Oracle’s Industry Lab brings cutting-edge technologies to the construction industry
May 27, 2022 | 5 minute readThe Oracle Industry Lab features robotics, drones, virtual reality, and AI—all designed to showcase the latest industry technologies.
Dancing robot dogs, hovering drones, and virtual reality headsets marked the opening of Oracle’s new Industry Lab outside Chicago, where hundreds of people in late April 2022 were able to touch, hear, and see the latest technologies for construction and engineering, energy and water, communications, and manufacturing.
The first phase of the Industry Lab opened in 2018, and the original lab focused only on the construction industry. Consisting of an outdoor worksite and a construction trailer, visitors could see and experience construction technology that would revolutionize the industry. Now, the next phase of the lab is open, in an airplane-hangar-sized building that showcases emerging tech, such as drones, the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, and robotics used to solve real customer problems. Though it now has a broader industry vision, it can still immerse visitors in the construction site of the future.
Pepper Construction worked with Oracle to expand the lab, using technology from many of the more than 30 industry partners that are now showcased in the lab. “Phase 1 looked like a half-finished project, with a trailer office and a bunch of equipment and I beams,” says Burcin Kaplanoglu, vice president of innovation for Oracle Industry Labs. “The entire project has modeled the course of a construction site, from a worksite with a trailer to a modern building that features the latest technologies.”
The first phase allowed Pepper and Oracle team members to work with core Oracle technologies and as many as 14 partner technologies, using what they learned to build phase 2. “We were actually physically doing it, not just talking about it,” Kaplanoglu says.
Building for the future
For Jennifer Suerth, Pepper Construction’s vice president of technical services, the lab isn’t just a construction site—it’s an engine for new ideas. Building the lab allowed her team to experiment with construction technologies that they continue to use for other projects, such as Reconstruct, which uses cameras to capture the status of a building in progress, then produce a 3D model and place the model on a timeline against the project schedule.
One of the first participants in the Oracle for Startups program and an Oracle Industry Lab partner from the very start, Reconstruct CEO Zak MacRunnels describes the lab’s grand opening as “bright.” After two years of demonstrating Reconstruct’s SaaS offering via Zoom, people were excited to participate in an immersive experience. “We were pretty isolated during COVID and to see new technologies in the flesh was different than seeing new technologies on Zoom,” says MacRunnels. “Being in the physical lab made the software come to life.” Pepper Construction used the Reconstruct platform to visually merge all of the data in one place, including drone, 360-degree photography, and scan data. “Reconstruct really helps drive decision-making around the schedule, the production, and where you’re headed,” says Suerth. “It’s very fascinating, and I think very valuable.”
An incubation lab for industry
Initially, a lot of construction industry technology was focused on the back office, such as task planning and building information modeling (BIM). The Oracle Industry Lab shifts the focus to the worksite. "We are literally making a difference to the workers in the field," says Suerth, who speaks with Pepper’s safety coordinator on a frequent basis. During construction, omnipresent webcams and periodic drone scans made it easier for remote workers, including architects located out of state, to get up close with the building’s progress.
COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of technology in the construction industry, Suerth believes. “COVID forced people to use technology because they had no other choice,” she says. “Then once they started using it they realized, ‘Oh, this isn't so bad after all.’ Now they want more.”
| “The entire project has modeled the course of a construction site, from a worksite with a trailer to a modern building that represents the building of tomorrow.” |
| —Burcin Kaplanoglu, Vice President for Innovation, Oracle Industry Labs |
The result is a facility that not only incubates promising technologies and technology integrations, but also lets construction leaders immerse themselves in the solutions that are changing the industry. “For this industry, seeing is believing,” says Roz Buick, senior vice president, product, strategy and development, Oracle Construction and Engineering. “They've been very hands-on for many, many years. This is where we show customers how it all can come together.”
One technology that catches everyone’s eye is Boston Dynamics’ Spot, the robotic dog that can traverse an obstacle-filled worksite and go up and down stairs while taking 360-degree scans of its environs. Suerth’s advice: introduce workers to Spot early in the project, since they’re sure to cluster around the robot when it first appears to take photos and watch it move. “But the longer he was there, people started treating Spot like a worker,” she says, “walking around him, waiting for Spot to pass.”
Innovation all over the world
The 30,000-square-foot lab will be followed by other Oracle Industry Labs, including a sustainability and mobility lab in Reading, England, and a construction industry lab in Sydney, Australia. The labs are providing Oracle technologists and customers with places to explore solutions to real-world problems and showcase new integrations and capabilities. And they’re not just prototypes—80 to 90% of the technologies used at the lab are commercially viable. “Instead of technology chasing a problem, we start with a problem our customers bring us and figure out the technologies, Oracle’s and partners’, that will solve it,” says Kaplanoglu. “It’s not a demo center. It’s a lab we use to solve customer problems.”
MacRunnels is encouraged by what he’s hearing now from his customers. Eight years ago, only early adopters were using digital technology designed specifically for the construction industry. Now, it’s a competitive necessity. “They’re saying, ‘I need this to run my business. I can't just eyeball it and use paper and send my teams out there and trust that everything is going great,’” says MacRunnels. “They’re seeing amazing opportunities for efficiencies, and more than that, they’re seeing how these technologies can change people’s lives.”
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Margaret Lindquist
Writer and content strategist
Margaret Lindquist is a senior director and writer at Oracle.
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