AEC Business

Marko Martiskainen, CCO of Zoan, is the guest on the AEC Business podcast. He talks about Cornerstone, Zoan's photorealistic metaverse, where you can buy land with cryptocurrency.

Cornerstone is a virtual volcanic island in the middle of the photorealistic metaverse. Its developer is Zoan, a virtual reality studio.

In Cornerstone, virtual land is bought and sold as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), crypto assets that live on the blockchain. NFTs guarantee the authenticity of land ownership by registering every transaction on the blockchain.

When you buy land from Cornerstone, you become a Cornerstonian. As a landowner, you gain access to the island and receive credits to start building a metaverse presence.

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I sat down with Zachi Flatto, CEO of ConTech. In this episode of the AEC Business Podcast, we discuss how ConTech is advancing the Israeli construction technology startups ecosystem.

Our topics include

Zachi's path from a licensed civil engineer to becoming the CEO of ConTechWhat ConTech doesThe contech startup scene in IsraelWhy Israel is a good environment for construction tech companiesThe challenges facing contech startupsA look into the future

ConTech – a leading global Construction-Tech hub

With Israeli technologies, government support, and the spirit of Israeli entrepreneurship, ConTech builds a unique ecosystem, making Israel a leading global Construction-Tech hub. 

The ConTech ecosystem includes startups, companies from all sectors of the construction industry, contractors, software companies, regulatory bodies, policymakers, and investors.

ConTech activities are aimed to grow the construction-tech startup ecosystem while facilitating business connections between startups and industry players in Israel and abroad.

ConTech is a joint initiative with the 

Ministry of Construction and HousingIsrael’s Ministry of the Economy, and the Israel Builders Association.

About Zachi Flatto

Construction has been in Zachi’s blood before being born growing up in an engineering family, and building upon this is over 20 years of experience in the industry. Hands-on experience ranging from being licensed civil engineering, to overseeing construction software sales, to being ahead of his time in developing parking algorithms, and over the past several years making Tel-Aviv the epicenter of Construction Technology with ConTech.

Zachi also served as VP of Sales and business development at Top Ramdor (TASE, project management platform) and held different management roles in Autodesk distribution channels. Zachi holds a B.S in Civil engineering from the Technion (Haifa) and M.S in Geography (GIS program) from TAU (Tel Aviv University).

Visit ConTech.me for more information and watch the presentations from the latest ConTech 4.0 event on YouTube.

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On the AEC Business podcast, I interview Melvin Newman, the CTO of PataBid. The company is launching an AI-powered estimation platform called PataBid Quantify for mechanical and electrical sub-contractors. It's going to speed up the estimation process dramatically.

In this episode of the AEC Business Podcast had the pleasure of interviewing Gary Ng, CEO of viAct. We discuss the use of AI in making construction sites safer.

viAct is a ConTech startup from Hong Kong backed by Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund, Artesian Ventures, and ParticleX. viAct provides “Scenario-based Vision Intelligence” solutions exclusively for the construction industry all across Asia & Europe and has been successfully deployed around 30 sites.

viAct has developed over 30 modules to provide granular insights on safety prepositions, productivity forethoughts, and environmental compliances.

Our discussion topics include

The story of viActAbout AI in the construction sector: where are we know, what are the most promising application areas, and what can we expect to see in 5 yearsThe problem the viAct is solvingHow viAct makes construction saferHow to start using viAct's solutions

About Gary Ng

Gary is a building engineer turned AIpreneur, having working knowledge in technological innovations in the construction industry for almost a decade. Before his AI journey, he was the Managing Director of world-leading 3D fashion tech EFI Optitex and senior management of NASDAQ listed technology enterprise Stratasys. 

In 2015, he is rewarded as the best regional senior executive in Stratasys with the highest Y2Y sales growth of 85%. However looking at the latency of technological innovations in the construction industry, he came up with his ConTech startup, viAct in 2016 to enhance safety and productivity in the construction ecosystem leveraging the power of AI.

Under his supervision, viAct has been categorized amongst the top 50 startups by CEMEX venture. Being a tech-geek, Gary has published many research papers on behalf of viAct making viAct a transparent R&D-backed start-up. Furthermore, Gary's farsightedness has spread viAct from Hong Kong to Singapore, with its technology being trusted and deployed by 30+ construction companies of repute all across Asia & Europe.

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My guest on the AEC Business Podcast is Jeevan Kalanithi, CEO of OpenSpace, the AI-powered construction technology company. We discuss OpenSpace's customer survey that clearly shows how technology adoption has increased on construction sites across the world. We also touch on construction technology investments and how to deploy new tech in construction.

OpenSpace provides 360° construction photo documentation software, powerful integrations, and analytics tools. The startup announced its $55 million Series C funding in April 2021 and is growing globally.

A view from OpenAsset

The Contech Survey

OpenSpace conducted a year-end survey recently, polling their customers who have a wide range of roles in the industry. The results provide a look into how the industry is currently viewing technological innovation and help set the stage for the coming months.

One result stands out. 91% of respondents said they had observed colleagues who didn’t previously use technology begin to embrace it over the past year. While there may be several factors behind this jump in adoption, the wholesale shift toward digitization and adoption of innovation among builders since the outset of the pandemic is undeniable.

You can connect with Jeevan on LinkedIn and visit OpenSpace at openspace.ai.

