A new survey, released by the AI Institute, has found that mid-size firms in the construction industry have boosted productivity by as much as 20% in recent years by becoming early adopters of AI tools.

According to the report, AI in the Built Environment, the trend among mid-size firms stands in contrast to the rest of the construction industry where fewer than one in three (30%) companies provide AI literacy training to staff and just one in five (20%) have AI policies governing the use of AI tools. 

The fallout of these failings, the report says, is that ‘shadow use’ of AI tools across the industry is leaving firms vulnerable to data breaches and other challenges related to cybersecurity.

It is also leading to a growing skills gap in small and larger companies as staff at agile mid-size enterprises expand their skillset to outpace smaller firms and become increasingly competitive against late-adopting larger rivals.

The AI in the Built Environment report, carried out by the AI Institute, was officially launched at an event at Engineers Ireland on Clyde Road in Dublin this morning (Thursday, November 13). The AI Institute is a Dublin-based company offering AI training, strategic advice, and solutions support with implementing AI tools.

Revealing the findings, AI Institute urged firms in the construction industry to reform their practices from the bottom up, beginning with the creation of formal AI policies around which tools workers can use, how to keep data safe, and what licences are needed. Staff should also receive mandatory AI literacy training to understand the basics of AI. 

This would lay the foundations for firms to identify processes and tasks that can be automated using AI, providing time and space for companies to begin organising and standardising their data to further progress their transformation journey. 

The AI Institute says that companies are currently making large investments in AI without first building a base of knowledge in the workforce – an approach which is doomed to fail.

Adopting AI in the correct way would lift productivity growth in the construction industry above its current annual rate of 1%, putting it in line with the 2.8% annual growth rate for the global economy, according to the AI Institute report.  

The report was compiled following a survey of 29 senior representatives of firms involved in construction, engineering, architecture, and quantity surveying across Ireland and the UK. The findings are supported by 57 peer-reviewed research papers focused on the built environment and professional services sector. 

Among its key findings, the report reveals:

• Productivity: Mid-size companies have increased productivity by between 5% and 20% by acting early to create structures and policies to react to the rise of AI.  Global firms, meanwhile, remain mired in indecision at the leadership level, with many found to have invested too early – without the requisite AI policy, change management or training strategy in place – too late, or not at all.
• Lack of training: More than four in five (81%) professionals reported having only basic or moderate AI knowledge while almost half (46%) said the lack of formal training is preventing them from fully utilising potentially transformative technologies
• Automation: Just one in five (20%) firms have identified processes which could be automated using specialist AI solutions, highlighting how the potential of AI is being wasted across the industry.
• Data: Industry professionals reported that data is fragmented and siloed across disparate workflows, making it difficult to deploy effective customised AI tools
• Culture: Some firms reported a cultural resistance to new technology, with SMEs particularly reluctant to spend on digital technologies – this despite being well-placed to benefit due to their size and agililty.

On top of calling for the introduction of formal AI policies and mandatory AI literacy training, the AI Institute report urges companies to standardise their data with the aim of creating industry-wide protocols for homogenous data collection and sharing, to enable AI models to communicate reliably across different projects and between various stakeholders.

Maryrose Lyons, Founder of the AI Institute, says: “Our report, AI Adoption in the Built Environment, sets out clearly the challenges facing the construction industry in terms of AI adoption, the reluctance in many quarters to embrace the opportunity that AI brings, and the value of being a mid-size player with the ability to move early to quickly implement a new AI strategy.

“While several larger firms have made significant investments in AI, the impact of these investments has been limited by the lack of foundational knowledge and support in the form of AI policies and training. To be successful, company leaders must build their AI strategy from the bottom up, laying the groundwork to ensure that bigger AI investments will be effective later.

“Our survey reveals that the use of commercial LLMs (large language models) is widespread across the sector. Unfortunately, such practices can breach compliance with data regulations and make sensitive client data more vulnerable if there is not adequate training. That’s why the AI Institute is urging firms across the construction industry to invest in AI literacy training for all staff, introduce AI policies that ensure compliance, and move beyond commercial LLMs like ChatGPT by investing in customised AI solutions developed exclusively to solve in-house problems.”

AI

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