What’s the right approach to digitizing the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry?

Digitization. Artificial intelligence. Machine learning.?

These terms have seemingly taken over the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry—and every other industry for that matter—over the past five years.?

But if every firm is putting resources into digitization efforts, how do you stand out? How do you make sure your company is the signal amidst the noise??

For starters, it takes real effort and forethought. This isn’t a Field of Dreams scenario where if you build AI and machine learning infrastructure, clients will immediately follow. Solely talking about your digital strategies and positioning yourself as a thought leader isn’t going to cut it.?

You must put in the work.?

It also matters in which sectors your digitization efforts are focused. According to the Environmental Financial Consulting Group’s (EFCG) AEC industry outlook, transportation, water, and environmental are the sectors expected to see the highest growth over the next decade. And that’s where the majority of Stantec’s digital solutions sit.?

Build trust?

Simply creating AI and machine learning programs isn’t enough. Customers aren’t just buying your technology or automated systems. They trust that the digital infrastructure you’re deploying was developed thoughtfully and with a purpose.?

And you build that trust with people.?

The delivery of digitization is more important than the technology itself. The creation of digital solutions is not a replacement for human intelligence. Successful digitization is built upon subject matter expertise. At Stantec, we quality control the output of our automated technology against traditional engineering and science models.?

That means our data undergoes rigorous training, testing, and evaluation before reaching the hands of our clients. We’re able to leverage our subject matter expertise to ensure that our data is accurate and robust.?

We use several metrics to chart our machine learning performance and we share these metrics with our customers to build their trust. For example, F-1 scores. F1 is a relatively simple metric that tells us how our models are performing in terms of making positive predictions correctly. The scores range between 0 and 1.?

A high score means the model makes positive predictions correctly, but also doesn’t miss positive cases in the dataset. Currently, our Flood Predictor digital solution achieves an F1 score of 0.9.?

Another metric we use to track our performance is an area under the curve or AUC score. Simply put, the curve is a graphical representation of a model’s performance at various thresholds. AUC scores also range from 0 to 1.?

An AUC score of 0.5 means that a model performs no better than randomly guessing. An AUC score close to 1 indicates that the model can effectively separate positive and negative cases. Flood Predictor has an AUC score of 0.9.?

Stantec’s digital technology team applies similar rigor to all our digitization and automation efforts. We don’t build black boxes that hide our methods.?

Clear communication?

Communication isn’t easy, especially in large firms. Since launching our Innovation Office and digital strategy in 2020, we’ve gone through several different iterations. We’ve shifted priorities and navigated growing pains. And with over 30,000 employees across different business lines, it’s challenging to keep everyone in the loop.?

Admittedly, we haven’t always made it easy on ourselves. We’ve used different acronyms, and different systems, and different processes that have all competed against each other. Our digital strategy hasn’t always been aligned across disparate teams.?

Over the past 12 months, we’ve worked hard to strip all the clutter away and provide concise and consistent communication to our staff on what our digital strategy is now and where we see it going forward.?

We want all our people working smarter and in new ways—which also means generating revenue from our digitization efforts. ???

Tech convergence?

For many AEC firms, there may be a tendency to rely on traditional methods to provide value for clients. And that approach does make rational sense. If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it, right??

Change can be uncomfortable. But it’s in that lack of comfort where significant growth and opportunity can occur. Spending the money to do digitization well is a risk. You might be sacrificing the bottom line now for the potential of success in the future.

But not moving toward strategic digitization might leave your AEC firm behind. According to the 2023 EFCG CEO survey, 80 percent of AEC firms report that attracting and retaining talent is their primary constraint to growth. Effectively deployed digitization and automation allows firms to do more with less.

And 75 percent of firms are increasing investments in innovation and technology to reduce billable time and increase project efficiency, which could be a race to the bottom if we don't find ways to generate new revenue.

?Plus, new players are entering the game. The division between engineering consulting, management consulting, and tech firms is blurring. There’s a merging of expertise. To stay current, traditional AEC firms need to look a lot more like technology and management consultant firms to win more work.

To sum up, thoughtful digitization is important, but clients still value relationships. The successful meld of people and transparent technology is what will define the AEC industry through the rest of this decade and beyond.

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