Buildings 2.0
In this episode of Buildings 2.0, Jose speaks with Zak Kostura, Associate Principal & Digital Services Portfolio Leader for Americas East at Arup. Zak shares his expertise on the transformative potential of AI in addressing complex design challenges, the importance of managing digital teams to optimize project outcomes, and the pivotal role of digital tools in providing flexible, innovative solutions to client problems.
Zak's insights highlight how technology is reshaping the design and construction industry, making this episode a must-listen for professionals looking to stay ahead in an ever-evolving field. He also does a deep dive into the future of design and construction technology.
Topics discussed:
- The importance of managing practitioners to optimize project outcomes by understanding and effectively utilizing technology.
- How AI can address complex design challenges and improve project efficiency and innovation.
- The pivotal role of digital tools in providing flexible, innovative solutions tailored to client needs.
- How technologists can act as consultants to solve client problems elegantly and effectively.
- Finding instances where an idea shows potential for scalability and applying it across various projects.
- How digital products can serve as new touchpoints for clients, offering valuable insights into their design needs.
- Approaches to selecting the right technology for a project by understanding design team priorities and client requirements.
- The importance of bringing subject matter experts together to enhance design outcomes.
- The role of data engineering and data science in modern design and construction projects.
Guest Quotes:
#1.)
“Once you collect that data, you put it in the cloud, you build software that uses the data. How then do you change the way someone operates a building or the experience of a tenant within the space? That involves user experience. It involves data engineering and data science and software engineering, and understanding the role of stakeholders. So understanding all of that technology, maintaining that understanding as technology progresses, is a real challenge.” 5:10-5:40
#2.)
“Listen to the design team, understand the priorities, and then pick the technologies, whether they're ones that we've developed or ones that exist already from partners in design tech and construction tech, to bring to bear, to just have the best possible outcome on the design experience.” 8:11-8:37
#3.)
“Sometimes AI isn't the right answer, but I think that in terms of what we look for, when speed is a key and when detail is a key in the outputs, AI can be a really good, important part of that workflow.” 12:17-12:31
#4.)
“It gets back to what you were saying before, Jose. Every project is its own little snowflake, but we're taking the methodology, and we're making it a little bit more mature every time we deploy it. When you're not really changing the methodology as you go from client to client, you're just reinforcing and growing it.” 27:48-28:06
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