INTRODUCTION
Al intelligence (AI) is a fast-growing innovative technology that will have a huge impact on projects and project management practices in the forthcoming years. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to project management theory and practice in the construction industry by analyzing the expectations of project professionals. A mixed method based on an international survey and semi-structured interviews was applied. The results show that construction project practitioners are looking for AI solutions to support the quantitative processes mainly related to scope, schedule, cost, quality, and risk management. However, the human-related processes, such as communication and stakeholder management, are not expected to be directly enhanced by AI, although might benefit from it indirectly. The findings also demonstrate a difference between amplifying and accelerating countries, where somewhat surprisingly the latter are more ready to adopt AI in their projects.
The continuously rapid advancement in technology Moreso in East and Horn of Africa is changing almost every aspect of organizational and managerial activities. The fast-growing discipline of Artificial Intelligence (AI) gets more and more attention from practitioners and academics in different fields of management, and is expected to disrupt the field of project management (PM).
Projects in the construction industry had taken a predominant role from the inception of the PM field. Even though new sectors and non-traditional industries also apply PM practices, the construction industry in East and Horn of Africa still constitutes a major part of the evolving PM body of knowledge. As a well-established domain of professional PM, the construction industry can, therefore, be an interesting case to investigate how new technologies, such as AI, have the potential to improve and reshape the profession.
AI was initially introduced in the 1950’s aiming to replicate human intelligence using computer programs. Although throughout the years the field of AI experienced major fluctuations, mainly due to a mismatch between the level of expectations and the level of available applications, it seems that current AI technologies are mature enough to provide substantial improvements in different aspects in the workplace, including project operational and managerial processes.
The aim of this paper is to analyze construction project practitioners’ expectations with regard to AI being applied to PM processes and practices. The paper starts with an introduction to AI. The next section reviews AI applications in the context of construction PM, by knowledge areas. Then, the research question and methodology are described, followed by reporting the research findings. The paper is finalized with a discussion of the main insights and concluding remarks on the limitations of the current study and directions for further research.
The current paper adopts the recent approaches, therefore suggesting that AI is based on the increasing capabilities of technology to analyze data, learn, perform tasks that are currently performed by humans, and adaptively interpret external conditions. In the context of project management, it means that AI technologies can be used to autonomously perform routine tasks and to support the project manager’s work by recommending preferred decisions and actions based on the machine’s competence to be adaptive to different environments and situations.
AI technologies are classified based on levels of specialization and intelligence. Narrow AI (NAI) refers to applications that are focused on a single subset of cognitive abilities to learn and do well only what they were designed for, within a specific spectrum, therefore usually used to automate specific tasks and improve efficiency. Examples in the context of project management might include optimal resource allocation, optimal project schedule, or optimal contract prices for the procurement of goods. General AI (GAI) includes intelligent applications that can autonomously learn and perform as, or even better than, humans on a wide range of tasks. GAI for project management might be in the form of project portfolio selection, analyzing customer requirements, or optimizing operation and site safety. The highest level of AI, named Super AI or superintelligence, refers to systems that exceed human intelligence and abilities, defined by Boström as “intellects that greatly outperform the best current human minds across many very general cognitive domains”. However, there is no consensus on if and when it will be possible to develop superintelligence systems, and there is a wide agreement that the current state of the art in AI cannot support superintelligence.
Compiled by : Samwel Kariuki
Date: 12th April 2024
Samwel Kariuki 