The Launch of Smarter Construction

There’s no doubt that the short­age of hous­ing in major cities will increase all the more over the next decades. The UN esti­mates that by 2050, seven bil­lion of the world’s ten bil­lion peo­ple will be liv­ing in cities. New met­ro­pol­i­tan cen­ters of unprece­dent­ed size will arise. There are cur­rent­ly more than thir­ty megac­i­ties of more than ten mil­lion inhab­i­tants. Liv­ing space is becom­ing ever more scarce. Accord­ing to an analy­sis by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum, around 1.6 bil­lion more homes will be need­ed in the next thir­ty years alone. More­over, peo­ple in many urban cen­ters are at a turn­ing point. They no longer want urban plan­ning to focus on cars, but instead want green­er and more sus­tain­able poli­cies. At the same time, build­ings are fac­ing ever greater demands—they are sup­posed to be smarter, more ener­gy-effi­cient, and offer uni­ver­sal access. All these con­sid­er­a­tions are direct­ly linked to the fol­low­ing ques­tion: What should con­struc­tion be like in the future?

Con­struc­tion sites of the future will pro­duce hard­ly any exhaust gases or noise pol­lu­tion. They will be much safer and more order­ly. Above all, they will be faster and more effi­cient. Elec­tri­fied exca­va­tors con­trolled remote­ly by cam­era will be con­nect­ed with con­struc­tion machin­ery fea­tur­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed sen­sor sys­tems that let them proac­tive­ly noti­fy man­u­fac­tur­ers of any tech­ni­cal prob­lems. Drones will fly over­head to reg­is­ter progress at the site. And dri­ver­less trucks will deliv­er entire pre­fab­ri­cat­ed build­ing mod­ules just in time, which will be assem­bled in short order by robots. A large part of the work will be done in fac­to­ry halls before the ground is bro­ken. Skilled work­ers at the site will assume large­ly coor­di­nat­ing func­tions or work “hand in hand” with the robots. And vir­tu­al dash­boards will always be avail­able to let them mon­i­tor and guide con­struc­tion progress in real time.

Much of this is still a long way off. “Lit­tle has changed at con­struc­tion sites for decades, and the teams often lose track of the over­all pic­ture,” says Uwe Brühl, vice pres­i­dent of dig­i­tal build­ing solu­tions at the Sto Group, a leader on the inter­na­tion­al mar­ket for inno­v­a­tive con­struc­tion mate­ri­als based in the Black For­est town of  Stüh­lin­gen. “Con­struc­tion machines are becom­ing more effi­cient and new process­es are tak­ing root, but most build­ings are still made on a crafts­man­ship basis.” The abil­i­ty to adhere to sched­ules depends on weath­er con­di­tions and fre­quent­ly also on chance, and con­struc­tion defects have a neg­a­tive effect on the com­pa­ny image. Although price-adjust­ed pro­duc­tiv­i­ty per work­ing hour has increased by an aver­age of 44 per­cent rel­a­tive to work vol­ume from 1991 to 2018, the con­struc­tion indus­try has essen­tial­ly stag­nat­ed, with a 4 per­cent increase dur­ing the same peri­od of time. In Brühl’s opin­ion, the his­to­ry and tra­di­tions of the trades are act­ing like a brake on progress. “For a sim­ple sin­gle-fam­i­ly house, you need dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sion­als to do the exca­va­tion, shell con­struc­tion, tiling, san­i­tary facil­i­ties, win­dows, and roof, so you end up with thir­ty or forty spe­cial­ists, each with their own plans and views. This results in new line­ups for every project, and these con­di­tions often make it impos­si­ble to have effi­cient process­es.

