.

Another example would be when adoption requires significant process change, especially if that process change spans various stakeholder groups. For example, layout robotics can produce multi-trade layouts, which increases productivity, but it requires contractors to buy the trades differently and sequence differently, therefore contractor adoption is slower.

I also believe some of this is perceptual. Oftentimes people equate technology with just software, but construction is fundamentally a physical industry that needs to put work in place. In the construction space, there is a limit to how willing contractors are to consume software solutions and keep upgrading those solutions every time a new version is announced. That hesitation to continuously add and upgrade software can drive the perception that our industry is slower to adopt technology.

Overall, I see the pace of technology in the construction industry accelerating. There has been a proliferation of software startups and investment in this space. Look at the growth of robotics, even if it is still predominantly in the pilot phase. So I don’t believe the construction industry is necessarily slow to adopt. I believe our industry adopts the right technologies where it makes sense.

If I could go back a little, you mentioned we are fast to adopt for efficiency. Could you give more examples where you've seen a technology catch fire kind of quickly.

A good example would be Procore, which has been very successful over the past two decades. I believe they were the first, second-generation field and document management solution that came to market, and people adopted it quickly because it drove efficiencies for users. OpenSpace was another solution that was easily adopted. We had been requiring photo-documentation on project sites for quite some time, and then Openspace came along with a frictionless experience that made people’s lives easier. This drove quick adoption of this tool. Assuming the price point is not too high, people are always looking for a chance to be more efficient and productive, and accomplish more in less time.

Moving onto big barriers to adoption. You have already alluded to process change, value chain fragmentation, and pricing. Any others? Could you explain further?

Leak detection and mitigation is a good example of this. The general contractor implements this solution, but the benefit is actually realized by the insurance company that has taken on the builders risk policy. In the long term, the asset owner will benefit from the minimization of leaks and reduction of rework and scheduling delays. But in the short-term, without a reduction in price of that builders risk policy or reduction in deductibles, no stakeholder is incentivized to pay the cost of implementing the leak detection and mitigation solution in and monitoring it.

This is an example of how different stakeholders in the value chain need to come together to adopt a technology that can drive value. Bringing together all those stakeholders seems logical, but it is easier said than done. Coordination across multiple stakeholders takes time and slows down adoption.

When it comes to solving the problem of effort versus reward, is it just a matter of communication or changing policy?

Solving that problem requires more than just communication. Even if stakeholders fully understand the value these solutions add to projects, in the end it comes down to “what's in it for me?.” Each stakeholder is typically focused on its own bottom line.

Changing policy and incentivizing can both work. In the insurance tech example, the insurance company can incentivize the general contractor to adopt a solution by offering lower deductibles for implementation of the technology, subsidizing pilots, or even lowering premiums. From a policy point of view, requirements to have a non-human risk mitigation system could also drive the adoption of technology. We are starting to see signs of both approaches, so I am confident this particular insurance tech will eventually scale. But for this insurance tech solution to scale and spark meaningful change toward more technology adoption, it must address all the pain points of the industry

Can you expound on some other barriers for technology adoption?

Another barrier for technology adoption is the mismatch between the timeframe of building construction projects and the technology itself. Once a project is underway, it is difficult to factor in price increases for technology. Margins are thin in construction as it is. For many contractors, new technology is a nice-to-have but it requires significant investment. From a process perspective, construction professionals are often used to doing things a certain way and do not want to shift their processes midstream. A lot of technology implementations require shifting processes. We often underestimate that.

The good news is that talent used to be a barrier for technology adoption. In the past, we did not have enough technologists who understood the industry enough to create good solutions for it. That is certainly not the case today. In the past, there were also construction professionals who were uninterested in technology adoption. That is also getting better. While there are still late adopters who resist technology, there is a generational shift underway and digital natives are now joining the industry like never before.

In that vein, you mentioned an upswell of technology startups in the industry earlier. Are we too saturated?

We certainly have volume now, but I do not believe we are suffering from saturation. Operations continue to have pain points that require tech solutions, and we continue to see white space. For example, the subcontractor base still has low technology penetration, and we still have a lot to solve in terms of embodied carbon, just to name a few areas with great potential.

