Connected World

#Factoftheweek What if hospital employees no longer had to manually count inventory? That may sound like a small operational change, but Gartner says AI (artificial intelligence) and computer vision could soon make manual hospital inventory counting obsolete. The technology is moving beyond simply helping employees count supplies faster. Instead, autonomous supply rooms could continuously monitor inventory, predict demand, and trigger replenishment with minimal human involvement.

Here’s something three decades in construction have taught me: there will always be multiple vendors. And there’s never going to be one single vendor that does everything a project team needs. So, that makes the real question more interesting: how do you work with all the data across multiple platforms in a meaningful way? That is the question of this decade.

The residential construction market is sending a message, and it is one we should pay attention to: We cannot build the future of housing the same way we built the past. The latest numbers from the NAHB (National Assn. of Home Builders) make the challenge clear. New single-family home sales fell 10.5% in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 607,000—the slowest pace since the beginning of the year. Sales were also down 6.3% from a year earlier.

Technology continues to transform agriculture, as farmers and researchers look for new ways to protect crops, improve efficiency, and reduce losses. As a result, we are seeing the rise of sensors and other advanced technologies that can provide farmers with valuable information before problems become widespread. As one example, researchers at Virginia Tech are using sensors to help detect the early signs of Sclerotinia blight, a fungal disease that can severely damage peanut crops.

Digitalization, Transparency, and Beyond Digitalization continues to dominate conversations across the EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) industry. And for good reason. Projects are becoming more complex. Resources are stretched. Expectations keep rising. The conversation is no longer about why digitalization matters. It’s about how effectively EPCs can implement and scale digital initiatives to improve visibility, collaboration, and project performance.

Here at Connected World and The Peggy Smedley Show, we have spent the last few years talking about AI (artificial intelligence), and now there is an AI revolution happening—one that is much more physical, and it is happening on the factory floor.

For years, construction has had an enviable title: the happiest industry in the workforce. That might sound surprising at first. Construction is hardly synonymous with easy work. Long hours, tight deadlines, unpredictable conditions, and an ongoing battle for skilled talent are all part of the job. But the industry has had something working in its favor: people have had work to do—and plenty of it.

For years, construction companies have been told that technology will transform the industry. We have seen it with BIM (building information modeling), drones, reality capture, connected equipment, digital twins, cloud-based project management, and AI (artificial intelligence). Now, we are moving from technology that helps workers do their jobs to technology that can increasingly do parts of the work itself.

As AI (artificial intelligence) continues to transform how communities manage critical infrastructure, universities are investing in research and innovation that can help public agencies make smarter, faster, and more cost-effective decisions about road maintenance.

For years, manufacturers have invested billions of dollars in automation, software, sensors, cloud platforms, and now AI (artificial intelligence). Yet many are still asking the same question: Why is digital transformation taking so long? The answer might just be a lack of interoperability.