A recent article in Building magazine highlighted that construction project costs have hit a five-year high. So how can you make sure that you keep your construction costs under control?

The construction industry has emerged as a key driver of the nascent commercial drone industry, which some analysts believe will top $5 billion by 2020. PwC estimates the current value of labour and services likely for replacement by drones to be $127.3 billion.

Technology is great, impacting most areas of our lives in really positive ways and making new things possible. However in many traditional industries such as construction, there’s quite a lot of work to be done before technology will dramatically change the way things are done.

It’s everywhere!  Throughout the construction industry, traditional manufacturers are selling various tech on their machines, while new technology-only suppliers are helping customers to retro-fit solutions to existing plant and machinery.

It barely needs mentioning that the construction eco-system is a highly competitive one.  Anyone who recently attended this year’s Hillhead event could see how the industry is hugely collaborative, innovative and eager to understand what everyone else is doing.

Whether you find it scary or not, artificial intelligence is the next chapter of the technology revolution, making its way into everyday life, and offering huge potential to every part of industry and business.

Essentially, artificial intelligence and machine-learning requires huge amounts of data gathered by sensors of all types, including from onsite machines.  By combining this to an understanding of what’s happened before better decisions can be made in future.