Javier A. Baldor, BST Global’s Chief Executive Officer, and Hank Tran, BST Global’s Director of Knowledge Management joined the ACEC Virtual Fall Conference, and presented a special session — The Future Is Now: Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Are Transforming the AEC Industry. During the 30-minute session with live Q&A, the duo explained the impact of machine learning and artificial intelligence across industries before honing in on specific use cases in the AEC space.

Here are some highlights from the presentation and Q&A session:

• Artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data are changing the face of every industry, including the AEC space
• Resource utilization and revenue leakage were two areas for opportunity found in BST Global’s exclusive research
• A data-driven consultancy of the future will utilize machine learning and artificial intelligence to unlock efficiencies in resource utilization and revenue leakage, among other things
• Not all data is created the same; you need the right kind of data
• You should approach machine learning in a phased approach: prediction, detection and optimization
• Machine learning within resource management can be used to understand the make-up of teams that deliver projects; you can begin to understand their construct and skills and how they can be best applied to projects, etc. (there’s a huge opportunity here for firms to impact project teams and the project itself)
• A data-driven consultancy means machine learning and AI rely on data to make an impact … not one single system will contain all the data you need so it’s important to harvest data and treat it like an asset
• Data scientists are being embedded in consultancies themselves, and many are starting with a targeted KPI to start to test out machine learning