Other technologies that can be used during construction that I mentioned earlier is virtual reality, just to give you a flavor of what that looks like and what that means. Means, that you can have a model in the booming environment. And then, you can transfer it over into a gaming environment. Now before I would have said, no, it's not worth the effort, I'm not going to create a 3D model just to transfer it into a virtual reality environment, just to have a nice environment to walk through the model. But today, I have the model already. I have it for a different purpose, so why not use reuse it to do something else with it? Be it get feedback from the public, if I'm building a public space. Get feedback from students, if I'm building a school. Get feedback from nurses, if I'm building a hospital. Get feedback from chefs if I'm building a kitchen, a hotel or a restaurant. So you can utilize this information that you had in a beam environment, into a virtual reality environment and there are a lot of different either companies that do that, software that helps you do that. You need some programming capabilities, but there's software that helps you do that. And there's software that actually helps you do that without programming capability, but not with flexibility. It just gives you a standalone product. So this is an example of that virtual reality environment. What you can see here is, you can walk through that model using your keyboard. You can click on these items here to go to a specific project. And that way, the whole team can access the models in a web-based environment without having to have install software, without having to view anything, without having to have plugins. They are just going to a website and looking at the model right there, navigating it with their keyboard. So that's of tremendous value. That's just the virtual reality in a gaming environment. That's a step before the immersive environment. Now this is another example. But this, if you notice includes information, and that is the heart of it. It includes more information rather than just the 3D environment, like the earlier project that I just showed. So you can see that you have an avatar, and that avatar can be yourself. If you would like it to. So that avatar can be anyone, and you can change that. They can walk the sites, as you can see, that's field staff. They can walk around the site, using your keyboard, you can have information pop up as soon as they touch a piece of equipment. So that can be utilized for a multitude of things. It can be utilized for safety training. It can be used for training new staff, so, let's say, you just got hired at this facility and you're required to maintain a piece of the equipment. How do you find it? So someone can easily show you on that model, this is how you get there. This is where you're going to see it. And these are the spare parts that you need to either exchange or maintain. This is the piece of equipment and this is its location, this is what it looks like. This is of tremendous value. As opposed to you going around, wasting time, going to different locations, trying to figure out what you need to find. And this is much faster than pulling up a map and drawing it for you, because all this is done automatically pre-training or pre-transferring the model to the owner. We do this, all of them transferred over into a package that the owner can utilize. And then you can have integration with a 2D drawing or 2D plan. Or you can add all kinds of things, again, if you have programming capability. The immersive takes it a step further. And I encourage you to even try that, whenever you can. There are simple cardboard devices similar to this that you can buy online that are fairly cheap, that you can just utilize, slip your phone into it and download any app that offers you immersive virtual reality. That experience will show you what immersive virtual reality means. So before we had 2D drawings, then we had a BIM model, but then we have rendered model to make it photo-realistic. But then I can transfer it into a gaming environment, like I showed you earlier. And it can be in this environment, so you have two screens here, one for each eye. You basically have it right in front of your eyes to create that immersive virtual environment. And it can be done using your phone. So it's fairly cheap, and you can utilize it with any type of model that you have, to visualize the space and immerse yourself in the space. And have a better appreciation for the design or the project that you're looking at. We also utilize this in a sense where, right, you have a plan view, you have a section view. You have a rendered view of the nurse's station but what you really want to check, if that nurse can actually see people from all directions in the nurse's station. So we actually took this rendering and put it in an immersive virtual reality environment, and then had the nurse put that on and look around. That completely changed from just showing her that image and definitely much cheaper, then building whole mock up station, of that nurses station. Just for that test. Is this okay or not? So, again, you can have virtual mock ups and you can have it in an immersive virtual reality environment. We talked about a lot of technology, mostly focused on BIM. Focused on BIM during construction, during design, during facility management. But there are other trends and they're not only in construction, right? There are trends that are happening across all industries. What is the technology that's going to be used next? Technology is changing every day and it's changing graphically. So, what is really growing and what's catching on a construction? One thing is drones, which I talked about. So, the UAV's or the drones are being utilized to capture photos, to capture videos, to support inspections. For example, for bridge inspection, you'll fly the drone for areas that are not reachable by a human, by a person. Fly the drone that goes right under the bridge. Takes different photographs from different angles that you are controlling but could be automatically controlled, so you could draw a path for the drone to go directly over there to take multiple pictures, to return back to a station, to send the live feet, to send videos. And feed that information back to you. That is a safer way for inspection. That's a cheaper way for inspection. So that's being implemented today. It's also being implemented for photography extensively, and to reproduce point clouds from these photos that are taken using the drone. There's also a trend for robotics. So robotics will be utilized in construction. When in the future, I don't know, but it is growing, the use is growing. For example, layout. So, the layout, once you define where the doors are going in the space. Where the doors are, where the walls are, where the pipes should be. Right now, you have connections from your BIM model, because your BIM model has all your locations. There's a live connection between your BIM model and your total station that could knock out where exactly your objects would go, where exactly your building materials should go. So it can layout that for you and if you send that signal to a robot. The robot can do the job for you. Now from a technological standpoint, this is possible today. How much it's implemented depends on a lot of different things, like the laws and regulations of the space. The laws and regulations of that state, or country, or city. Whether people are comfortable with having a robot around for