The construction industry needs a robot revolution
By Borja García de Soto, an assistant professor of civil engineering at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), a global network assistant professor of civil and urban engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and Director of NYUAD’s S.M.A.R.T. Construction Research Group.
There is no question that automation will change the way people work, but for some sectors of the economy, change is long overdue. Nowhere is this truer than in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC). For an industry with nearly $10 trillion in annual revenue—about 6 percent of global GDP—its performance is not great. Worldwide, the average big construction project takes 20 percent longer to complete than planned and runs a staggering 80 percent over budget.
