ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — An Atlanta and Silicon Valley-based company is trying to drive down construction costs using artificial intelligence.
“100% of the time, at any given moment, [construction] is behind,” said KP Reddy, a 30-year civil engineer and CEO of Zero RFI.
Reddy knows construction is an inexact science. He also knows that modern technology makes things harder.
Hundreds of people, dozens of businesses, thousands of emails, and timelines are all interdependent in construction projects. It makes it easy for things to get complicated and projects to fall behind.
“It rains, you have a supply chain issue, you can’t get a piece of material, and you have to change the game,” Reddy said.
Zero RFI bills itself as construction’s “assistant program manager” as actual managers retire faster than they, or their experience, can be replaced.
“With a new grad, it takes them 20-30 years to know what they’re doing,” Reddy said.
But with an AI manager, new workers don’t have to be experts on Day 1 to read and understand the drawings.
“Our North Star is we can reduce timelines by 30% and budget by 30%,” Reddy said.
That’s a big deal in an industry that hasn’t seen a long-term decline in material costs as tech has advanced.
Reddy believes AI efficiencies could trickle down to cost reductions for housing.
“That supply chain, and that capacity, all of a sudden housing costs come down, so things become really affordable,” Reddy said.
It makes sense in theory, but it still needs to be proven. Like AI itself, there’s a lot of promise, but also worries about whether it will actually work.
Reddy is confident.
“This has been my life’s work,” he said.
One thing he knows for sure is the industry can’t keep operating so expensively and inefficiently.
“Humans adapt,” he said. “We’re pretty smart.”
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