Construction is a $12Tn industry suffering from very low productivity and digitization. This results in major delays and cost-overruns to be the norm, wasting $5Tn annually. In 2018, we identified the lack of real-time visibility on construction progress and performance to be a key problem. The manual reporting process means decisions made based on intuition as opposed to actionable insights and risks/issues managed with significant delay, resulting in majorrework, low productivity and compounding risks.
Last year, the Contilio and Imperial College London (ICL) partnership was awarded a significant Innovate UK R&D grant through the “transformingconstruction” challenge to tackle this key problem. Through application of cutting-edge technology, we have successfully developed an AI-based software for automating the broken construction progress and performance, thus, helping deliver construction and infrastructure projects on-time, on-budget and with significantly enhanced productivity and reliability. We have also conducted state of the art research into computer vision and deep learning methods for the Built environment. Building on the successful momentum of last year’s grant, this project will further advance Contilio’s 3D deep learning technology, conduct state-of-the-art research, and develop a complementary software module. We will develop a scalable and automated data labelling approach for 3D deep learning applications in the built environment and create an AI-based software prototype that fully automates the construction quality and certification processes. We will compare different data collection technology to evaluate whether low cost camera outputs could be used to collect reliable quality site data. We also will investigate the use of Scan-to-BIM methods, contributing significantly to the creation of smart and structured digital twins.
This project is conducted by Contilio, a fast-growing construction tech startup based out of London and Imperial College London’s Department of Computing and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with the support of multiple industry partners. It is aligned with the objectives of the UK Government Construction Strategy and ties into the overall BIM process.