Yet anoth­er prob­lem lies in the short­age of skilled work­ers, both now and in the future. This sit­u­a­tion is evi­dent across the indus­try. Large-scale con­struc­tion projects in indus­tri­al coun­tries are no longer pos­si­ble with­out the help of migrant work­ers. But these work­ers tend to con­cen­trate only in the boom mar­kets of cer­tain regions. In addi­tion, high­ly qual­i­fied young pro­fes­sion­als such as engi­neers and archi­tects are switch­ing to other indus­tries after a few years. And con­struc­tion costs have been ris­ing the world over. These fac­tors are prompt­ing investors to search for alter­na­tive solu­tions. Replac­ing a pure­ly project-ori­ent­ed atti­tude with a mass pro­duc­tion approach fea­tur­ing high­er lev­els of stan­dard­iza­tion and mod­u­lar­iza­tion could achieve the sought-after level of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at con­struc­tion sites. The advan­tage of this method lies in the abil­i­ty to put build­ings togeth­er like Lego blocks. An aston­ished world wit­nessed how the prin­ci­ple works in early 2020 in the Chi­nese city of Wuhan at the start of the corona­virus epi­dem­ic. Two com­plete­ly equipped hos­pi­tals were set up there by mod­u­lar means in only ten and twelve days, respec­tive­ly. Yet the indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion of homes is an issue that has divid­ed experts since the begin­ning of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Its crit­ics fear a “McDonaldiza­tion” of archi­tec­ture.

“Mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy has taken mod­u­lar con­struc­tion to new heights. We can pro­duce build­ings in more indi­vid­u­al­ized ways and on con­sid­er­ably high­er lev­els than ever before. We can reduce com­plex­i­ty by a fac­tor of ten, and over­come some of the tra­di­tion­al divi­sions of labor among the trades and replace them with strong value-adding part­ner­ships,” says Brühl. In the USA and Cana­da, the Sto Group and its net­work of part­ners have been mak­ing mod­u­lar inte­ri­or walls and façade com­po­nents since 2013, which are fur­nished with insu­lat­ing mate­ri­als, plas­ter, paint, brick­work, nat­ur­al stone, or stuc­co ele­ments and then deliv­ered for assem­bly. What does this mean for total con­struc­tion times? “It short­ens the con­struc­tion time for some­thing like a hotel project from one and half years to six months,” says Brühl.

Accord­ing to Mikael Hed­berg, CEO of the Finnish Admares start-up, con­struc­tion sites should essen­tial­ly become assem­bly sites as soon as their foun­da­tions and base­ments are com­plet­ed. “We’re mov­ing con­struc­tion sites into fac­to­ries, because auto­mat­ed pro­duc­tion of mod­u­lar­ized build­ing com­plex­es is the only way to sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve the qual­i­ty and reduce the costs in the real estate sec­tor,” he says. He expects this approach to cost up to 30 per­cent less than con­ven­tion­al con­struc­tion meth­ods. It would shift 80 to 95 per­cent of the value-adding process­es from con­struc­tion sites to indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties, and bring enor­mous changes to the tra­di­tion­al build­ing sec­tor.

Hed­berg sees numer­ous advan­tages to that. “There will be less noise, traf­fic, and dirt for near­by res­i­dents,” he notes. “And we’ll reduce con­struc­tion waste by 60 to 70 per­cent.” There are pos­i­tive effects for con­struc­tion work­ers and trades­peo­ple as well. Employ­ees with­out spe­cial­ized knowl­edge can be trained quick­ly. And they can work in fac­to­ry halls that are pro­tect­ed from wind and weath­er, and where large num­bers of com­po­nents are made under indus­tri­al con­di­tions in accor­dance with a log­i­cal sys­tem devel­oped by archi­tects and engi­neers. By 2022 at the lat­est, Hed­berg wants to start up the world’s first fac­to­ry that will pro­duce entire ready-to-use hotels, res­i­den­tial build­ings, and hos­pi­tals. All sec­tions of the build­ings will be pro­duced in the fac­to­ry, along with key prod­ucts such as fixed fur­ni­ture, win­dows, doors, and bath­room mod­ules. All pre-fab­ri­cat­ed sec­tions will then be joined on the main assem­bly line before being trans­port­ed to the con­struc­tion site. At the site itself only the final minor steps will be car­ried out, such as con­nect­ing the building’s room mod­ules and core ele­ments. That com­pris­es only 2 to 10 per­cent at most of the entire con­struc­tion process.

