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MEP contractors stand at a crossroads, where the path paved with technology leads to competitive advantage. As MEP evolves, the winning teams evolve with it, embracing the power of digital modeling, artificial intelligence and data analytics to seize market leadership.

In this transforming space, contractors are leveraging technology to slash risk and optimize operations. Those who deftly use digital tools can ease labor shortages, accelerate timelines, reduce waste and hit sustainability targets. Agile businesses can overcome barriers to entry for the massive, low-tolerance projects demanding levels of precision, collaboration and modeling that only digital tools can facilitate.

Through the use of cutting-edge digital tools and insightful decision-making based on AI-generated data, construction businesses can also attract top talent, improve project outcomes and — with targeted investments and strategies — grow their profit margins. 

Using Technology for Competitive Advantage

The incoming wave of advanced technology is revolutionizing MEP back- and front-office business practices as well as jobsite operations. Incorporating digital tools is becoming increasingly important for positioning a firm for market leadership and prestigious jobs.

As governments and structure owners strive for sustainability targets, MEP is being integrated into the earliest phases of design and preconstruction, for its power to actuate new levels of operational efficiencies. 

But recently as 2020, McKinsey & Company estimated that the construction industry’s failure to digitize was precipitating budget overruns of up to 80 percent and completion delays of 20 percent on large projects. 

Available technology closes those gaps by accelerating and universalizing communications. Today’s construction management platforms create a single source of truth for all players to access — capturing data and historical performance metrics for sharpening risk analysis, accelerating timelines and lessening disagreements. 

Technology also offers the power of predictive maintenance to anticipate failures and minimize downtime through analysis of real-time data. 

The advantages inherent in embracing digital tools and AI include: 

1. Winning More Bids

   MEP is the meat and potatoes of every bid, offering pathways to the operational efficiencies that project owners and designers demand. Through use of AI, contractors can document the systems coordination and integration that actualize cost savings, operational efficiencies, risk mitigation and schedule optimization. 

2. Attracting Top Talent

   The digital natives skilled at applying technology to navigate the gaps between design and execution will accept jobs and stay in the workplaces committed to deploying technology as a strategic asset. 

3. Improving Client Relationships

   Fewer change orders and less time at the negotiating table make GCs happy. When specialty contractors use digital tools to anticipate and correct small bumps before they become major issues, commissioning goes smoothly, and owners more quickly reap the returns of their investments. With a positive experience behind them, general contractors will turn to their digitally inclined partners for future projects.

Mechanical technology is also transforming the physical aspects of construction. They include robots that reduce the risk of accidents by performing dangerous tasks or transmitting images from miles away on large horizontal jobsites. 

Seeing Picture-perfect Results with BIM and VDC

Architects, engineers and contractors are leveraging building information modeling (BIM) and virtual design and construction (VDC) for unprecedented powers of planning, collaboration, risk reduction and efficiencies. 

The virtual models known as “digital twins” create testing grounds that facilitate collaboration and clash detection, minimizing risk long before physical construction begins.

Sitting at the table early in the design process, the MEP trades are detailing their mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems in virtual spaces. Here, the numbers can be adjusted and tested with confidence – no reworks needed in the field.

With these predictive capabilities, opportunities for prefabrication are growing. Contractors can easily greenlight offsite prefabrication for onsite delivery, knowing that specs and tolerances have been refined to pinpoint accuracy.

Some firms still face barriers to adopting digital tools, including cost considerations and limited inhouse technical expertise. 

Those days are dwindling, however, as contractors realize that keeping up with the pack demands the deployment of technology tools as much as power tools and heavy equipment. 

Solving Problems with AI and Machine Learning

The onset of AI and machine learning is further revolutionizing design and layout by automating clash detection and optimizing system layouts, for new levels of precision and more efficient design processes.

This is technology for more than spotting inconsistencies that people correct by clicking keyboards.

AI can apply learned knowledge to design and optimize system layouts. AI prevents risk beyond just spotting clashes — it suggests resolutions, acting as a neutral third party that prevents disputes and significantly reduces time-consuming manual coordination. People step in only when it’s time to review and approve the recommended designs. 

This approach will facilitate more precise equipment sizing and reduce submittal times. Labor needs are reduced at multiple phases, including design, project management and fabrication. 

The captures the impact and advantages that artificial intelligence brings to the construction industry. In its many forms, AI offers machine learning to optimize planning, robotics to enhance the efficiency and safety of field tasks and computer vision to open windows into real-time updates and insights on project status. 

AI also enables natural language processing to summarize reports, while the emergence of generative AI is streamlining such cumbersome tasks as generating monthly summaries from daily logs. 

Data hygiene is key to maximizing the benefits of AI. The management of clean, consistent and reliable data helps support better decisions by humans and autonomous machines. The journey from basic data collection to strategic application begins with an assessment of data maturity — essentially, the firm’s capabilities for managing and utilizing high-quality data to achieve its goals. 

