Post 3: The Future Technology of the AEC Industry

Bill Allen projected a future where computers handle more and more of the design process under the direction of engineers. He summarized the past, present, and predicted future of the AEC industry’s use of computers as “data gathering, data manipulation, data optimization.” Data gathering refers to manually going through a model and collecting information about it, writing it down, and then using it to change a building manually as well. Data manipulation refers to using programs to create multiple design iterations faster than by doing them by hand. Data optimization is where a computer runs through many design iterations and selects an optimal one given user-supplied constraints. Both data manipulation and optimization can be called automated design. His view is that data optimization will be the future of the AEC industry.
While I agree that data optimization will eventually dominate AEC, I believe it will take more than 10 years until this point is reached. First, I would argue from my experience that the industry is still data gathering and has yet to embrace data manipulation. I believe that this will likely become commonplace in the next 10 years. Adoption of this will likely be met with resistance since it requires a better understanding and use of coding and new computer programs, but its time-saving features will eventually bring it into mainstream design. This is only data manipulation though.
Data optimization will likely take well over 10 years until it becomes the standard in the AEC industry. Based on an optimization research project that a professor showed me in another class, the building industry needs people with mathematical knowledge beyond that of the average engineer to create tools that leverage data optimization to its full potential. Once these tools are created and implemented, I would also imagine that engineers would have to use advanced math much more often then they currently do. For these reasons, I believe that it will take more than 10 years for the engineering part of the AEC industry to transition to data optimization.
However, I can see basic applications of automated design coming into building design. Within 10 years, may be used for minor tasks, like automatically running a first pass on laying ductwork/piping/structural elements/electrical elements. It will undoubtedly power newer clash detection and rerouting tools. I believe that automated design will, in time, revolutionize the ACE industry and that it will vastly improve the resulting buildings while reducing time and cost by an equally impressive measure. I unfortunately don’t foresee this all happening within 10 years though.

Autodesk University. (2016, November 26). The Future of BIM Will Not Be BIM—and It's Coming Faster than You Think. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq6yKyauu-o

Harvin Bhandal,
I believe we took two different approaches to reach the same conclusion. I had not fully considered how adoption of this technology would be slowed down by the engineers who it would be made for. You make several good points about the current condition of the industry- the great difference in the use of technology from firm to firm- and the underlying reasons for it. I agree that this situation would be the same for automated design, though the extreme reduction in time and therefor cost of design may cause it to be adopted more universally. I’d like to add on that customers may also want a human-created design, similar to the handmade products favored in other industries.

Albert Hanan,
You have a co-op’s experience in the AEC industry than I do and what you shared in your post reinforced my opinion of the industry’s current usage of computer automated design. I had not seen the usage of Dynamo for anything besides automating data location and retrieval at CRB, a larger firm that I worked at. Hearing that you had similar experiences at both firms you work with was somewhat surprising to me; I had expected that Jacobs might use the most up-to-date technology available. This makes me more certain that it will take time for automated design to become a dominating force in the AEC industry.

Alec Silverstone,
You bring up a good point: the tools for “co-created” design will likely not be interoperable. If the current state of the industry holds into the future, these tools will only be available as a part of expensive software suites like Revit or Bentley. This would likely favor large firms that have the resources to afford the software and necessary training and put smaller companies at a great disadvantage. Similarly, if one company were to create these tools before any other, it may hold a disproportionately large piece of the market. This technology, which would certainly improve the resulting buildings while reducing cost and design time, could have serious implications for some parts of the AEC industry.