\nAnita Nelson<\/p>\n
Permission granted by Skanska USA<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
On a day-to-day basis, that means workers can ask the AI tool safety related questions via mobile or desktop and get instant support for planning a morning huddle or addressing a new hazard.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nBeyond text, if you’ve got a picture of site conditions that day, you can ask questions related to that image. The tool is also embedded into our workflow, so it’s not an added step in the day, it\u2019s very user friendly.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nSafety Sidekick is one of a suite of AI offerings that Skanska has. How does it fit into that?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h4>\nOur data solutions team, in collaboration with information technology, they’ve developed four secure internal AI tools.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThere’s Skanska Sidekick, which is based on OpenAI\u2019s GPT-4o model. That\u2019s a general use chat bot that protects user business data so you can ask it anything within our organization or outside our organization.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThen we have three \u201cexpert\u201d sidekicks.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nOne’s called My Skanska Sidekick, and that searches for key documents on our internal intranet site. So, if you’re looking for a risk management protocol or our sustainability report, or who’s the leader of something, you can ask it for that.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThen, we have an Operational Risk Sidekick, which is one of my other favorites, for our folks in the field. It\u2019s comprised of thousands of case studies and experiences across different project types and building systems. It gives you strategies and mitigation plans for existing risks on jobs.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nSafety Sidekick is the newest member of our suite.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWhat hurdles did you have to clear to make this AI available to your team?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h4>\nBecause we had developed others, it was really about making sure that we got the documents in place.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nOur early users constantly give us feedback in real time on what’s working and what’s not. We don’t launch things, you know, to all 3000-plus building employees right away. We take time to pilot, see what’s working, see what’s not.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nI don’t think we ran into any hurdles on this particular launch, because the technology is there.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nI don’t want to say it’s as easy as plug-and-play, because my data scientists would tell me it’s more complex than that. But really, a lot of our challenges are going to be about the quality of the data and whether our data warehouse has the right information.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWhat have been the benefits?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h4>\nOur early users are definitely reporting time saved when preparing safety briefings and improved jobsite engagement. I think that is critical.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWhen you’re preparing for a morning huddle, you might be preparing for that the night before. You might be planning that day before on your commute.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThis makes it really easy for people. They’re not getting to the trailer and figuring it out. They’re not staying late the night before to figure it out.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWhat advice would you give a smaller contractor who wants to implement this kind of tech?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h4>\nStart with the data that you know. You start with the low hanging fruit. When you’re looking at generative AI or language models, if you have documents and you want to have them scanned and create a chat bot on top of it, that’s all well and good.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nBut, if there’s not an infrastructure that you invest in to do that, that’s where you’re going to run into trouble.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAdditionally, we were able to build this ourselves. Don’t think you have to build it yourself.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\nWe have a big enough organization and a lot of our own systems and protocols that require that. But there are products off the shelf. I wouldn’t be able to list them or the sites, but I know they exist, and so you can start small by testing one thing.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n