Glodon CEO: Improving Construction Productivity through Digital Technology

?“Digital technology should be at the core of creating new quality productive forces in the construction industry, with digital transformation aimed at refined management to develop new models for the industry’s growth.” ?

On July 3rd, during the 2024 Global Digital Economy Conference, Yuan Zhenggang, Chairman and President of Glodon, delivered a keynote speech at the 2024 Industrial Internet Innovation Development Forum. He elaborated on how BIM software, digital business platforms, and AI in the construction industry are shaping new quality productive forces and empowering the sector’s development.?

BIM Software: Enhancing Efficiency and Value in Design?

The three-dimensional graphics platform engine has been a bottleneck in the sector’s digital development. Glodon, with over 20 years of accumulated industry expertise, has successfully addressed this issue through independent core technology research and practical application. The self-developed 3D graphics platform engine and BIM software enable multi-level applications at industry, enterprise, and job levels. For instance, the BIMFACE product, based on lightweight models and drawings combined with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), offers online model rendering, model data, and business capabilities, achieving data lightweighting large-scale, high-performance models.?

The Digital Design Product Suite, born from the controlled 3D graphics platform engine and BIM, ensures design efficiency, extends design value, and enhances design quality. Core products include Digital Building Design, Digital Structural Design, Digital MEP Design, and Digital Road Design. Each product has unique features such as modular design, automated drawing, and integrated quantity takeoff for Digital Building Design, and automated rebar design review for Digital Structural Design, ensuring BIM design efficiency and cross-disciplinary data synchronization.?

Glodon’s collaborative design platform enables efficient 2D and 3D collaborative design, doubling project collaboration efficiency, extending BIM value, and ensuring strict design quality control. For example, the Glodon Smart Construction and South China Headquarters project deeply applied integrated design solutions, becoming the first project to use Glodon’s self-developed 3D design software and collaborative platform, achieving full professional collaborative design and multi-party design management, quantity takeoff, and design-construction integration.?

Moreover, Glodon has opened its platform to various industries such as highways, shipbuilding, railways, power grids, and water conservancy, allowing them to develop suitable products on the platform, truly realizing ecosystem cooperation and mutual benefits.?

Glodon Business Platform: The Foundation for Digital Development in the Construction Industry?

“Platformization is the inevitable path for industrial digital transformation,” Yuan Zhenggang stated. The digital transformation of industries evolves continuously from digital empowerment to platform sedimentation and then to business innovation. Digital empowerment enhances existing business efficiency, platform sedimentation achieves core capability reuse and business integration, and business innovation integrates data to drive data-driven and AI applications in the industry.?

Glodon Business Platform, a core PAAS platform for the construction industry’s digital transformation, provides the necessary core capabilities through an open architecture. It meets the digital needs of construction enterprise clients and independent software vendors (ISVs) in business integration, product adaptation, application development, and ecosystem promotion.?

Business standards, industry knowledge, and core technologies are the foundational prerequisites and key supports for industry digitalization. Glodon shares these digital core capabilities and provides out-of-the-box platform component capabilities, accelerating enterprise digital transformation and avoiding redundant efforts.?

With over 50 core products integrated into the Glodon Business Platform, Glodon helps enterprises achieve business, system, and data connectivity, unlocking innovation potential.?

AI in the Construction Industry: Ushering in a New Era of Digitalization?

Since 2015, Glodon has dedicated significant resources to AI research and development, resulting in over 100 intelligent applications. In 2023, Glodon launched its “All in AI” strategy, intensifying its investment in generative AI for the construction sector, aiming to drive innovation in construction intelligence.?

The core capabilities of AI in the construction industry include automating repetitive tasks, data-driven analysis and decision-making, and understanding and generating professional content. Glodon’s advanced graphics engine, comprehensive knowledge graph, extensive application software, and wide range of application scenarios provide the necessary data and domain knowledge for developing AI tailored to the construction industry.?

Recently, Glodon unveiled the AecGPT, a large AI model for the construction industry, along with an AI platform. This marks a significant breakthrough in leveraging AI to drive digital transformation in the construction sector. The AecGPT model is designed for industry-level applications, covering seven key areas: planning, design, procurement, cost management, construction, operations, and comprehensive management. It boasts capabilities in automation, analytical decision-making, and content generation.?

Glodon is committed to integrating AI across the entire lifecycle of construction software products, introducing AI-native applications with a fresh perspective. These applications include AI design, AI quantity takeoff, AI scheduling, AI materials management, AI procurement, AI safety, and AI education. For instance, the AI design product, Concetto, is a next-generation design software driven by data and AI, supporting design, analysis, and output at the master plan stage.?

Yuan Zhenggang concluded by stating that AI+ projects, based on data and connectivity, are opening a new chapter in the digitalization of the construction industry. Digital transformation with a focus on refined management will represent a new paradigm for the development of the construction industry.?