My Journey in Construction Technology

I’ve spent the past 13 years of my life using cutting-edge technology to optimize construction. It may not be surprising to hear that construction is one of the least digitized sectors of the world economy, second only to agriculture. However, McKinsey Global Institute stated that “the construction sector is one of the largest in the world economy, with about $10 trillion spent on construction-related goods and services every year.” Grace Ellis, of Autodesk, reported that “23% of [construction] firms report they are taking steps to improve jobsite performance with lean construction techniques, tools like [Building Information Modeling], and offsite prefabrication.” I am working hard to be the change I want to see. I work for a company that is owned by Stanford graduates. There is a world-renowned Stanford professor on our board of advisors along with one of the top people at Amazon Web Services. With all of that talent and knowledge, it can still sometimes feel like we are taking two steps forward and one step back. It’s progress, but it is a steady fight. When I started my journey in construction technology, we were in the thick of the great recession. I was a year away from graduating from UC Berkeley and took an internship at a well-established structural engineering firm. That internship changed the course of my future. I was fascinated by a little-known program at the time called Revit. It was like the easy button to all the heartache I had experienced with AutoCAD and this structural engineering firm was implementing it on all of their projects. I had to be a part of it.

For people that have not used Revit, here’s a simple explanation. Imagine that you are tasked with providing design information for a room. One wall had a window. Another has a door. Instead of redrawing both walls from scratch, you simply add a section cut facing the wall with the window and another section cut facing the wall with the door. Two steps and you are automatically given what would have taken 100 steps. That was very fancy for 2008. Jump ahead 13 years and now I can use Power BI to show the return on investment for issues I was able to solve with building designs before a shovel even touches the construction site. I recently saved $3 million dollars on a 20 story high rise in Phoenix, Arizona. I don’t live in Phoenix, Arizona. I worked for 6 months with the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection subcontractors as well as the owner, designer, and general contractor to find and fix major issues. We all worked together weekly and sometimes daily without ever seeing each other in person. Video conferencing is a way of life in construction technology.

At my company, we believe that the secret to construction success is the right people, the right process, and the right technology working together. Looking back on the past 13 years of my career, I would have to say without a doubt that every time I ran into trouble, one of the three was missing. As soon as that one element was fixed, things improved dramatically. I recently started one of my own construction projects. I am in the process of designing and building an accessory dwelling unit for my mom in my backyard. I used a fairly unknown technology called laser scanning to scan my backyard. I took that scan and now have a perfect 3D representation of my backyard. I can see my existing fence-line and the exterior walls of my main house. With that, I was able to create a 600 square foot space for my mom. It includes an open concept living room and dining room. There’s a bedroom with a barn door that can open to increase the feel of the space and a relatively spacious bathroom. My mom’s accessory dwelling unit is larger than my first apartment in San Francisco. It’s exciting to think that this small space will be the representation of 13 years of my experience in the construction industry. I used every trick I learned to optimize the process. Think good thoughts for us. We are about to start construction soon.

Hey did I mention I’m a lady? That’s right, I’m a 30 something year old woman. I bet you are not surprised to hear that women only make up a small part of the construction industry. Lior Zitzman of Big Rentz just came out with a 2021 infographic on women in construction. Lior states, “Of all the people working in construction, women comprise only 10.3 percent. Even smaller is the number of women on the front lines of a job site—only one for every 100 employees in the field. Considering that women make up 47 percent of all employed individuals, this means that the construction industry is only benefitting from about 1.25 percent of women in the workforce.”

So if anything I told you sounds cool, maybe think about telling your daughters in junior high, high school, and college, that the construction industry desperately needs them. There is a labor shortage in the construction industry lower than the national average and many people are on the verge of retiring. Plus, the McKinsey study “Why Diversity Matters,” states that companies with very gender-diverse executive suites were 15% more likely to generate above-average profitability compared to companies whose executive teams were predominantly white and male. If that weren’t enough reason, the National Association of Women in Construction states, “Women in the U.S. earn on average 81.1 percent of what men make. The gender pay gap is significantly smaller in construction occupations, with women earning on average 99.1 percent of what men make.” I can confirm this is true from personal experience.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that construction technology deserves way more attention than it’s getting in the media. An intern at our company recently said that we are the Tony Starks of the construction industry and I’d have to agree with him. The intern loved the company so much that he decided to join our company as a full-time employee. We work hard to improve the safety, efficiency, and cost of construction. By the way, if you are interested in learning more, check us out. We are a woman-owned firm as well: www.viatechnik.com/.