Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming a commonly used tool in the home construction business, as it leads to advancements in safety, efficiency and cost control. AI is making it possible to build new homes quicker, safely, and with minimal wasted resources – which in turn saves developers and buyers money.
Let’s have a look at how AI is currently being used in new home construction.
Safety During Construction
AI is efficient enough to make predictive conclusions on what may happen in specific situations and is able to further guide us on being safe in the workplace. AI can be used to analyze safety data and provide suggestions on controls and rules that need to be in place.
In outdoor home construction, there are multiple areas that workers need to remain vigilant over. AI would allow developers and tradespeople to proactively predict future incidents that are likely to occur.
Home Design and Planning
Today’s AI systems can take inputs such as design parameters and generate various outputs containing designs. It allows design centres, engineers and architects to visually see multiple design options.
The end customer would also enjoy having access to multiple designs for their future home. There is a significant cost savings during the home design and planning stage – which relieves manual labour associated with designing and putting together layouts.
These cost-savings can be later passed on to the developers and customers.
Construction Site Monitoring
With the assistance of drones and systems equipped with AI technology – these systems can further analyze images and videos to provide real-time data. This real-time data can be extrapolated to provide progress updates on projects and even identify potential areas where a bottleneck may occur.
AI can also assist with monitoring construction equipment, tracking tools, workers, labour hours and material movement. In addition, companies like LivePatrol offer construction sites with live monitoring overnight and during times when no physical staff are on site.
While construction sites leave their lights on at night, LivePatrol and similar services offer a two-way audio connection to the site to deter any would-be thieves from stealing construction material or equipment.
Project Management
In recent months, project management has been made easier with the assistance of AI. Today, AI has been able to help home builders better manage on-site human resources; which in turn has helped improve project timelines and the utilization of resources.
AI systems that focus on project management help optimize the available resources, putting together schedules and timelines that allow for the greatest efficiency. In addition, these tools can use previous history and trends on risks to better avoid obstacles in the project timeline.
The end result is a significant cost savings for the home builder, developer and end customer.
Resource and Supply Chain Management
Forecasting demand and the use of building materials and resources may be a costly project for workers. With the help of AI, home builders are now able to forecast demand and time the purchasing and delivery of shipments to the construction site.
In some new construction areas, there is limited space to unload all the required building materials for the new homes. As a result, some home builders will use just-in-time delivery to minimize the amount of time the material sits on the lot. With just-in-time delivery; the builders can ensure the right material arrives for the time they are needed.
For example, the average home uses 21,000 nails to be built. Knowing this statistic, the home builder can also use AI to see the average use of building materials per project. This can lead to figuring out if workers are using less or more of the building materials as they are intended to be used.
AI has been a huge catalyst that has pushed the use of supply chain management in new home construction.
Energy Efficient New Homes
AI built into home thermostats has allowed for optimal use of cooling, heating and lighting to increase the energy efficiency of new homes. Artificial intelligence has the capability to quickly interpret past data on weather conditions and indoor conditions to optimally use energy in the home.
Overall, you can see that AI is slowly becoming an integral part of new home construction. In new home construction, AI is helping lower costs, streamline processes, maximize the use of human resources, create schedules and improve safety for workers.
As AI continues to learn the new construction home industry, it is very likely to play a critical role in every new construction home project.