Episode 123: Gilbane CIO Karen Higgins-Carter on genAI pilots in construction

Well.

Oh,

well, good.

And you've been there almost a year and a half now.

Yeah.

Okay, so good.

We've got lots of good stories to talk about here.

But I wanted to dive into the innovation and creative problem solving aspects of it, which was because I often ask CIOs, you know, well, what does digital transformation mean in your industry? And I rather suspect that in building and construction, I would get kind of a blank look.

Oh, not at all.

Really? No, not at all.

I think in terms of...

Yeah, talk to that.

Yeah, I think the types of people in construction are incredibly smart, incredibly skilled problem solvers.

So I am constantly amazed at what it takes to actually deliver one of our projects.

So the complexity... with meeting a schedule, meeting a budget, managing safety on a site.

It's stunning to me to see the level of effort and the level of care that is taken and needs to be taken to keep people safe on one of our job sites.

enormous complexity every single day.

And so people who do that for a living tend to be incredibly creative problem solvers.

So sometimes, you know, what I hear at Gilbane sometimes is, well, I'm just a dumb builder.

You know, you're the technologist.

And I have to say all the time that if you can build a building, you can understand what I do.

We're just working in a different vocabulary.

So

that's kind of a don't feed me that line thing.

That's somebody who's- I