BIM is mainly a digital description of all aspects of a construction project. BIM is expanding its use in the Architectural and Construction (AEC) industry either because of public administration increasing requiring project documentation in BIM format or by industry leader implementing the most innovative solution available to improve productive and efficiency. A BIM 3D model offers graphical and non-graphical data. All this information remains alive during the whole project progress, being constantly update as the project advances.
In additional to the 3D spatial dimension a fourth dimension can be added with the schedule of tasks to be perform. This helps to increase productivity and minimize waste. A fifth dimension can be added with the cost related to the project and in sync with the schedule.
All those different set of data provides an opportunity to Machine Learning enter into the scene. Projects contains huge amount of data of all kinds. The Machine Learning algorithms can analyse the the data and identify patterns that would not be possible to identify otherwise. Once those pattern are identify the algorithm can make decisions based to automate and improve model building process. This became know as AI-assisted BIM.
How is AI making BIM systems more efficient?
Increasing productivity
The construction industry has been suffering due to low productivity levels. In the construction industry that accounts up to 7% of the global workforce, productivity has grown only by 1% in the past 20 years.
The increasing investments into construction technology in recent years has helped the development of BIM and consequently AI assisted BIM, which has made processes in all areas more efficient.
The technology helped eliminate inefficiencies, minimizing errors and improving the speed of project completion. But whilst we’ve already come a long way, there’s still a lot more potential for BIM software that AI to develop.
Support building design
Artificial intelligence allows a user to input a design criteria or create set of rules into a system so the machine can suggest the most viable output based on the requirements.
Within BIM, this can be used to create site footprints, floor plan designs with the most efficient orientation and more. The plans are all linked to one another too, which means if you change the measurements in the site footprint during the process for example, the system will know to make the necessary adjustments across all areas of the design to ensure the highest accuracy throughout the project minimizing even more design fails.
Continuously updating
Systems that has AI embedded are always learning from past and ongoing projects.
This means that they’re on continues improvement, delivering the most efficient and effective information to construction workers as soon as possible. This will support the development and grow the industry and help to find new design solutions quicker and allow these to be shared across organization and the industry.
Risk mitigation
In recent years, BIM has improved constructions site safety, facilitating the implementation of extra safety measures before a project is carried out.
AI assisted BIM can take this to the next level, predicting on-site incidents before they’ve even happened. Using machine learning, BIM software now can analyse construction projects from an image alone and identify different type of risks such as workers at a height, slip, trip, among others.