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In this episode of the AEC Business Podcast, Aarni interviews Carson T. Carney, the VP of Technology Integration at Advanced Construction Robotics. They discuss construction robotics and how doing one thing – rebar tying – extremely well, ACR's robots increase project profitability, reduce schedule risk, and keep workers safer.

"We've talked to people across the globe that have similar problems, and that's just a lack of skilled labor. We can't keep up with the demand that's out there. So we have to come up with a solution to make us more productive," says Carson. "I think really what makes us unique is that we are looking at job site problems and developing solutions for those problems, as opposed to the opposite way, where you can develop a solution and try and find a fit for it on a project."

About the guest

Carson T. Carney, P.E.  joined the Advanced Construction Robotics, Inc. (ACR) team as Vice President in 2019. He has worked on major bridge projects throughout the United States as well as internationally, managing the entire project lifecycle from the earliest teaming, planning, and design stages to execution and handover. In Scotland, he brought together and managed an international team to design and build what was the world’s longest multi-tower cable-stayed bridge, the Queensferry Crossing.

The robots

TyBOT and IronBOT carry out the repetitive and backbreaking tasks of rebar installation using artificial intelligence and robot vision.

TyBOT is a rebar tying robot that ties up to 1,100 intersections an hour. It does not require BIM, pre-mapping, programming, or calibration.

IronBOT is a rebar carrying and placing robot that can carry up to 5,000-pound bundles.

Learn more

Visit constructionrobots.com and follow ACR on LinkedIn.

https://youtu.be/4h1DWdtLL6Q

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In this last AEC Business Podcast episode of 2021, Paul Wilkinson and Aarni Heiskanen discuss the AEC technology news and phenomena that they found interesting this year.

Paul and Aarni started collaborating in 2020. They host AEC TechTV and organized two AEC TECH Webinars with WDBE this year.

Both Aarni and Paul blog about AEC technology. Aarni is the host of AEC-Business.com - the blog and podcast - and Wilkinson writes at Extranet Evolution. In this AEC Business podcast episode, they talk about the news and phenomena they found interesting in 2021.

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I had a great conversation with Stuart Maggs, the CEO of Scaled Robotics. On the AEC Business Podcast we discussed how AI, machine learning, robotics, and BIM work together to create situational awareness of a construction project.

Scaled Robotics is a startup that leverages computer vision, machine learning and AI to provide precise construction quality and progress information. With their cloud-based system, customers can track, analyze, and optimize the construction process.

"We really believe that this is a game changer for construction because it's going to allow us to have better information, to make better decisions, to be able to de-risk projects," Stuart explained. "What we are doing is once you've captured that data on the construction site, we automatically analyse it in the cloud, and we deliver it back to you as actionable information."

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I had the pleasure of interviewing Joe Giegerich, founder and CEO of ProjectReady. We discussed why and how the construction sector should start using an integrated data environment on large infrastructure projects. You can listen to the interview on the AEC Business Podcast.

The USA, Japan, China, and the EU are among the economies that will see a considerable amount of money poured into their COVID-19 recovery programs, including infrastructure stimulus.

As several projects are starting up simultaneously, project owners have to develop a way to manage their portfolios and individual projects. They need to implement construction project management software that is fast to roll out and integrates various processes and workflows.

Luckily, the industry has come a long way in digitalization over the last few years. But many challenges remain.

" Now, there were reasonable challenges around the digitization of the industry, both everything from old habits to just appropriate technology to drive that," Joe told me. " But one of the challenges around any project, let alone the ramp-up now in infrastructure, is again, how do you bring all that information together in that single context? How do you set up all those systems quickly? How do you secure those systems? How do you synchronize that data? How do you manage transmitters and the like?"

On the podcast, Joe explains why ProjectReady came about and how it solves many of the issues of large-scale digital collaboration.

About ProjectReady

As the Integrated Data Environment of the AEC/O, ProjectReady drives process over the platform by developing connected workflows, driving improved collaboration, and deploying automation to mitigate risk and drive holistic organizational growth. 

A proper cloud-to-cloud solution, ProjectReady drives improved deployment and utilization of the platforms companies currently own to help improve efficiency and maximize growth. To learn more, visit www.project-ready.com.

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I had the pleasure of discussing the latest technology in construction management, robotics, with Prasoon Shrivastava, CEO of Zepth. The company has partnered with Boston Dynamics and uses Spot, the robot, for data collection on construction sites.

"The construction industry is going through rapid digital transformation, especially post-pandemic, and there are studies that indicate that in the next decade or so, almost 40 percent of the construction industries would be taken over by robots, which includes manufacturing as well," says Prasoon. "We wanted to ensure that while we have one foot in the present, we should always have one foot in the future. And therefore we decided that we need to collaborate with Boston Dynamics and start creating solutions which are not only for today but for tomorrow as well."

He explains why they saw a need for a dynamic reality caption solution: "One of the challenges that we noticed is that it's not easy or it's not possible to deploy permanent cameras on-site because the construction sites are extremely dynamic, always evolving, and therefore it is not practical to deploy permanent cameras."

Listen to the whole AEC Business podcast episode 117 here or on your podcasting platform of choice.

About Zepth

Construction is a complex business and Zepth streamlines its management with practical solutions. It enables project teams to manage project risks, challenges and deliver quality projects on time and within budget with a central collaborative platform that manages projects, resources, and financials in unison. Zepth enables a transparent and seamless experience by creating value through time and cost savings with its robust modules like Project Cost Control, Inspections, Video Conferencing, and others.

Visit https://www.zepth.com for more information.

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