In our minds, the brief is intrinsically linked to the construction strategy.
Having our own clients presents us with a range of questions that we have to answer, and it requires a particular set of capabilities.We create solutions and give them to clients – for them to use.
That means our product has to work independently of us – it has to achieve a level of external usability and stability..Working in this way has also given us a lot of scope in terms of choosing what sort of team we want to be, to evolve sometimes according to the individuals who join the team, and to decide our own overall development path – but we’ve always been tethered strongly to the core intellectual drive of the company.. What is your position on AI/generative design/automation in construction/robotics in construction?.AI relies on large data sets.
These aren’t typically available in our sector so the use of AI in construction has been somewhat limited by that.Examples of AI are often narrowly defined and only really touch a very specific part of the overall process; the part for which large data sets do exist.. ‘Generative design’ means many things, but generally it’s an approach used in the industry to solve complicated problems; you use generative design to create loads of possible solutions or scenarios, from which you choose the best..
The Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) approach that we have in Bryden Wood – which is embedded in Creative Technologies – means that something like generative design can be more powerful, as it can be built around design rules and content that’s inherently more clearly defined..
When people in the industry talk about cutting-edge construction technologies, these are usually buzzwords about things that are not widely in use, generally misunderstood and unlikely ever to deliver the advertised benefits – because they’re not appropriate solutions and our industry is too far from ready.The technological advances of the last 50 years have allowed us to be able to model scenarios from millisecond by millisecond to decade by decade.
This allows us to control processes at both ends of the scale – from an oil refinery to a micro robot.This is a time when we need to learn from nature and think hard about scale..
Going back to the rise of mammals or Homo sapiens, a change in scale is an adaptation to a transforming environment.This is arguably exactly where we are today with industrialisation – the ground is shifting quickly, fissures are opening up, lethal challenge and paths to opportunity are open to us like they were to our ancestors in the Rift Valley.