A multidisciplinary team from Texas A&M led by Zachary Grasley (Director, Texas A&M Center for Infrastructure Renewal) has received a Planning Grant for an Engineering Research Center for AI in Construction (AI-Con) from the National Science Foundation. This award supports the development of a research roadmap for implementing artificial intelligence (AI) in the construction industry and the formation of a multi-institutional team working toward an NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC).
Construction is one of the largest global industries, employing 7% of the world’s workforce and contributing more than $10T annually to the world economy. However, it has the lowest productivity of any manufacturing industry, labor-intensive jobs with significant safety risks, and ballooning costs. New AI technologies have the potential to address all these challenges, leading to massive, positive economic and social impact. AI is poised to revolutionize the construction industry similarly to how the assembly line revolutionized the automobile industry, leading to significant cost reductions, higher productivity, and safer, better paying jobs for the United States of America.
The planning grant team comprises PI Zachary Grasley (Director, Texas A&M Center for Infrastructure Renewal and Presidential Impact Fellow) and Co-PIs Zhijian Pei (TEES Research Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering), Amir Behzadan (Clark Construction Endowed Associate Professor in the Department of Construction Science), Nick Duffield (TEES Research Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and TAMIDS Director) and Korok Ray (Associate Professor and Director of the Mays Innovation Research Center).