AI at IIBEC and IRE
The building envelope world converges on Texas.
I spent the last week at two major building envelope-related conferences in Texas. First was the IIBEC Convention in Houston, then the IRE in Dallas.
These two conferences are the premier annual gatherings for the building envelope consulting and roofing industries, respectively.
AI was everywhere at both.
Presenters in educational sessions highlighted several applications of AI they’re seeing and using in daily practice. These included:
determining drone flight paths
visual damage detection and quantification
I learned that Walter P. Moore is developing an in-house visual AI damage detection model. A similar service I’ve written about previously (T2D2) was originally developed inside Thornton Tomasetti.
On the trade show floor the most common AI application on display was AI damage detection. I could hardly walk 10 feet at IRE without bumping into a vendor selling this service to residential roofers.
I saw one vendor (Nearmap) that was using AI to identify various features on aerial imagery like solar panels, tree overhang, etc.
While vendors of AI services were generally bullish on the capabilities of their products (as one might expect), I was struck by the dismissive tone taken by many educational session presenters.
Most mentions of AI were quickly followed up by something like “…of course, this will never be a substitute for hands-on/human/what we’ve always done…”
Obviously no one knows what the future will hold, certainly not me. But especially given the recent trend I would caution against being so dismissive.
Honestly it felt a bit like folks were trying to reassure themselves that everything will be fine and there’s no need for scary thoughts like considering how AI could dramatically disrupt our business.
On the other hand, AI discussions were more prevalent at these two conferences than what I’ve been encountering in recent “real life” day-to-day conversations. There seemed to be a higher-than-average awareness along the attendees, vendors, and speakers.
I’m very curious to see how the discussion has evolved by the time of the 2024 editions of these events a year from now.
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