Construction Today - Volume 16, Issue 2 - 64
Technology: Streamline Your Business | ALICE TECHNOLOGIES 'I've put a lot into this. The construction industry needs better software tools.' er columns in the BIM. "You don't tell the software how to build the whole project," Morkos explains. "You tell it how to build a slab, then to replicate for all slabs." As a result of that breakthrough, ALICE is the world's first parametric construction planner. "We cracked a problem that no one has been able to crack for 50 years," Morkos boasts. "It's 43,000 hours, eight years of my life." Flexible Parameters Because it is parametric, contractors can easily adjust recipes. It takes only a few seconds to adjust a planning parameter such as the number of available crews or crane locations and see how the change would impact the overall schedule. With that power, contractors and engineers can weigh priorities such as cost savings or expediting work to deliver the best possible project at the most cost-effective price. In fact, clients can test all kinds of variables - what happens if they double the number of cranes or change to a less expensive material, for instance - and see the results in only a few minutes. That gives them the ability before they even bid on the project to explore all the what-if scenarios that were previously too time-consuming to calculate. Early adopters, like Rick Kahn Sr., director of innovation at Mortenson, are enjoying the benefits too. "The integration of our building expertise and ALICE enables us to evaluate hundreds of potential scenarios to determine the best possible plan for our customer," he says. "ALICE is changing our industry and we are proud to be an early adopter of this leading technology." The software also benefits clients by freeing up their construction engineers to spend more time on project planning and internal system installation and less time crunching scheduling numbers. While ALICE still needs input from expert planners, it takes the pain out of scheduling. "We sit down, we create the plan," Morkos says. "The plan is basically this list of tasks that feeds into the schedule. ALICE generates the different schedule options at the push of a button." That savings does not only come from the time it takes to put together the construction schedule but the efficiencies ALICE can discover in the process. A human can take months to put together one schedule, but in only 20 minutes ALICE can analyze hundreds of millions of schedules and identify the most optimal plan based on the client's criteria. ALICE Technologies estimates that users can save up to 33 percent of construction time and costs. "We go through 600 million options and take the best one," Morkos says. The work going on in the background to analyze those hundreds of millions of schedule possibilities may be massively complex, but it all appears simple and straightforward on the front end. The resulting schedule is color-coded to make it clear to read and review and ALICE is designed to be easy to use and quick to learn. It only schedule analysis of the Wheaton College - Performing Arts Center in ALICE with (from left) Casey O'Leary, »Collaborative scheduling manager (M.A. Mortenson Company); Jeff Heuton (ALICE Technologies); Andrii Tsymbala (ALICE); Rajashekar Bistaiah, scheduling manager (Mortenson); and Tim Schubert, integrated construction manager (Mortenson). 64 CONSTRUCTION-TODAY.COM VOLUME 16, ISSUE 2