Redefining Jobs for the Intelligent Age
A Kyndryl 2025 Readiness Report finds 87% of business leaders expect AI to reshape jobs within a year, yet only 29% feel their workforce is prepared. To bridge this gap, Kyndryl has partnered with Wayne State University to launch the IntelliMake research hub—a pilot‑scale factory and living lab that blends real‑world production challenges with immersive AI training. The initiative shifts focus from automating isolated tasks to supervising intelligent systems, emphasizing continuous learning and change management. By embedding education directly into manufacturing, the hub aims to align talent pipelines with rapid AI innovation.
Earth Day: A Construction Mindset Shift
Earth Day highlights the growing demand for sustainability in construction, where waste management is shifting from an afterthought to a data problem. A partnership between AI‑startup Woodchuck and contractor Walbridge on a Ford manufacturing plant in Michigan used a real‑time...
Fact of the Week – 4/20/2026
Physical AI—robots, autonomous vehicles and drones—are entering a rapid growth phase, with Counterpoint Research forecasting 145 million units shipped worldwide between 2025 and 2035. The projection breaks down into roughly 59 million drones, 48 million robots and 38 million autonomous vehicles. Accelerating advances in...
Success Stories: AI Advances Disease Knowledge and Treatment
Artificial intelligence is reshaping biomedical research, with a focus on accelerating disease insight and treatment development. Virginia Tech researcher Debswapna Bhattacharya secured a five‑year, $2.1 million NIH award to build AI tools that map protein and RNA structures in three dimensions....
A Strategic Case for AI Adoption in Combination with Robotics
Distribution firms in retail, CPG and food operate on razor‑thin profit margins, typically 1‑5% net after accounting for warehousing, transportation, labor and financing costs. Gross margins sit higher at 15‑30%, but operating expenses erode most of the upside. Labor is...
U.S. Manufacturing’s Next Chapter
The U.S. manufacturing sector is at a turning point as automation, AI, and IoT converge to enable reshoring. Walmart recently signed a letter of support for unspun’s AI‑enabled 3D weaving system that can produce garments directly from yarn, dramatically shortening...
Autodesk Forma: A New Era
Autodesk announced that its Construction Cloud suite will be folded into the Forma platform, effectively rebranding Docs, BIM Collaborate Pro, Build and Takeoff under the Forma name. The move creates a single, AI‑native, cloud‑based environment that links pre‑design, schematic design...
Big 5: Construction Safety
The American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) released a new report outlining five critical themes shaping workplace safety, with particular relevance for construction, an industry still plagued by high fatality rates. The study, based on extensive feedback from safety professionals,...
Fact of the Week – 4/13/2026
Intelligent transport systems (ITS) for public transit are entering a rapid expansion phase, with Europe projected to reach roughly $3.6 billion by 2030 and North America about $1.7 billion. The market grew from $2.8 billion in Europe and $1.3 billion in North America in...
Success Stories: Trustworthy AI
Purdue University has developed a patent‑pending AI image‑editing system that masks sensitive regions, such as faces, on the user’s device before processing. The platform reintegrates the masked area after applying commercial generative models, delivering photorealistic results while keeping raw biometric...
Big Signals About Work
Peggy Smedley and foresight director Dennis Draeger explore how emerging signals are reshaping talent mobility and leadership structures. They argue AI is a double‑edged sword in hiring, speeding screening while amplifying bias. The discussion also contrasts city‑state versus nation‑state dynamics...
Small Business Builders Scale
Peggy Smedley interviews Steve Yates, CEO of Buildxact, about the fast‑changing construction sector and how small‑business builders can scale with limited resources. Yates highlights cloud‑based software that streamlines estimating, quoting, and project tracking, turning data into actionable insights. He also...
MES and the Physical AI Revolution
Manufacturing execution systems (MES) are emerging as the critical bridge that turns digital AI insights into real‑world, physical actions on the shop floor. By linking enterprise resource planning (ERP) data with operational technology, MES provides the visibility, control, and traceability...
