The construction industry is often criticised for its environmental impact, contributing to nearly 40% of global energy-related carbon emissions. Given this significant footprint, the urgent need for sustainable practices in construction is clear.

Fortunately, with rapid technological advancements, AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) software is playing a transformative role in shaping a greener future in construction around the world. From optimising design processes to reducing carbon footprints, AEC software offers an array of tools that are revolutionising the global construction industry.

This article by Gordon Rodger, Managing Director of the construction consultancy firm, Stonehaven, delves into how AEC software is driving sustainable construction across the globe, highlighting the cutting-edge technologies and innovative practices paving the way for a more sustainable future in building.

URL: https://www.aecbytes.com/feature/2024/SustainabilityTechnology.html

Houseal Lavigne is an urban planning and geospatial design firm that using cutting edge technologies including procedural and detailed 3D modeling, visualization and simulation, and publishing its designs as playable games that can be interactively explored. This article captures the details of its methodologies and toolset as well as several case studies highlighting its technology implementation, with projects range from several cities in the US to Dubai’s metaverse project, as well as a hypothetical city based on Ebenezer Howard’s famous “garden city” concept.

URL: https://www.aecbytes.com/feature/2024/HousealLavigne.html

Graphisoft continued its 2024 series of Building Together events with an Innovate event held last month that was specifically focused on how architectural firms were making innovative use of its technologies for extending their design capabilities on many fronts, including parametric design, sustainable architecture, open collaboration, cloud platforms, and managing extremely large projects. These were demonstrated by the firms themselves, and the event featured a variety of fascinating case studies, starting with the Athletes’ Village for the 2024 Paris Olympics. Kickoff to the world’s biggest sporting event is barely two weeks away, so it was doubly exciting to learn about a project that will be responsible for providing rest and relaxation to the athletes, as well as a space for them to recharge, as they go through the grueling schedule and competitions of the Games.

URL: https://www.aecbytes.com/feature/2024/GraphisoftInnovate2024.html

In this article, Dr Avgousta Stanitsa, Associate Design Researcher, and Sukhmit Singh, Digital Solutions Lead at AtkinsRéalis, show how, at the Building Design Research and Innovation (R&I) unit at AtkinsRéalis, they are generating impactful, emergent insight from data connectivity, dynamic technology ecosystems and continuous knowledge capture — and using it to enhance their design processes.

URL: https://www.aecbytes.com/feature/2024/AtkinsRealis.html

A couple of months ago, I attended an online webinar in which ES Global and Laing O’Rourke, two leading UK construction companies, shared how they were using cutting-edge technologies on their projects. It was part of the “Digital Building Week” event put together by the organization, Building Design. In addition to discussing the technologies, the firms also presented case studies showing how the technologies were being leveraged to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and meet project deadlines.

URL: https://www.aecbytes.com/newsletter/2024/issue_132.html

Last month, Graphisoft held the first of its Building Together events for 2024, one that was focused specifically on collaboration in AEC. In addition to highlighting Graphisoft’s solutions for collaboration, the Collaborate event provided an in-depth look at a customer case study showcasing this collaboration in action: the Nivy Centrum project in Bratislava, Slovakia by the firm SIEBERT + TALAŠ ​ (Figure 1). This article provides an overview of the event, which also helped to provide a snapshot of current status of Graphisoft’s solutions for the AEC industry.

URL: https://www.aecbytes.com/newsletter/2024/issue_131.html

Last week, Nemetschek’s leading AEC technology brand, ALLPLAN, held a virtual event to provide an overview of its growing technology stack, which now includes the structural engineering solutions, SCIA Engineer and FRILO, in addition to its flagship BIM application, Allplan, the steel detailing and fabrication solution, SDS2, and the collaboration platform, Bimplus.

In addition to showcasing its products and their latest capabilities, the two-day event also included several examples of customer projects from around the world that have been implemented with ALLPLAN’s solutions. This article captures some of the highlights from the event, along with an overview of Nemetschek’s new dTwin solution for digital twins that was also presented.

URL: https://www.aecbytes.com/feature/2024/AllplanSummit2024.html

Similar to last year when I attended and wrote about a World Architecture 100 (WA100) Live webinar focused on technology, I attended a similar webinar this year which discussed how AI (Artificial Intelligence) was impacting the architecture sector. While it is still relatively early days for AI in design, it was very interesting and insightful to hear the perspectives of some of the leading firms in the UK on AI technology and learn about the exploratory AI work that they have started working on. This article captures the main highlights that stood out to me from the webinar, including the presentations from Foster + Partners, NAME Architecture, and Heatherwick Studio.

URL: https://www.aecbytes.com/newsletter/2024/issue_130.html

Towards the end of last year, I had the opportunity to visit a construction site that was using technology from a company called Dusty Robotics. As the name suggests, the company makes robots, not for tasks that we typically associate with robots such as manufacturing prefabricated components or even for automating tasks for onsite construction such as rebar tying, but rather, for marking up the precise layout for multiple trades on the floor of a construction site.

URL: https://www.aecbytes.com/feature/2024/DustyRobotics.html

Last month, I provided an overview of the latest technology developments of the Speckle platform that were shared by the Speckle team at the recently held SpeckleCon 2023 online event. Speckle is an open-source AEC technology cloud platform that uses cutting-edge database technology — instead of a file format — to create an open central repository for AEC project data, which can then be used to exchange data in real-time between multiple AEC applications using “connectors.” With connectors to over 20 of the most common AEC applications as well as more in development, Speckle is able to facilitate synchronous collaboration between the multiple team members working on a project from a wide range of disciplines, allowing the data to be pushed and pulled easily as required.

Being open-source as well as data-driven — where the building data is not locked into proprietary file formats — there is understandably a lot of excitement among AEC firms eager to explore Speckle’s technology for their work and break out of vendor lock-ins. There are also many third-party developers building add-on tools for Speckle, both for brand-new use cases or for being able to connect and contribute to existing workflows more easily. An overview of several of these initiatives, as presented at SpeckleCon 2023, is captured in this article.

URL: https://www.aecbytes.com/newsletter/2024/issue_129.html