Mod­ern ship­build­ing process­es gave Hed­berg his inspi­ra­tion. Cab­ins are pre­fab­ri­cat­ed and lift­ed onto lux­u­ry lin­ers by cranes, deck by deck, until all the sec­tions are then joined into a whole. Anoth­er exam­ple is the auto­mo­tive indus­try. “When cus­tomers order a Porsche sports car, they can choose one of a large num­ber of pos­si­ble con­fig­u­ra­tions,” he says. “You won’t get iden­ti­cal 911s rolling from the pro­duc­tion line. Our cus­tomers should also be able to use a con­fig­u­ra­tion sys­tem to design their build­ings indi­vid­u­al­ly, and see the price and timetable for any given vari­ant.”

Dig­i­tal­iza­tion is rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing plan­ning process­es in the con­struc­tion sec­tor for both the trades and indus­try. “There will be fun­da­men­tal changes to our plan­ning and design work in the future, and we’ll ben­e­fit from other sec­tors’ dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies in the process,” says Brühl. As the Sto Group’s vice pres­i­dent of dig­i­tal build­ing solu­tions, this expert is deal­ing direct­ly with the trans­for­ma­tion him­self. As he notes, “Most con­struc­tion sites still base their plan­ning on 2D-sup­port­ed doc­u­ments.” A more mod­ern approach is to have a “dig­i­tal twin” of each build­ing project, gen­er­at­ed by a process known as BIM (build­ing infor­ma­tion mod­el­ing). The core of BIM is a three-dimen­sion­al dig­i­tal model that con­tains all the con­struc­tion details and doc­u­ments all the process­es through­out the building’s life cycle, includ­ing every­thing from progress at the con­struc­tion site to sub­se­quent mod­ern­iza­tion. With inter­faces to all the skilled trades and stake­hold­ers involved, work can take a more con­cert­ed form. BIM plat­forms will also soon be offer­ing dock­ing options for con­struc­tion machin­ery and their data. Sys­tems of these types open up enor­mous oppor­tu­ni­ties. As just one exam­ple, Ger­man com­pa­nies could guide con­struc­tion sites in China with­out being phys­i­cal­ly present.

When things final­ly get mov­ing at con­struc­tion sites, exca­va­tors, wheel load­ers, bull­doz­ers, cranes, dump trucks, and other spe­cial­ized con­struc­tion machines get to work. Many man­u­fac­tur­ers envi­sion a future busi­ness sec­tor con­sist­ing of clean­er, qui­eter, and more effi­cient machin­ery. All the lead­ing mak­ers have already pre­sent­ed ini­tial pro­to­types. “Elec­tric mobil­i­ty and alter­na­tive pow­er­trains are an increas­ing­ly sig­nif­i­cant field not only for cars and vans,” says  Patrick Scherr, senior vice pres­i­dent of Schaeffler’s Offroad Europe busi­ness unit. “The mak­ers of con­struc­tion vehi­cles and machin­ery are advanc­ing elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of their own prod­ucts. They’re installing elec­tric dri­ves espe­cial­ly in small­er con­struc­tion machines and lower per­for­mance cat­e­gories. Hybrid dri­ves are also increas­ing­ly of inter­est. There’s a high demand for sys­tems that sup­port sim­ple activ­i­ties and also offer a sec­ondary power source when high per­for­mance lev­els are need­ed, such as for exca­va­tors or medi­um-sized wheel load­ers.” Scha­ef­fler offers fric­tion-opti­mized and robust roller-bear­ing solu­tions for chal­leng­ing oper­a­tional con­di­tions.

