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*Winner - Best Tech Podcast - 2025 Quill Podcast Awards*
British Columbia is experiencing an unprecedented housing crisis. While addressing various aspects of the housing supply chain is essential, no single approach can fully solve the challenges we face in scaling housing production. So, what's the blueprint for growth?
In November 2023, DIGITAL — Canada's Global Innovation Cluster for digital technologies — launched its Housing Growth Innovation Program with support from the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs. The program brings together collaborative teams of industry leaders to accelerate technology-driven approaches that are driving real, tangible growth for British Columbia's housing production sector.
Amy Vilis, Director of Housing Growth Innovation at DIGITAL, chats with innovators doing groundbreaking work within DIGITAL's Housing Growth Innovation Program to develop and implement technology-based solutions within British Columbia's housing sector across the full scale of end-to-end production. These conversations showcase how ideas are making it into the real world where they can become comprehensive, viable and, best of all, achievable solutions to accelerate housing production for British Columbians.
Amy Villis (00:00)
Welcome to Blueprint for Growth, Innovation and Housing. I'm your host, Amy Villis Director of Housing Growth Innovation at Digital, Canada's global innovation cluster for digital technologies. Today we're looking ahead to the future of housing innovation in Canada.
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Amy Villis (00:38)
We'll explore cutting-edge technologies and discuss how Canada can become a global leader in addressing the housing crisis through innovation, collaboration, and scalable solutions. Brey Tucker is a digital strategist specializing in the AEC industry. He leads Tucker Technology Consulting and works with McElhaney Engineering, a major Canadian firm. Brey started as an architect designing skyscrapers with HOK.
He embraced early adoption of BIM, leading a career in technology and business strategies, including time as a global strategist at Autodesk. With expertise in both architectural and digital transformation, he offers valuable insights into the future of construction and development. We will explore the shift from traditional practices to digital innovation, data management challenges, the role of language models, workforce changes, and emerging digital business models.
emphasizing technology's impact on sustainable housing development. So what I'd love to hit out right away is your views and thoughts about technology deployment within the construction sector and development sectors, where you've seen the evolution from your experience, where you see innovation shaping the sector right now.
Brey Tucker (01:52)
It's really interesting, I think, because there's a huge opportunity for innovation to just keep enriching what would be something that I call biblical BIM BIM is like late 70s Chuck Eastman out of Georgia Tech talking about this really complete digital ecosystem of you design a thing, you build a thing, you do maintenance and kind of record keeping on a thing, and then you renovate a thing. And it's all in this one digital land, but we've never actually done that.
And the thing that's interesting, there's this opportunity, especially on the permitting side of things, for a lot of automation and improvement around either standard design blocks and terms of housing units and different things that people are trying to do for at scale development. and then there's also just this piece of we are still very paper-based from a legal contracting kind of perspective. So I think Europe has had some success in terms of going more digital and having less paper-based reviews, less paper-based permitting.
But here in the West, we're still very, very stuck in paper. And so a huge technology that I hate is the growing use of PDFs. And so there's, you know, we have all these things that are on top of PDFs that we're using, as opposed to, you know, real database information connected to a 3D environment. So it's interesting, I think most of the innovation that's happening is actually in the construction side.
So we're seeing like passive-based capture technologies with either a reality capture device or just with simple security cameras. And then we're starting to automate kind of project management and kind of tracking and completion work. That's super fascinating because I think there you can have a lot of post-mortem conversations after a project on what went well, what was unpredictably taking so long, like where were our design issues. And I think especially for governance.
Those are really valuable things to know because that's like detail review, details that don't work, details that leak, things like that. Those are things that I think there's a lot of room for innovation that's probably going to happen sooner than a lot of the stuff that should have happened like 20 years ago because we're stuck in paper-based delivery.
Amy Villis (03:58)
my experience was the catalyst of COVID, sort of quantuming to a place where we couldn't accept paper drawings. And so we all of a sudden had to move two years, you know, at full steam ahead, which was actually very, very useful for the work that we were doing at the time too. So technology is a catalyst for changes, like catchphrase I'd put on a bumper sticker, that's for sure.
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Amy Villis (04:42)
A big one that can help support some of this stuff, obviously, AI, generative AI. Where do you see that playing a role in current state?
Brey Tucker (04:51)
So I think the best thing the generative AI is doing right now in current state is just simplifying the complexity of so many things. I am finding large language models to be a tremendous tool and sussing through 1,000 page documents. And so it's nice because all of that, and I talk about this a lot at McElheny, but huge difference between information and data.
