Artificial intelligence and other new technologies are starting to ease the burden on Dubai’s construction sites, but humans will continue to be the ones wearing the helmets, said the CEO of contractor Alec Holdings.
The Dubai-based company, whose projects include SeaWorld Abu Dhabi, Dubai’s Bvlgari Resort Hotel, One Zabeel and Dubai Hills Mall, is currently using robotic dogs on project sites to monitor work progress and drillbots to do heavy lifting.
But the main benefits of AI aren’t necessarily on the front end, Barry Lewis said. The National In an interview.
“I think we need to adopt AI early. We need to use AI to increase efficiency,” he said. “There are many routine processes in the construction industry, so we are looking at how to use AI to optimize many of our systems and processes.
“So, given the stores and data collection, there’s no reason why you need to enter it manually. You should use AI to create matching concepts.”
Alec uses modular construction to meet his various project commitments. In modular construction, the manufactured components of the structure are assembled in a factory setting and transported to the site.
Another use of this technology is to monitor worker-specific task efficiency through watches.
“We do a lot of analysis on our employees. On construction projects, employees are only 35 to 45 percent productive,” he said. “That’s because they have to go to the site, make sure they have supplies, have lunch, leave, return to the site, and continue to rely on available logistics.
“Those are the constraints, so we use watches that work task-specifically. For example, if we have a plumber, we do time and motion studies, and when he wears the watch, we know exactly what time he’s actually doing the plumbing work.”
Developed by Dubai-based AI productivity platform Brix, the company’s data shows that while plumbers are active about 35% of the time when working on construction sites, they are 85% more productive when performing the same tasks in a factory environment.
“So we need to get to a place where we perform more tasks in a factory-controlled environment,” Lewis said.
But are employees comfortable with the idea of being monitored? “What it does is it gives us access to real-time data. So we use that to incentivize people… We say to them, if you achieve this, this is your productivity level at this moment.’ [higher] The company currently has about 7,000 watches and plans to more than double that number.
Although the use of technology is expanding, he doesn’t foresee a future where the entire building process is automated or done by robots.
“Anything that needs to be robotized needs scale and repetition. So if you think of a car factory, you need scale and repetition so that the factory has the bandwidth to invest the capital and design the equipment to manufacture, especially in an automated way,” he said.
However, in the case of non-uniform buildings, they do not add up from a cost perspective.
“You’re not going to make the same thing tomorrow that you make today,” Lewis said. “So if you tell us you want us to make 5,000 of a particular item, we’ll provide you with an optimized solution that probably involves robotics. When people talk about 3D printing, there’s the infrastructure and capital cost to create that equipment.” [automate] …It’s too expensive. ”
He said the company is focused on increasing productivity through modular units and moving work from construction sites to factory floors. You can also create an entire bathroom and transport it to the site.
“If we have 10,000 people on a project today, we should have 2,500 in the future,” he said.
Large addressable market
The company raised 1.4 billion dirhams ($381.2 million) in an initial public offering on the Dubai Financial Market in October, which was more than 21 times oversubscribed.
Dubai Investment Corporation, the main investment arm of the Dubai government, is currently Alec’s largest shareholder and has sold 1 billion ordinary shares, representing 20 per cent of the company’s share capital.
Alec works on projects in the UAE and Saudi Arabia across sectors such as leisure, hospitality, residential, commercial, airport expansion, retail and oil and gas, with a work backlog of AED 32.9 billion at the end of September last year. Some of the new projects the company is working on include the first phase of the Stargate data center in Abu Dhabi and the Wynn Resort in Ras Al Khaimah.
“Addressable market” [in the UAE and Saudi Arabia] It’s important. There’s a lot of opportunity in the data center space, there’s a lot of opportunity in the hospitality and entertainment space,” Lewis said.
He added that while the company remains open to new markets, it takes a lot of effort and time. “Right now, the two markets we are involved in are very bullish. In the short and medium term, we think there is enough bandwidth for us, but if one of our customers wants to move into a specific area that is not our normal area of work, we will look at it,” he said.
