COMMENT Editor: David Chadwick (cad.user@btc.co.uk) News Editor: Mark Lyward (mark.lyward@btc.co.uk) Advertising Sales: Josh Boulton (josh.boulton@btc.co.uk) Production Manager: Abby Penn (abby.penn@btc.co.uk) Design/Layout: Ian Collis ian.collis@btc.co.uk Circulation/Subscriptions: Christina Willis (christina.willis@btc.co.uk) Publisher: John Jageurs john.jageurs@btc.co.uk Published by Barrow & Thompkins Connexion Ltd. 35 Station Square, Petts Wood, Kent BR5 1LZ Tel: +44 (0) 1689 616 000 Fax: +44 (0) 1689 82 66 22 SUBSCRIPTIONS: UK £35/year, £60/two years, £80/three years; Europe: £48/year, £85 two years, £127/three years; R.O.W. £62/year £115/two years, £168/three years. Single copies can be bought for £8.50 (includes postage & packaging). Published 6 times a year. © 2022 Barrow & Thompkins Connexion Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of the magazine may be reproduced, without prior consent in writing, from the publisher For more magazines from BTC, please visit: www.btc.co.uk Articles published reflect the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the publisher or his employees. While every reasonable effort is made to ensure that the contents of editorial and advertising are accurate, no responsibility can be accepted by the publisher for errors, misrepresentations or any resulting effects Comment A measure of intelligence? by David Chadwick Icame across this quote on my 'go to' political website: "If you value intelligence above all other human qualities, you're going to have a bad time". It's very relevant as intelligence is featuring highly on most platforms just now and occasionally, I hope, here as well. This is in reference to artificial intelligence and whether everybody's job are on the line as a result of it. AI has featured in several articles recently, and I would take issue with the second assumption, as the current use of AI within the industry concentrates on the effective use of information, assisted by the increasing complexity and inventiveness of human developed algorithms, that take advantage of the vastly more powerful computer systems at our disposal. A bit of a mouthful, but the point is that humans are still required to interpret and act upon the results of AI data manipulation, and that is based upon their experience and knowledge of the industry (and a bit of human intuition). So will the latest iterations of AI - Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI - which can 'teach' themselves to think, prove to be more insightful, or are they merely an extension of AI? Returning to the original quote, it doesn't take much intelligence to work out which jobs are most vulnerable. Most fall outside the construction industry, for example, and consist of repetitive jobs, replicated easily with simply defined requirements. Construction consists mainly of physical activity and the on-site management of construction teams. Real time interventions may be required at any time for a multitude of issues, making it a 'hands on' job, and it will still need input from experienced professionals to make instant decisions. The complex mass of supporting information, engineering change orders, cost management and scheduling also relies on a connected web of individuals, each of them reacting individually on behalf of their teams and the success of the whole project. Who is going to be responsible for tasking the 'Artificial Intelligence' with the job of overseeing all of that? There is a role for a greater reliance on the intelligence driving a project, though, highlighted at the recent Bentley Systems Year in Infrastructure Conference in Singapore. The huge amount of information that is amassed to support a project raises both opportunities for all stages of the construction process, but also raises questions about which information is useful, and how it is used. Infrastructure intelligence was therefore a feature of Greg Bentley's Keynote speech at the conference, and was followed by a technical session which featured Bentley experts and users, who spoke about the management of structured information using digital twins and AI, and its practical application in some very interesting case studies - outlined elsewhere in this issue. November is also the traditional time of year for The Hammers, the 17th Construction Computing Awards. It was a lively event, held at the Leonardo City Hotel in London, with excellent entertainment - and some well-deserved winners, of course. The projects submitted for the awards this year covered a wide range of complexities, originality and technologies and were a delight to read and judge. We will also be featuring some of them in future issues of the magazine. You will find a full round-up of this year's winners further on in this issue. Hats off also to the Lighthouse Club Construction Industry Charity, whose CEO, Bill Hill, spoke about the heartache behind some of the industry's worst statistics - the effect of the job on worker's mental health. 4 November/December 2023
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