Author: Peggy Smedley
At IMTS last week, in Chicago, Ill., Sharon Cobb, associate program manager, NASA, shared in her ELEVATE breakfast keynote that innovation in manufacturing is going to put us back on the moon—but there is another component in addition to innovations that will also be key: people. It was in 1972 that Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan said, “… as I step off at the surface at Taurus-Littrow, we’d like to dedicate the first step of Apollo 17 to all those who made it possible.” He was crediting the team who got him there, says Cobb. “NASA’s voyage to the unknown…
Gartner forecasts information security spending in India to grow 17% in 2025.
Five ways to improve your PM strategies today. Project managers have their hands full these days. With labor shortages impacting nearly every construction company, projects becoming more complex, and new regulations to consider, project managers have a lot of balls in the air—and a lot of responsibility too. Many project managers are responsible for projects worth millions—and often billions—of dollars. Let’s explore a few tips today for how to make these jobs a little bit easier, ensuring projects are completed on time and on budget. View the full article here.
Can smart homes help you be more profitable in your homebuilding business? This is the million-dollar question we have been studying here at Constructech for years—ever since the industry collectively called it AHT (automated home technology). Much has changed and much has stayed the same in the past decade, but there are key trends homebuilders should keep a close eye on. For one, it is important to note that some growth is still imminent. Next Move Strategy Consulting suggests the global home automation market was valued at $103.34 billion in 2023 and is predicted to reach $210.53 billion by 2030.…
Gen AI (artificial intelligence) offers incredible advantages for businesses. But even before anything can truly happen, there’s some heavy lifting that needs to be undertaken to unlock AI’s full potential. One especially hefty assignment is the collaboration among tech companies. This is perhaps the first step in delivering the required compute power. The good news is tech companies are coming together to deliver this in a timely fashion. At the end of August, IBM and Intel announced a global collaboration to deploy Intel Guadi 3 AI accelerators as a service on IBM Cloud. IBM Cloud with Guadi 3 will be…
A company’s data is among its most valuable assets. Here’s how to leverage it. Every day you work with a diverse set of documents as you plan, sell, and build your projects, including a diverse range of documents throughout the lifecycle of any project. As part of any major development, construction firms create contracts, blueprints, renderings, photographs, and virtual walk-throughs. Business is more than just work, it’s about valuable data. View the full article here.
The construction industry has been facing a conundrum for years—far before the COVID-19 pandemic sent things into a tailspin. This conundrum plaguing the construction industry continues to be finding skilled workers to help complete construction projects on time and on budget. The numbers tell us a compelling story about where we have been and where we must go to manage a skilled workforce. In late August, the AGC (Associated General Contractors of America) released the results of a workforce survey that painfully shows 94% of contractors admit they are having a hard time filling open positions, particularly among the craft…
The road to AI (artificial intelligence) in manufacturing is paved with, well, data, and of course opportunity. Many manufacturers recognize this and are beginning to take big steps forward. We see 64% of manufacturers are entering into an R&D or experimentation phase with AI, and 35% are deploying right now. Where are you on the journey? In a recent conversation, Simon Floyd, GM, manufacturing and mobility, Microsoft, explains to me how quickly AI is being implemented and the steps companies can take to build an AI strategy in manufacturing. Let’s walk through the 7 steps right now. Step 1: Focus…
COVID-19 changed the workforce: women left, but are they returning? The latest data from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce shows there are 8.1 million job openings in the United States and 6.6 million unemployed workers. Yikes! The numbers are almost too high to comprehend. A shortage of workers creates economic upheaval for many industries—something we can’t afford. As workers and employers, we continue to grapple with finding an answer we can all embrace. It appears the solution lies in aligning the right worker with the right career, but this begs the question, again, are we making the right moves to…
AI (artificial intelligence) is the future of business. Many industries are turning to this technology to speed jobs, heighten efficiencies, achieve access to new data sets, and enable a new shift in the way we work. But will this all unfold as expected in the construction industry? Will it transform how we do bidding, estimating, project management, accounting, and job costing? Let’s explore a new report to see if we can find answers to some of these questions. Deltek’s 45th annual report looks at the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) industry. To be clear, the report isn’t just about AI.…