Where is the AEC Industry Headed?
I have been thinking a lot lately about the current state of architecture, construction, and engineering (AEC) industry and where it’s headed.
More I learn about the present initiatives and success stories of technology implementations, I am more compelled to think about the last decade of technology advocacy, R&D, and implementations in the industry.
The year was 2009 and I was a masters student at the Texas A&M University. I was contemplating a lot about lean construction, building information modeling (BIM) and green/sustainable construction. And, also did a fair bit of writing about it.
At that time I was talking about the “why” of BIM, Lean and Green in the AEC industry and now, when you fast forward to 2017, I am truly impressed with the progress that we have made as an industry.
Now, we are not debating over “why” BIM, Lean or Green anymore, but we are moving into a completely new era of AEC Tech and Productivity & Process Improvements.
More I think about the state of AEC in early 2000’s, I am more convinced that we are not going to solve the overarching problems (low labor productivity for instance and growing demand) of the construction industry by doing things the old way.
I think the AEC industry is going to solve it the smart way. We will move away from traditional ways of building. We are not going to reinvent the wheel either, we are going to take advantage of what we already know and what’s already working for other industries.
Manufacturing is using 3D and 4D design and robotic manufacturing from decades. We have mastered the art of manufacturing, which is also apparent by how much stuff we use in our everyday lives.
And advances in manufacturing have no doubt, improved everyone’s standards of living.
In a recent Wold Economic Forum publication, I learned about what Bill Gates thinks about the improvements in human lives over the next decade.
He sees the entire planate coming out of the poverty by 2030 and I bet that means a whole bunch of buildings, roads, bridges, schools, hospital, universities and factories. Or in other words, there will be a lot of business for the AEC and we will be expected to do a lot in a very short period of time.
So, the AEC industry has to move faster than it could with the traditional ways of building things. And, focus on a more sustainable development using lean construction principals (also borrowed from the manufacturing industry btw) and building information modeling (BIM), at the turn of the century, is paying off.
We are building things way faster than we were building in the early 2000s.
We are using way more modular design and prefabrication than we were using then.
And, we are using 3D printers, robots (drones, bricklayers etc.) to become more like manufacturing.
I see the construction industry learning a lot from the manufacturing in the next decade to meet the growing demand.
And, I believe the technology has a lot to do with it.
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Check out our initiatives at Builderbox.io
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What do you think about the future of AEC industry? Let me know the comment section below.
Happy Building.