I think the perception of saturation comes from people reinventing the same solutions. An example of this is timekeeping. We have seen many solutions try to address this challenge. Photo-documentation itself has had many solutions. Competition is always a good thing, but at some point the field will thin out and we will have just a few established, proven solutions for each use case.

That is a great segue into the next question: opportunities. What are the areas ripe for tech optimization?

Design automation is one area of opportunity. Design is a discipline that is predominantly performed digitally today, and a lot of recent advances in artificial intelligence can be applied to that discipline.

I would also be interested to see more innovation in scheduling automation and prediction. We have seen scheduling innovation mainly in the short-term scheduling space, with one or two solutions in schedule prediction and scenario simulation. It is a difficult problem to solve, so it has not received as much focus as other areas. But it is certainly one that is overdue for disruption.

Is there a particular area of the construction process where that would be most opportune?

Procurement and supply chain logistics is an area of great opportunity. This became evident during COVID. But even four years later, supply chain challenges persist, driven by geopolitical instability, union action and other events. We continue to experience supply chain challenges, which in turn impacts project schedules. More transparency into supply chains would certainly help contractors and other stakeholders across the building lifecycle.

Kicking off our final line of questioning, let’s talk disruptors. What technologies have you excited?

Well, generative AI is one we are all watching closely. There is so much more potential than what we are seeing today, which is simple text generation and summarization. AI’s true potential lies in creating different ways for construction professionals to interact with information. Data in construction is challenging because it is heterogeneous and there is a lot of it, which requires structure and organization. You need to be able to access the right information at the right time to make better day-to-day decisions. AI can simplify that interaction, changing the way we interact with information and data. We have seen this addressed in AI solutions that search and retrieve, smart queries, and creating linkages between different data types.

Imagine if we could develop a true intelligence for builders, where an AI solution could absorb enough knowledge to become a co-pilot for builders. Now that would be transformative. This idea is not that much different than what we are seeing in the healthcare space. Today, because healthcare professionals have been capturing detailed healthcare notes for quite some time, we now have AI programs that can help detect and diagnose ailments in patients. The construction space is not as disciplined in the data capture process as the healthcare industry, but someday we will get there.

We have already started seeing construction companies hiring for new AI-specific roles. Is that something you expect to being seeing more of industry-wide, or would that be more a whole specialized software may be able to fill?

The hiring of AI professionals will depend on the value AI will bring to contractors, which is still being evaluated. Larger construction companies will likely invest in AI talent and develop their own specialized models. Mid-sized or smaller companies will likely rely on specialized AI software to meet their needs. Generative AI might not become disruptive in the end if it continues to hallucinate because requirements of accuracy are very high in construction. Construction is so driven by risk and which stakeholders are responsible for that risk. Construction is a high-cost, high-risk industry and generative AI so far is not as effective with precision. AI solutions are also expensive, so contractors may not be in a position or may be unwilling to absorb that cost.

In that same risk and ownership versus value conversation is robotics. Is there disruptive potential there?

Robotics could follow an incremental penetration path rather than burst onto the scene in a massive disruptive moment. The barrier to entry for robotics is still quite high across numerous use cases. Processes need to change to adopt robotics at scale, and talent needs to be trained up.

I do believe robotics can add value in construction. In fact, we are using robots on Suffolk projects right now. We are finding the economics of robotics work best when we have high utilization of these robots on jobsites. But that requires predictable demand, with streamlined logistics for delivering the robots to jobsites, along with at-scale training programs. We are not seeing that quite yet. There is also the risk transfer question, meaning who owns the risk of work performed by a robot? Many of the robotics startups cannot, or will not take, that risk. In the end, your robotics-enabled contractors must still provide a service and have some human organization to guarantee that service.

Any other technologies you’re especially excited about, before we end our interview?

I'm really excited about low-carbon materials and their potential to drastically lower embodied carbon.

I believe lowering our emissions footprint could truly be disruptive in the built world. I would say this is at the top of my list. If we are able to produce lower carbon cement, concrete or steel at scale, it would radically transform our industry. There are many technologies out there right now that have proven out prototypes and are starting to scale. These innovative material companies are inventing something new, but they are also solving for the cost premium. It will not happen overnight, but if these innovators can reach price parity in five to ten years, they will disrupt our industry and transform the world.