Dr. Rüdi­ger Kaub empha­sizes the role of gov­ern­ment actors and reg­u­la­tions in pro­mot­ing zero-emis­sions con­struc­tion machin­ery. As chair­man of the man­age­ment board of Bauer Maschi­nen, he vis­its con­struc­tion sites on a daily basis. Clients inter­est­ed in the spe­cial­ized exca­va­tion machines from this Bavaria-based leader on the world mar­ket read like a who’s who of con­struc­tion cor­po­ra­tions. “Calls for con­struc­tion project pro­pos­als from our neigh­bors in the Nether­lands, for exam­ple, or in Sin­ga­pore, require the machin­ery to leave a min­i­mal CO2 foot­print and pro­duce very lit­tle noise,” says Kaub. After all, in many places these machines run essen­tial­ly around the clock. And elec­tri­fi­ca­tion is not always pos­si­ble. “Heavy-duty exca­va­tors with around 1,000 horse­pow­er run on diesel engines, and that’s not going to change all that quick­ly,” says Pro­fes­sor Sebas­t­ian Bauer, man­ag­ing direc­tor for R&D at Bauer Maschi­nen. “There could in fact be elec­tri­cal solu­tions for medi­um-sized exca­va­tion machin­ery, but they would need spe­cial wiring and facil­i­ties or all the lights would go out at the con­struc­tion sites.” A down­siz­ing trend is also evi­dent. “For decades our fleet was get­ting big­ger, heav­ier, and more pow­er­ful, but there will be greater calls in the future for more com­pact, light­weight, and trans­portable machines more suit­able for the tighter space in urban con­texts. We can prob­a­bly lower noise lev­els by a sub­stan­tial amount with devel­op­ments in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing,” explains Kaub. The com­pa­ny is also study­ing the use of fuel cells and hydro­gen dri­ves.

All con­struc­tion experts agree that in order to increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, con­struc­tion machines need high­er lev­els of automa­tion and the abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with each other. That will make these expen­sive machines more effi­cient, and allow them to be used around the clock. “Numer­ous assis­tance sys­tems are sup­port­ing dri­vers today, which means the machines are already par­tial­ly auto­mat­ed,” says Kaub. “These dig­i­tal assis­tants make it pos­si­ble for less expe­ri­enced work­ers to oper­ate the machines too.” That could be one answer to the short­age of skilled con­struc­tion work­ers. Many parts of the world now use dri­ver­less dump trucks to make rounds and trans­port raw mate­ri­als on set routes, for exam­ple at mines in Aus­tralia and South Amer­i­ca.

Auto­mat­ed func­tions not only improve safe­ty lev­els at con­struc­tion sites. They also reduce dri­ver fatigue and help com­par­a­tive­ly inex­pe­ri­enced users be more pro­duc­tive. Scha­ef­fler Par­a­van, a sub­sidiary of Scha­ef­fler, has devel­oped a suit­able base­line tech­nol­o­gy for this pur­pose, name­ly, its Space Drive drive-by-wire dig­i­tal con­trol sys­tem, which assumes all the dri­ving and steer­ing process­es with­out mechan­i­cal con­nec­tions. It process­es elec­tron­ic sig­nals with­in nanosec­onds and trans­mits them via actu­a­tors to the axles. Elec­tron­ic sig­nals con­trol accel­er­a­tion, brak­ing, and steer­ing. Tra­di­tion­al steer­ing wheels, ped­als, and steer­ing columns are no longer need­ed to trans­mit com­mands mechan­i­cal­ly to the wheels. The advan­tage here is that con­struc­tion vehi­cles can be oper­at­ed via tablets, apps, or remote con­trol sys­tems while the oper­a­tors stand off to the side or in com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent loca­tions. “Schaeffler’s Space Drive sys­tem has been used suc­cess­ful­ly for many years now, both on the roads and in vehi­cles like min­ing trucks,” says Scherr. “It’s a proven tech­nol­o­gy that we’re pro­vid­ing to run con­struc­tion machin­ery autonomous­ly.”

