In July 2023 Augmenta was recognized by CB Insights in their 2023 Generative AI Market Map as one of the 335 startups in the world with a major role to play in generative AI. Even more impressive: Augmenta was one of only 6 companies highlighted within the building design category thanks to our unique approach that combines generative design and Generative AI. Today, Augmenta is on the precipice of disrupting the construction industry by bringing AI-powered automation into the building design process. There is a clear ROI for automated design.
While our grand vision is to enable everyone involved in construction (including developers, general contractors, engineers and subcontractors) to leverage the Augmenta Construction Platform to realize a multitude of advanced coordination and business benefits (reduced risks and labor costs, increased profitability, and more), our current pilot program is specifically geared toward electrical contracting and engineering firms. With our new Automated Electrical Modeling capability in the Augmenta Construction Platform (ACP), VDC and BIM teams today can work much faster, saving up to 90% of their early stage modeling and coordination time.
Our first pilot customers are working on large commercial projects such as hospitals, schools, laboratories, and shopping centers. They say that ACP has the potential to be truly groundbreaking for their teams and business because not only does it enable the rapid modeling of commercial electrical systems, but it also lets them assess multiple design options, rapidly respond to major coordination changes, and increase the amount of prefabrication performed.
ACP will enable them to both design and model faster, and by doing so they will be able to be more competitive and even change the way they operate as a business.
Over the last several years, as advances in generative AI and especially the popularity of tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E have taken off in a more mainstream way, we’ve seen that there is a greater acceptance around AI for prototyping and creative purposes. If you listen to any news cast today, you’ll be hard pressed not to hear about AI funding and disruption, with McKinsey predicting that generative AI applications will contribute between $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy. An increasing number of businesses across sectors are leveraging AI tools, and construction is no exception.
While there are very legitimate concerns about how AI and the data created can be used, in addition to fears of job loss, for many industries AI-adoption seems necessary to keep up in today’s economy.
Within the construction design and engineering sector specifically, for BIM and VDC managers, there is a real challenge to find enough experienced and skilled employees to do the expert design work for buildings slated for rapid completion. The demand for new buildings is huge, and the pace of production can’t keep up. This is in part spurred by increasing government stimulus across the construction industry globally, such as the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in the United States and the €800 billion NextGenerationEU fund in Europe.
While it can take years to train a skilled VDC team member, with the Augmenta Construction Platform, rapid automated modeling becomes possible. Using ACP, one skilled VDC manager can oversee and direct more design projects. Projects can be completed faster, and time allocated to other important work such as value engineering (a systematic approach to substituting materials and methods with less expensive alternatives, without sacrificing their performance.)
In the construction industry, which has been plagued by low productivity for decades, we are seeing a clear signal of interest in AI, with more businesses adopting AI tooling in conjunction with growing enterprise IT budgets for digital transformation and the acceleration of cloud technology adoption. In addition there is a huge investment being made into AEC technology. McKinsey reported that an estimated $50 billion was invested in AEC tech between 2020 to 2022, 85 percent higher than the previous three years.
Within the building design and the construction industries, the problems that have to be solved are hard. They’re not trivial design challenges and there are many constraints and dependencies. Building designers need to ensure that building codes, safety requirements and compliance regulations are met. There is no room for error when it comes to building design, and mistakes in the design stage result in very expensive issues to solve on the construction site.
Here at Augmenta we are passionate about tackling these hard-to-solve challenges with our proprietary combination of generative design technology and AI. We know that there is real value in solving these challenges, because of the real world applicability and the people whose jobs will become better because of the improvements we make. There is much to be explored related to the future of the engineering profession with generative AI. At Augmenta we are working toward a brand new generation of design tools that embody the means and methods of production to enable engineers to improve the ways that they work.
Stay tuned for our forthcoming blog series in which Augmenta’s generative design experts unpack the methods we use to create generative design and AI systems that help building designers to speed up and scale their abilities within the construction industry.
Read our latest pilot customer case study with Miller Electric.
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