a safety perspective. Whether these robots are expensive or cheap. Whether the project can handle that type of cost. Whether this is a union environment or a non union environment. Whether people are comfortable with using such technology or not, and used to it, because most of the time people will revert to, no, I've done this before and it was successful. I don't want to be the guinea pig for trying new technology. So it'll take time for this to start catching on. Cloud based system, this is a huge topic, this is for almost every industry that's transferring to the cloud. Now you hear a lot of issues about cloud security. Every day, if you start reading the news about cloud security, you'll find that a company got hacked. Sometimes, it's a small company, sometimes it's a large company, sometimes it's a lot of sensitive data, probably read a lot about that. Cloud-based security is growing and it's extremely important. People are using cloud-based systems to facilitate their efficiency. But you cannot continue to use cloud-based systems without defining your cloud security measures. And this is a very hot topic right now, that all companies are looking into to make sure that they do not get hacked while benefiting from cloud base system, because they can give you access to information from any location. Cloud base system allow multiple teams from multiple companies to work together and to get up and running on a project site. Very, very fast rather than setting up their own servers, setting up their own data, getting access to each other's data sources or data warehouses. Today, someone can join the project, I can give them an iPad, give them a username and password, then done. They have access to all the project information. So that is a challenge from a security standpoint. But it's a huge efficiency saver. And highly recommended for any project right now. I doubt that any project is not using cloud based systems, actually. The internet of things, I touched upon it a little bit. So that idea of it, for example, the drone can be sending information back to your computer, that is an example of internet of things, your watch sending information back to you, your mixer, your blender, your coffeemaker, all this is also applied to construction. All this means that also I can have devices that are tagged to my vest, that are sending information back to my home office about movements, for example. If I make a movement that is unsafe while on the drug, it can alert me that next time I should be careful because this affects my safety. So there's a lot of trends that are happening right now with the Internet of Things, both in construction and outside of construction, that will impact the way we do things in the industry. And of them are sensors and sending data directly to the model. So for example, imagine a piece of equipment already connected using that concept of the Internet of Things. And then you already know that the information's coming back to the model, whether that equipment was manufactured, whether that equipment was delivered. Was installed, is operational, is up and running. Or stops working, you're the in connection with that equipment. The equipment is already talking to you. There are other concepts and other technologies that will be used, whether tools are available or tools are being developed today. But, artificial intelligence will play a big role in our industry. It's hard to say when, but it all start because the artificial intelligence idea is being used in things that we use everyday like internet searches, like maps, like GPS, like figuring out your route to get from one location to another. So that concept of having artificial intelligence, I firmly believed that it'll support things like cost estimating, utilizing the model. Yes, we can get to a point where we can push a button, but if we implement some type of artificial intelligence capabilities in our platforms. So now we've covered the use of BIM during design, during construction and during facilities management. And some other trends that we're seeing in the construction industry right now in relation to technology. So what are the lessons learned from implementing BIM on all these different projects? First, defining them is really important. That's the first thing I spoke about, defining BIM. What does BIM mean to you? What do BIM mean to your client? What does BIM mean to the organization and to the project team? Evaluating, do I really need BIM on my project? What type of information do I need with regards to the BIM environment? What type of BIM applications do I need? How do I manage expectations? Do people know what it means to implement BIM on the project? What is the role of the construction manager in the BIM process? How can I manage the quality of the BIM model that I'm receiving from the different parties? We must implement different educational sessions. Throughout the whole project period, throughout the company that you're working in, there has to be educational sessions to educate people, newcomers, people who have gone, people who have joined the team. What it means to implement BIM in this environment, because every company could implement BIM differently. Not because you've done beam once on one project that means, then you go and you seamlessly blend in with your new team on a different project. No, there has to be educational prepositions. Some people asked, how do I get started with implementing them? You implement them. First, how do you recommend that? Start with the pilot project. Pick a project that works. Pick a project that'll have a suitable size for your applications and start with that project as your case study, as your pilot. Figure out, are your workflows going to work? Is the software going to serve your purpose? Will it provide you with a good return on investment? There has to be executive support. There has to be leadership support. There has to be mention of BIM and the requirements in the contract specifications. It has to be a contractual requirement, it cannot be an option. Bear in mind, that today it's a mobile world. You have to be able to reach all the project team. If you have a project that has 500 people working on it, you have to have the mobility to go mobile within this BIM environment. People have their phones with them all the time. Take advantage of that, make sure that they can access the BIM model through that. You have to make sure that you have mapped out workflow, set structure, set processes to make sure that everyone is on the same page and doing the process that required your final BIM deliverable to be produced following the same methodology. Rather than ending up with disconnected BIM models that are coming from either the design team team or from the construction team. And collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. Collaboration is key in the BIM environment, there are contractual requirements that prevent us from collaborating as we could and to the potential that we could, because of these contractual requirements. But, we still have to be able to navigate these contractual agreements and figure out, how can we collaborate and share information for the greater benefit of that specific project. So this concludes the course. As we mentioned, we covered the implementation of BIM. On different phases of the life cycle. Trends in the construction technology, different applications, and how we can utilize these applications with a select few from a construction management perspective. Thank you for attending.