AI in Construction Step 3: Driving Innovation
The article outlines the third step in a series on AI in construction, emphasizing the need for a robust digital foundation that integrates data systems, BIM, IoT, and drones. It argues that AI’s effectiveness hinges on centralized, interoperable data platforms...
Building Smarter: The ERP Transformation in Construction
Construction firms are moving from fragmented spreadsheets and siloed tools to unified ERP platforms that combine project management, procurement, finance, and equipment tracking. Integrated systems now deliver real‑time financial visibility, allowing cost overruns to be spotted early and corrected promptly....
Fact of the Week – 4/06/2026
Gartner predicts that by 2029 AI agents operating in physical environments will generate ten times more data than all current digital AI applications combined. This surge stems from agents capturing logical, spatial and multi‑agent information as they interact with the...
Success Stories: Alerts From the Night Sky
Astronomers worldwide processed roughly 800,000 night‑sky alerts this year, leveraging a University of Washington software pipeline that ingests 10 terabytes of images nightly. The system, built by about two dozen researchers over a decade, identifies transient events such as new asteroids...
Fact of the Week – 3/30/2026
Fleet-management systems in Southeast Asia are projected to grow 12.3% annually, expanding from 3.6 million units in 2024 to over 6.4 million by 2029, according to Berg Insight. The market penetration is expected to rise from 17.5% to 27.1% of business fleets...
Meet Your Next AI Analyst
GlobalData unveiled an upgraded AI analyst named Ava, now equipped with agentic capabilities that let it reason, plan, and execute end‑to‑end research tasks. The system can ingest and synthesize thousands of filings, patents, news items, and research papers in minutes,...
Success Stories: Eyeing Underground Utility
Common Ground Alliance estimates annual U.S. social costs of underground utility damage at about $30 billion. Purdue University engineers have created a patent‑pending method that combines ground‑penetrating radar with a Bayesian uncertainty‑aware model to pinpoint pipe location, orientation, and radius. The...
Fact of the Week – 3/16/2026
ADP Research reports that in January construction workers enjoyed the largest job‑switching wage premium at 6.6%, outpacing resources and mining at 5.6% and leaving leisure‑hospitality with a negative shift. Starting pay for new hires across all sectors rose to $19...
Construction’s Future of Work Comes Into Focus
At ConExpo‑Con/Agg 2026, construction leaders spotlighted AI, IoT, automation and workforce development as the next wave of jobsite innovation. Caterpillar unveiled Cat Compact, new high‑horsepower engines, an AI Assistant and its first autonomous soil compactor, building on a decade of...
Fact of the Week – 3/9/2026
A recent ABC study shows that 90% of construction workers in 24 states were non‑union in 2025, amounting to roughly 9 million non‑union employees versus just under 1 million union members. The report also highlights a projected 349,000 worker shortage for 2026....
Success Stories: Medical Students Think Like Clinical Researchers
University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine launched the IDEA (Independent Data Exploration and Analysis) project, a mandatory year‑long curriculum for first‑year medical students that embeds artificial‑intelligence tools into research training. Initially using ChatGPT and Claude, the program transitioned to...
A Call for Collaboration in Construction
The article calls for deeper collaboration in construction, citing the $15.8 billion annual loss from poor interoperability identified by a 2004 NIST study and the $1.85 trillion data‑quality cost reported in 2020. It highlights the Constructech Top Products awards as a platform...
Storytelling with 4D BIM
The construction sector is leveraging 4D BIM as a storytelling tool that merges models with schedules to visualize project timelines. Real‑world cases show staging time reductions of up to 66% and optimized material delivery sequences, especially on constrained sites. Bentley...
Fact of the Week – 2/16/2026
Berg Insight reports private LTE/5G deployments reached $2.4 billion in 2025, with 6,500 networks launched. The firm projects the market will expand to $12 billion by 2030, implying a 38% compound annual growth rate. Growth is fueled by new deployments, upgrades, and...