When you get a book, it's a lot of really high value information, but none of it is data. Most PDFs, none of it is data. Most Excel files, none of it is data. So it's like to actually have data, I'm seeing a huge opportunity with GEN.AI to go comb through really complex, large documents, do information extraction, and then kind of data creation. I think that is a huge opportunity for the industry because we've just, we keep adding rules.
for design and we keep adding all these requirements. We have all these ethical concerns with practice of architecture, practice of engineering. So there's just lots too much any one mind can work with. So I think it's really good to have these tools that are very very good at kind of reading through semantics, making a good judgment call on kind of interpretability of a clause of something and then just giving you that heads up like oh hey that's probably not going to work for ABC reasons and then if that turns into something that you want to
make a proper semantic around in your common data environment. Now you have a tool that can just go grab and spit out your rules that you want to design by. So that I think is a fantastic use of it.
Amy Villis (06:21)
No, I love it. And I think you need to touch on a couple of things there. One is obviously using AI and language models to capture that data and create usable data to sort of reframe away from discretionary decisions because ultimately regulatory are rules and conflicting. And we have a lot of that that causes delays on projects. So being able to do that. And what I kind of love about it from that data capture piece is
analytics. So from now on, it's like, once we've got those rules digitized, how often are we, you know, relaxing a rule? You know, and then maybe we should consider using that for decision making around how those rules are created, certainly. So that's a big piece for me, like how they're changing priorities in housing and whatnot. And I love that they'll challenge the status quo once we get a bit more data maturity.
within that, especially the regulatory environment. So one big piece I wonder, obviously all of this is all trying to lead technology towards efficiencies and reducing delays, controlling costs, all that sort of stuff. How do you think like the workforce is gonna navigate any sort of skills gaps or how do you see them showing up, you know, meeting the needs here and the new absorption of technologies or, you know,
When we talk about innovation in this sector, sometimes it's not innovation, it's just going back doing it as you said and just doing it a little bit different of a way. But how are we going to manage the workforce? Because we do know that we are within a constraint workforce environment within the construction sector and development sector.
Brey Tucker (08:04)
Yeah, absolutely. think workforce issues are going to continue to get nuanced and harder. Because I think that we have the largest amount of retirement that's going to happen in the next 10 years. And we're going to have an experience gap that's going to be massive. And so then we're going to need all the tools that we can have to try to bridge that gap. But we also have a huge amount of demand for more things. So more construction, more homes.
and we have a construction workflow gap that's not addressing that. So, I think there's probably going to be some hard periods of readjustment where construction is going to have to cost more, so those laborers can be paid more and that can start being an attractive workforce again. And then, on the technology disruption side, I think for a very long time, basically since the late 80s, early 90s, there's been kind of this standard of how you draft and how you deliver work.
And the designing of buildings is going to get probably a bit more complicated in terms of data matters. And this industry has been operating with basically zero data for its entirety because, know, draftings and vector-based drawings, there's nothing we can suss out from that. And so I think that's where there's going to be a lot of transition into, okay, well, what's the difference between information and data? How can I leverage some of this stuff on my projects?
How can I build libraries of things that we've already done once? It's a compliant fit for what we're doing here. And so those algorithmic types of thinking and then really database approaches, that's going to be different. So it's interesting. think there's some stuff there where existing staff who are probably in mid-career, so late 30s to maybe even early 50s, where you're going have to completely change the way you work and learn a lot. So totally learn.
know, respect and approach for data and how you incorporate that into delivering work.
Amy Villis (10:02)
So one more question, and this is one of my favorite ones to ask is you can freewheel this as long as you like. The future state. We know we're out. We know we got a bunch of tools. There's things kind of percolating. For you, when you sit in your chair wearing all the hats that you've worn, what do you see in five, 10 years that excites you that you're like, this is going to be super rad or I can't wait for us to get past this hurdle so we can do this?
Brey Tucker (10:26)
I think there is a really exciting future opportunity for every design consultant, both architects and engineers, to step into a new type of contract where they are going to be managing digitally based solutions that are part of the overall project delivery and asset management lifecycle. So there's an opportunity, I think, for everyone in the space to just, we're all going to transition into more digitally based deliveries and digitally based management.
And I think it's interesting for consultants, they're already really comfortable with multidisciplinary contract relationships. So if you're doing this asset management thing, Autodesk just becomes one of your subs that's on the project. And then you're using their platform to do different things and you have different goals. I think that's really the future, I think, for digital twins. We have to solve that contractual piece. But for me, I think it's really exciting because those companies that are up to think about it.
