Data in Construction

Dodge Data & Analytics has one of the longest running data practices in the construction industry, and provide services from forecasting to business analysis for their customers, as well as providing invaluable insights for free on their website. Chief economist Richard Branch talks about the opportunities and challenges in creating forecasts for the construction market.

How companies architect and deploy their cloud can vary hugely based on what they need, and choices they make. Remko de Knikker has been working at the cutting edge of real cloud deployments for years, and explains how different technologies work, from containers, to microservices to kubernetes and more. A refreshingly clear explanation of what these critical terms mean.

Data Mesh, Data Fabric, Data Warehouse...so many terms get used in the modern data stack, it can be tough to understand what they all mean and why they matter. Amy Hodler has been helping make sense of advanced data concepts for years, and walks us through a critical concept, "Data Centricity," and how that relates to many of the other data-related concepts, including knowledge graphs. Amy brings it all together with Relational.ai and how their unique take on knowledge graphs and graph database technology embeds logic and intelligence in the data.

What if the process of building could be modeled? What if that model allowed project teams to try out dozens or even thousands of possible options for how to most efficiently build, or respond to changes & setbacks? That's the idea behind ALICE Technologies, a pioneering software firm that has trained its AI systems to model the key factors of building, and give project teams an incredibly powerful tool to manage their jobs. Co-Founder and CEO Rene Morkos explains how & why they do what they do, and how they're changing the way project teams plan and get the work done.

Knowledge graphs have been a part of data & document management for decades. Recent advances by companies like TigerGraph have made these tools even easier to use - but how exactly does a contractor create one of these things? Cayley Wetzig of TigerGraph takes us through a refreshingly clear & intuitive process for capturing the invaluable knowledge from the field and organizing it into a knowledge graph.

As a leading provider of jobsite and project management software, Procore produces, manages and coordinates an unprecedented amount of construction data. To make the best use of this, Procore has developed an increasingly sophisticated data analytics capability. Jason Ramsey leads product development of this analytics product, and walks us through what they've built, why they've built it, and how this capability helps Procore customers.

As clients, and contractors, become more sophisticated in their IT operations, sometimes it is more efficient to build on top of legacy systems when they cannot meet the specific needs of a project or contractor's way of doing things. Pariveda Solutions is a consultancy that provides this sort of service across industries, and Alan Henson walks us through how and why they were asked to augment a system of record for an oil major on a recent multi-billion dollar project.

As data has become more and more important, the role of Chief Data Officer has also grown in importance. As a complex industry, containing many subspecialties that strongly rely on individual judgment and problem solving, medicine is in many ways similar to construction. Caroline Chung, MD is an industry expert who has also accomplished a great deal in the data world - her perspective on bridging the gaps between industry understanding and data competence provides useful lessons for construction as we continue to digitize and staff accordingly.

In an industry like construction, that is producing data across many systems & siloes, knowledge graphs are a uniquely powerful way to manage across these silos and develop powerful insights. Neo4j is the market leader in knowledge graphs and graph databases - Maya Natarajan walks us through what it takes to leverage this powerful technology for your business.

An accomplished construction specifier, Jeffrey Potter has worked at some of the premiere architecture firms, and now works at Deltek. Across his career, he has pioneered the use of data as a way of looking at processes and seeking to improve them, including knowledge work like specifying. In this fascinating episode, we dive into how specifications are data, and how data about the specification process can make for more efficient spec writing, and ultimately higher quality buildings.