Instilling Confidence in Prefabrication

The MEP sector has already embraced the advantages of prefabrication, but the rising deployment of BIM and VDC is helping conquer remaining hesitation. 

That’s because digital twins can be modeled to virtually clash-free specs. With advanced resolution of onsite complexities, units can be precision-built offsite to exacting specs. 

Speedier adoption of prefabrication, with its plug-and-play features, addresses multiple pain points in MEP:

• Less labor needed to fabricate and assemble units onsite 
• Heightened safety with fewer steps and tasks for completing installation
• Simplified scheduling with fewer people needed onsite
• Speedier installation for faster progress toward project completion deadlines
• Less waste, as materials are ordered to precise specifications, instead of being delivered onsite and cut to size

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Building Smart Sustainability

Building sustainable structures that both leave a smaller carbon footprint and are built to last in a changing environment is becoming a non-negotiable aspect of new construction. Advanced technology, along with the comprehensive coordination with architects that technology enables, helps reduce operational costs and improve energy efficiency. 

BIM and VDC can facilitate better integration of sustainable design elements. Manufacturers are constantly issuing more sophisticated, energy-efficient models. In turn, designers and MEP contractors have the power, through technology, to test and coordinate installation of such advancements as energy recovery systems, low-flow plumbing and high-efficiency HVAC.

VDC, BIM and AI can also help reduce material waste. These digital tools allow precision specs to guide materials procurement and purchasing. The more exact the details, the less that must be transported and, in the end, disposed of.

After installation, the virtual replicas of BIM allow modeling and testing of equipment for its performance under a range of conditions. Any potential failure to achieve promised sustainability goals can be corrected before they impact commissioning or warranty promises. 

Creating an Unblinking Eye for Safety

While the cost and efficiency advantages of construction technology are appealing, the MEP trades are also evolving to automate the identification of onsite safety patterns, using AI to predict trouble and suggest improvements. 

Contractors using advanced jobsite safety technologies improved safety issues by 63 percent, according to . And yet, Dodge further reports, up to two-thirds of contractors reported frequent issues with data accuracy, completeness and consistency. 

That was because, in part, nearly half of contractors studied were still using error-prone manual methods to track performance, and only 9 percent used devices such as sensors, cameras and drones to automatically track and record site data.

Technology can help reduce risk on jobsites in the following ways.

• Identifying Issues to Before Rework

  When using tech to proactively identifying safety issues, not only do workers stay safer, but they can avoid costly rework. The fewer the times that tradespeople, managers and supervisors must return to the site, the lower the risk of accidents. 

• Enabling Safer Prefabrication

  When contractors have the confidence to okay prefabrication, they are siting more of the construction in controlled environments, where sudden hazards are minimized. Controlled environments also enhance quality by distancing the work from the impact of weather and onsite missteps.

• Reducing Exposure to Hazardous Conditions

  Robotics and automation can handle dangerous tasks, taking them out of human hands. For example, the aforementioned HITT Contracting job that used robots to shave time off the risky task of drilling ceiling anchors was completed without a safety incident. 

• Promoting Collaborative Thinking

  Advanced communications and visualization tools streamline proactive problem-solving. Team members arrive at solutions faster, minimizing the time that people are needed onsite. Even in reactive onsite situations – perhaps an unexpected archaeological or environmental find -- technology facilitates a timely solution.

Forging Ahead With New Tech

Today’s leading contractors ride the wave of change to mitigate risk and strengthen their market positions, but even those leaders must think strategically. Wisely investing time and money demands virtuous circles of improvement and adaptation strategies, meeting the future before it arrives while making choices aligned with company vision. 

There are many strategies contractors can use to help modernize their practices and incorporate technology into their workplace cultures.

Stay informed about surging technologies through industry publications, peer groups and forums. The latest technology isn’t necessarily the greatest, but every bit of knowledge about new offerings and capabilities contributes to better decisions. Chances are, there’s an early adopter on the team who’s skilled at keeping an ear to the ground and can be assigned to tracking and evaluating the daily rush of findings, research and innovations.

Consider investing in BIM/VDC capabilities to improve competitiveness and project outcomes. Carefully examine the advantages, drawbacks, scalability and interoperability of available software and hardware. Due diligence positions contractors to acquire the right platforms and put them to work for generating operational efficiencies, mitigating risk,and driving strategic decisions.

Explore prefabrication to ease labor shortages and improve efficiency. The precision design made possible by advanced modeling makes prefabrication more feasible in many cases.

Work towards adopting AI and machine learning for design and clash detection processes. AI can do more than spot anomalies in earlier phases of design. Solutions derived through its machine learning can also minimize the human kind of clashes and ease labor shortages by freeing personnel for the human ingenuity that sparks innovation. 

As technology speeds ahead, the MEP contractors who embrace its challenges and keep pace will stay on the cutting edge and strengthen their foothold in a growing, increasingly demanding construction marketplace.

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