“It will be anoth­er fif­teen or twen­ty years before we see fully auto­mat­ed dri­ver­less machines at typ­i­cal con­struc­tion sites,” esti­mates Bauer. “When we reach that stage, the dri­vers will take on dif­fer­ent jobs such as super­vis­ing and coor­di­nat­ing the autonomous machines from con­trol rooms, and being ready to inter­vene and make cor­rec­tions at any time.” As chair­man of the board of the Research Asso­ci­a­tion for Con­struc­tion Build­ing and Mate­r­i­al Machines (FVB) and pres­i­dent of the Otto von Guer­icke Fed­er­a­tion of Indus­tri­al Research Asso­ci­a­tions (AiF), his research takes place at the inter­faces between peo­ple and machines. “Inde­pen­dent con­trol as a semi-autonomous step will relieve dri­vers’ work­loads over the next ten to fif­teen years and help achieve greater lev­els of safe­ty and per­for­mance,” he says, adding that “this will be accom­plished with tech­nol­o­gy in the form of AI, 5G, GPS, cam­era sys­tems, radar, and soft­ware.”

Pre­dic­tive main­te­nance will play a key role in autonomous and con­nect­ed machin­ery at future con­struc­tion sites in areas like safe­ty, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and machine avail­abil­i­ty. While some sen­sors on mod­ern dredgers, wheel load­ers, and exca­va­tors scan the sur­round­ings, other sen­sors will mon­i­tor inner com­po­nents of the machines such as bear­ings and valves and detect even the slight­est devi­a­tions from nor­mal oper­a­tions. They will reg­is­ter engine speeds and noise lev­els as well as the tem­per­a­ture of oils and other oper­at­ing mate­ri­als. The com­bi­na­tion and analy­sis of these data will yield infor­ma­tion about the state of con­struc­tion machines. That in turn will pro­vide early infor­ma­tion on when cer­tain com­po­nents will wear out and should there­fore be replaced in order to pre­vent repair costs or unex­pect­ed out­ages. For predictive—as opposed to preventive—maintenance, the inter­vals are not spec­i­fied in advance. Instead, they are deter­mined on the basis of sen­sor data. Schaeffler’s Optime already offers an eco­nom­i­cal, wire­less, plug-and-play way to mon­i­tor sta­tion­ary assem­blies. Its sen­sors mon­i­tor vibra­tions at mea­sure­ment sites and fully auto­mat­i­cal­ly pro­vide oper­a­tors with analy­ses and rec­om­men­da­tions for action. Based on this expe­ri­ence and with dig­i­tal ser­vices in gen­er­al, Scha­ef­fler is superbly equipped to meet the chal­lenges in the con­struc­tion machin­ery sec­tor.

The engi­neers at Bauer can cur­rent­ly switch into around one thou­sand pieces of machin­ery regard­less of where they are being used. The machines reg­u­lar­ly send data pack­ages wire­less­ly to com­pa­ny head­quar­ters. “We use big-data appli­ca­tions to help our cus­tomers eval­u­ate and con­tin­u­ous­ly opti­mize our prod­ucts with updates and fine­ly tuned main­te­nance, which means we can increase qual­i­ty and func­tion­al­i­ty and length­en prod­uct ser­vice lives,” says Kaub. In the future it should be pos­si­ble to switch into the cab­ins in real time to sup­port dri­vers. High lev­els of data are chang­ing the busi­ness mod­els for com­pa­nies like Bauer. They are becom­ing ever more impor­tant sources of rev­enue and lay­ing the ground­work for new data-based ser­vices. Bauer is also giv­ing older machines a sec­ond chance by enhanc­ing them as far as pos­si­ble with soft­ware and new hard­ware. This lends new mean­ing to an old con­struc­tion site motto: What doesn’t fit will be made to fit.