Slate Technologies Launches Digital Assistant For Building Projects

New platform uses AI and machine learning to maximize revenue and productivity for construction projects.

Slate Technologies has launched a digital assistant for the construction industry. Slate uses AI and machine learning to improve the productivity of construction professionals by enabling better, earlier decision making to keep building projects on time, maximizing revenue. Among the company’s early development collaborators include multinational construction leader Skanska.

Slate TechnologiesThe Slate Digital Assistant executes multi-dimensional analysis across internal and external data sources, learning as it goes to offer full transparency into the building process. These data sources include ERP systems, emails, RFIDs, 3D models and other construction-related information; along with public data such as weather, labor, and traffic; dark data locked in silos, and non-integrated systems within general contractor and subcontractor organizations.

“We’re very grateful for Slate in helping Skanska navigate the valuable unstructured data that doesn’t sit in one place and doesn’t sit in a beautifully crafted data lake or data warehouse,” stated Andrew MacAskill, Operational efficiency Director at Skanska UK. “It’s been such a fruitful partnership for us, and we genuinely believe Slate could be a game changing opportunity for the whole industry and we wanted to be part of its development and be in it from the very start.”

Globally, construction sector labor-productivity growth averaged 1 percent a year over the past two decades, compared with 2.8 percent for the total world economy and 3.6 percent for manufacturing, according to McKinsey. By integrating and analyzing data from almost any location, Slate’s proprietary dynamic scheduling capabilities ensure change decisions can immediately update an overall schedule, and the order of individuals’ tasks. This dramatically boosts efficiency, improving every step of the building process. Through its integrations with subcontractors and material suppliers’ software and systems, Slate’s data insights are valuable to the executive suite, as well as any individual executing tasks on a project.

“Slate is the catalyst for a significant shift in how we deliver buildings, where software works hand-in-hand with humans to transform productivity and profitability,” said Jeff Bettencourt, CEO of Slate. “In construction, a building project is only on schedule on the day its master schedule is created. Slate offers the first-time ability for construction companies to see what is happening with all aspects of a project – including materials, workers, and weather – to perceive problems so they can make changes along the way, minimizing waste and costs while maximizing productivity and revenue.”

Click here for more news items and stories about Technology & Facility Management.