Last Thursday I spoke on a panel How Technology is changing the $10 trillion construction industry at Seattle Startup Week with:
- Greg Howes - Cofounder, CutMyTimber, AEC Hackathon, Seattle Proptech
- Amy Hutchins - Founder, Chief Product & Technology Officer, Unearth Technologies
- Salla Palos - Director of Emerging Technology & Innovation, Sellen Construction
Greg Howes opened the panel discussion with a quote on a slide from Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost about AEC and Manufacturing are merging. He then asked the panel how we seen the changes and future of AEC construction.
The quote is from a great interview that you can read or listen to by Engineering.com with Andrew Anagnost. It provides a great understanding on what Autodesk is focusing on and helps you get to know our longtime Autodesk employee and now CEO.
Interview with Anagnost, Part 1: Constructive Criticism (How Construction is Doing It All Wrong)
“We believe the fastest growth manufacturing market in the world over the next 10 to 15 years is buildings and roads. We're not steering towards more AEC.
What we're seeing is manufacturing and construction coming together. “
We spoke for almost an hour on various topics including the value of technology in construction, AR/VR/XR in construction, power that the cloud to reduce errors and streamline data flow, AI and generative design, and how to make construction more efficient and streamlined with ideas like being able to submit BIM models to permit reviews instead of paper plans and then we took several questions from the audience. What was set to be an hour ran on almost 2 hours continued outside when they ushered us out of the closing building.
It was a great series of great discussions and I found the Seattle AEC focused tech startups and AEC construction attendees to be very progressive. In fact many when presented with the concept of manufacturing and AEC construction merging get defensive, but not in Seattle where they welcome the changes and recognize the highly inefficient past ways of doing things. It makes sense when you look at the massive construction going on in Seattle being the leader in AEC construction and tower cranes in the US. Seattle has always been an innovative and early adopter community in technology from the early days of Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon to the AEC construction leaders building the future of Seattle like Anderson, Turner, Skanska, McKinstry, Hoffman, Katerra and many others who are also Autodesk customers. I am a firm believer that Seattle can be a force with changing the $10 trillion construction industry. We at Autodesk love a big challenge and want to partner and help improve the efficiency of the AEC Construction as it is quite possibly our top focus across the company and certainly the biggest opportunity.
Thank you for everyone that participated, and I hope we continue the discussions and can collaborate on projects solving problems together. Please feel free to reach out and email me. I am in Seattle frequently and live just down the road in Portland and would love to get more engaged with the bustling and progressive Seattle AEC and tech community.
Come learn more at Autodesk University in a month where over 10,000 Autodesk customers will descend on Las Vegas and talk about the future of Making everything.
Cheers,
Shaan
