AECCafe Voice 
Susan Smith
Susan Smith has worked as an editor and writer in the technology industry for over 16 years. As an editor she has been responsible for the launch of a number of technology trade publications, both in print and online. Currently, Susan is the Editor of GISCafe and AECCafe, as well as those sites’ … More » BuildingConnected from Autodesk Publishes High Volumes of New ProjectsNovember 5th, 2021 by Susan Smith
Zac Hays, head of product, preconstruction for Autodesk Construction Solutions, spoke this week with AECCafe Voice about Autodesk’s new BuildingConnected, a building platform to which new building project data can be posted and shared.  Zac Hays, head of product, preconstruction for Autodesk Construction Solutions
Company materials report, according to aggregated and anonymized product data from BuildingConnected – a collection of over one million owners, general contractors, construction managers and subcontractors soliciting or submitting bids – 2021 was a year of record growth for the industry, with new projects published increasing almost 19 percent year-over-year on the platform. March of 2021 also hit a new all-time record for most projects published in a single month, followed closely by June 2021. The BuildingConnected team also identified the regions of the U.S. and Canada that are seeing the highest volumes of new projects published (chart below). This chart details the top 15 cities with the highest levels of published projects over the course of 2021 so far. In January of 2020, the AGC released data showing the impacts in construction jobs, which detailed that Texas lost over 33,000 jobs during the pandemic, followed by New York (22,000), Ohio (12,600), Massachusetts (11,300) and Florida (9,900).
AECCafe Voice: To what do you attribute this 19% Year on Year growth in new projects? ZH: It’s a fair assumption that our industry is in the process of ‘climbing out of the trough.’ Earlier this year, we saw a big uptick in bidding activity that was happening on our platform with bidding activity spiking in January 2021. At the time, economist Ed Zarenski noted that this spike suggested that delayed or rescheduled projects were beginning to come back online (you can find more on this and his direct quote, here). The increases we’re seeing in YoY growth in terms of new projects published – meaning entirely new projects that have been published to the BuildingConnected platform – seems to indicate that the industry is beginning to pick up steam, getting these new projects off the ground and making up for lost time due to the pandemic. AECCafe Voice: How does BuildingConnected work to track the bids and new projects that come in?
ZH: BuildingConnected is a platform that more than one million owners, general contractors, construction managers and subcontractors use to solicit and submit bids. When the time comes to begin the bidding process, teams can publish a given project on the platform and send out invitations to bid to our vast network of construction professionals. BuildingConnected lets them easily solicit bids, but also helps them track and audit all bidding activity on their project, automate certain workflows to help save time, and even use artificial intelligence to help identify financial risk early on in the process. Users of the platform have their own dashboards where they can manage the entire process from beginning to end. We then can anonymize all this data to create some of these really excited industry insights. AECCafe Voice: Does BuildingConnected track the projects that are started and their various stages of development to completion? ZH: We did not track this for our most recent blog post, as it’s not currently something we track on our end what stage of development projects are in. For that matter, we also do not report on bid winners – however that information is of course available to our customers. It’s also important to note that all data used in the blog post was based on aggregated and anonymized data to ensure the upmost confidentiality.
ZH: BuildingConnected is one of the preconstruction solutions within Autodesk Construction Cloud. With over one million construction professionals in our network, you can think of it like a “LinkedIn for construction.” With BuildingConnected, builders can choose the right contractors for every project and set up projects up for success before the shovel hits the ground. At the same time, specialty contractors can keep track of new projects and subsequently bid on those new projects. AECCafe Voice: Why was Texas particularly hard hit during the pandemic and what brought it out of that slump? ZH: In January of 2020, the AGC released data showing the impacts in construction jobs, which detailed that Texas lost over 33,000 jobs during the pandemic. According to AECCafe Voice: Why do construction professionals in the high growth areas think they had such a high percentage of growth? ZH: It’s hard to speculate on why this is without further analysis of economic data. It’s unclear how much was attributed to a pent-up backlog of projects versus demand for new projects but seeing these areas of growth certainly is a welcomed and exciting development. AECCafe Voice: Have you received reports on how professionals felt about the choices of construction professionals provided in BuildingConnected? ZH: Yeah, the great part of BuildingConnected is that we don’t just provide a digital rolodex of all the construction professionals in your area, but we also give you the tools to evaluate and qualify them for your specific job. We’ve introduced companies to thousands of new trade partners that they would have never found before, and we have data to show that those become lasting relationships. AECCafe Voice: Are there features of BuildingConnected that particularly lend themselves to the Covid times, i.e., remote contacting of professionals for new projects, safety measures, etc.? ZH: I think technology as a whole lends itself to a whole new way of working – one that’s more efficient, collaborative and predictable. Construction has seen an uptick in technology adoption for the past several years, but the pandemic absolutely hit the fast forward on that. BuildingConnected allows teams to remotely collect, analyze and accept bids – but it also provides a central hub for this information to live and be accessed by your team anytime, from anywhere. BuildingConnected also offers electronically sealed bids, meaning that subcontractors no longer have to physically hand in bids or attend a public bid opening – eliminating the need to meet in person. Tags: 3D, AEC, architects, architecture, Autodesk, Autodesk Revit, BIM, building, building design, building information modeling, CAD, collaboration, construction, covid-19, design, digital twin, engineering, engineers, infrastructure, laser scanning Categories: 2D, 3D, AEC, AECCafe, architecture, Autodesk, BIM, building information modeling, collaboration, construction, construction project management, engineering, field solutions, infrastructure, project management, sustainable design |
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AECCafe Voice: How does Autodesk Construction Cloud facilitate the BuildingConnected platform? 
their report, even though residential construction market saw a surge of new starts in 2020, commercial building activity in the state did slow down significantly.
