How owners can use AI to reduce project delivery risk

When considering risk in the construction industry, builders and owners often think in terms of individual projects almost as if each one was being built on its own island.

But rather than hopping from island to island, they should think of risk in terms of the entire archipelago and implement a companywide approach for their full portfolio of projects. While initially that may seem overwhelming, consider that it’s the way to get the most benefit because there is a vast sea of data to help understand where to focus your attention.

The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, as well as a broader industrial landscape, are on a journey to understand how massive innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) bring this bigger map into focus and help unlock value for businesses. Organizations are turning to AI and data analytics to help tie their projects together and improve business outcomes.

An upcoming live webinar titled, “Using analytics and AI to reduce risk: An owner’s perspective,” will explore how practical uses of AI drive enterprise level business value creation, particularly in the area of safety. The 30-minute webcast is scheduled for Tuesday, June 27, at 1 p.m. EST and will feature a fascinating, fast-paced discussion with Josh Kanner, product strategy lead for the Construction Intelligence Cloud, Oracle Construction and Engineering; and Nitesh Alagh, business lead, digital engineering, sustainability, and emerging tech at Severn Trent, one of the UK’s leading water utilities.

Kanner, the former CEO of Newmetrix, and Alagh both are longtime champions and proponents of improving safety outcomes through better processes driven by data and analytics.

“Nitesh and I will be talking through Severn Trent's overall motivation for pursuing analytics and AI, how they started that journey,” Kanner says. “They have in place today a data and analytics approach to engage with their entire construction supply chain.”

Who should attend

Owners and delivery teams (i.e., contractors) exploring how AI can create business value, particularly in the areas of safety, are encouraged to register and learn how Oracle is working with Severn Trent to add value and reduce risk.

The Oracle family of products underneath the Construction Intelligence Cloud, which now includes Newmetrix for safety risk and CIC Advisor for schedule risk, are forming the backbone for Severn Trent's initiatives to better utilize AI and analytics on their projects.

Being relatively new technology, AI and analytics also requires the C-suite’s full-throated support, particularly for a technology that is fundamentally about an organization’s value and not a project-by-project deployment approach.

“They will learn that AI in our industry isn't just a theoretical concept,” Kanner says. “Leading companies like Severn Trent have adopted practical applications of artificial intelligence to drive meaningful business outcomes by better understanding risks and getting proactive around managing them. This is not a theoretical exercise, it's not a general-purpose tool like ChatGPT, it's a specific set of capabilities that have been built for the construction industry with construction industry data to address key design and construction issues in project delivery like safety and schedule risk with more to come. These are real, practical, and measurable outcomes from the implementation of a program.”

The importance of AI today

AI helps builders and owners move up the maturity curve from being reactive to being proactive. These technical capabilities help businesses move along a broad range of value creation, from saving a worker five minutes in the field to helping save lives by predicting a safety risk.

And Oracle is working on other predictive aspects of analytics in AI because safety isn’t the only project risk that is important to owners.

“Successful company performance hinges on properly managing safety risk, schedule risk, finance risk, and quality risk across all of your projects,” Kanner says. “Our goal is to create AI tools to enable companies to proactively manage risks across these categories. The Construction Intelligence Cloud combines Oracle’s award-winning data and analytics technologies with deep construction and engineering knowledge. When combined with Oracle’s industry-leading commitment to data security and privacy, we can be a great partner for those looking to advance along this journey to better decisions and better project and thus company outcomes.”

If you want to get above the “islands of risk” and start to see the entire archipelago, register for the June 27 webinar by clicking here.