- Render CEO Stephen Rose predicts AI will soon play a bigger role in designing network blueprints
- Construction planning and design firms will soon evolve to “another variant of software firms”
- AI presents massive changes but he’s optimistic humans won’t be left out of the construction process
AI is already helping broadband construction crews automate routine tasks and monitor job sites, but it could soon play a bigger role in designing the network layout itself, according to Render Networks CEO Stephen Rose.
“Having constructible designs done a lot by AI technology, that is a real opportunity,” he told Fierce.
He thinks AI in the coming years will grow to a point where it will process info from a combination of geospatial data, drone technology and other forms of mapping technology to create more accurate network blueprints.
This would benefit not just construction design firms and crews but also municipalities that help with the broadband permitting process, utility damage prevention groups and the like. Ideally, “those participants in the ecosystem will then be able to have very efficient ways of getting constructible designs,” Rose said.
The technology still has a ways to go, but the goal is to make sure AI is competent enough that the original design plans (the initial blueprints created before construction) and the as-built blueprint (which shows what was actually built) only have “a maximum deviation of 2 to 4%," he added.
Render has become a notable player in the broadband digital construction management space, alongside companies such as IQGeo and Vitruvi. Render works with operators like Archtop Fiber, HyperFiber, Shentel and Visionary Broadband, and recently launched ClearSight, a tool built on DataBricks’ Data Intelligence Platform that aims to give providers more precise insight across the deployment process.
AI's grip on the broadband construction space
Given how much AI is already changing the construction landscape, Rose believes companies that provide planning, design and engineering services will eventually evolve into “another variant of software firms.”
That’s in line with findings with Hudson Cooper Search, which predicts construction jobs will look a lot different once AI is fully entrenched in the process. The firm thinks traditional entry-level jobs will decline starting in 2030 as new roles like “Robotics Technician” and “Construction Data Analyst” emerge.
No matter how you slice it, automation is poised to bring job reductions across most industries. But Rose, like others in the broadband industry, believes AI can’t fully take over the construction process.
Humans are still needed for manually intensive tasks like digging and trenching. “The AI isn’t going to dig the hole for you,” he said, and execs from Charter and Technetix have stressed AI can’t replace hands-on techniques for say, installing fiber cable.
Rose argued AI can make “a lot of good decisions” around resourcing, automating back end processes, making sure an operator has the right number of crews and compiling all the data construction workers need to carry out their jobs. For instance, he said Renders’ Databricks integration allows operators to reel in various forms of construction data – whether it’s text, image or video – and figure out “where the status of the project is at any one moment in time.”
But at the end of it all, it’s up to the human to sign off on changes. “There still needs to be a human in the loop that says, ‘yes I accept this.’ We’re quite some way away from the technology being able to remove humans from those decision points,” said Rose.
Stepping up AI adoption in construction
Adopting AI in the field is naturally its own challenge. If an operator makes their construction workers transition to an AI platform all at once, “that’s just a sure-fire way of getting the adoption curve shallower than you would want,” he added.
For Render’s part, it typically starts off by identifying a couple of crews that are “technology curious” enough so it can show the other teams that the technology is worth it. Rose said this method is especially beneficial for operators that hire multiple contractors.
“Maybe if they’ve got 15 crews, you take five crews to start with and then you get them happy,” he added. “So therefore, when you come out to the next phase, you’re not up against resistance.”
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