#916: NAIT Research: Clint Undseth on Construction, Smart Buildings and Changing Demographics

Clint Undseth is the Vice President of Innovation with the construction giant, Stuart Olson.  Clint was in Edmonton recently to speak at NAIT’s Research and Innovation Symposium.

One hot topic is smart buildings.  How can construction meet the challenge of new technologies and changing demographics?

CLINT UNDSETH:  If you look at a 60 year old versus a 40 year old versus a 30 year old, their needs and their expectations and their work space and their study space and their living space are different .  And so how is building responding to these different needs and expectations?  And technologies played a big role, whether it’s air quality, whether it’s light levels, whether it’s how we move and adjust the infrastructure in the facilities therein.  People today work much differently.  We see young people, they collaborate on the fly.  They can be in a meeting but they are all on their mobile devices, they’re researching, they’re texting, whatever they’re doing, they’re multitasking.  Right?  How do buildings better respond, how do buildings better anticipate and facilitate these changes?  So when we speak about smart buildings, that’s a big part of it.

According to Clint Undseth, future building construction involves algorithms, analytics and even artificial intelligence.