It's an opportunity right now to define your perspective on how you want to manage it and what matters.
Amy Villis (11:26)
Tony Yang is a professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of British Columbia, specializing in developing technologies to improve structural performance, making buildings faster to construct, more resilient, lower in carbon, and smarter. Our discussions explore the future of housing innovation in Canada, the rise of AI and digital twins, and the challenges of adopting building information modeling,
Professor Yang highlights the need for collaboration between industry, academia, and government to drive innovations and establish Canada as a leader in housing development. Okay, so just as far as an overview, maybe you could provide around the current climate for innovation and technology adoption in Canada, where we're sitting right now.
Tony Yang (12:14)
Canada is right now in the urge of being able to produce housing. We have housing crisis, have labor shortage issue, so we are in the urge of being able to deliver quickly. Our government has been funding the industry and the research domain heavily in allowing us to develop those technologies. The technologies are not implemented in the day-to-day process, but it has been going through a lot of iteration in research at the moment.
So we have seen a lot of early fruits of those research and now we can see capable technology almost ready to be deployed to the industry. That's where we are today.
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Amy Villis (13:27)
attempts to use factory robots in construction fell short due to the unpredictability of job site environments. Unlike manufacturing, where robots perform precise, repetitive tasks, construction requires machines that can navigate chaos and handle heavy materials. With a global labor shortage, there's a push to make traditional equipment like cranes, excavators, smarter using AI and sensors, kind of like those self-driving cars. How is the next generation of construction robots evolving?
Tony Yang (13:56)
mean, robots are not new to us. We started seeing robots in our industry, general industries, making cars, making phones, making computers, making airplanes. But those robots, the previous generation robots, are developed for pure manufacturing. And with the significant shortage of skilled laborers in North America and around the world, we started seeing that maybe we should start to ramp up this technology in the construction sectors.
So over the last 10 plus years around the world, and of course Canada is taking a significant effort in this area leading it, we started developing the next generation robots to be used in the construction environment. So we started developing the next generation and the current generation of robots that are be used for the industry. And after a few iterations, we...
We do have many capable machines already been used in the construction industry today. You see the crane, you see the excavators, but right now they are operated by humans. So what we're doing at the moment is that we're making them smart. So basically putting the brains allowing to putting sensors around it so the robots will understand what's going on around them and then be able to execute tasks by itself autonomously. Just like how cars have been driving,
Amy Villis (15:19)
So next one, big one, AI. Everybody likes to use that. And I mean, I understand it's interlaced in everything that we're doing and innovating with. But as far as AI automation, we've seen it in applications around safety, wearables, things like that have been used in AI. So maybe if you could dive a little bit into how it's being used across the sector and its different modalities.
Tony Yang (15:42)
Yeah, so AI is evolving daily. Every day we're working on the new algorithm coming out and it's clearly the technology of this generation. So a few generations ago, we had personal computing, had finite element, but now AI is the day-to-day routines that algorithm technology we're using today. It's very mature now. We can use AI to do autonomous works now. For example, exactly the example you mentioned,
We can use sensors and AI to map out 3D environments. So we have started developing that. We use this AI to do predictive works. For example, with certain trends detected, we can actually prevent it from happening. We can use AI to do routine quality assurance work in our construction industry. Well, we say, hey, we train the AI to detect certain features that we wanted to do. For example, do we see any cracks in the wall?
and you will continue routinely going through and identifying it. Basically, we develop drones to fly around the construction site and everything the drone sees is what we turn into a digital twin technology. So you will see everything like those video games, you see everything is rendered, but it's done by AI. It's actually turned into 3D environment and you have precise measurement inside the 3D world. And we're also developing the next generation AI technology to do what we call
object recognition capability. So we have developed that technology. And the other portion of the AI technology we have developed is the algorithm we developed to control this heavy machinery with the hydraulic controls. So with all this integrated together, this is what you have seen in our demos that when the drones fly around, you see a digital environment, and then the management team will understand where things are and you start executing the things by moving and develop.
algorithms to start placing and build up those buildings.
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Amy Villis (18:16)
Digital Twin technology is advancing rapidly. But it's a relatively new concept. Over the past 20 years, we've used sensors to monitor infrastructure like bridges, building, measuring vibrations, and moisture to predict failures and prevent disasters. Now with your partnership with Rogers Communications, you're developing a 5G-powered digital twin for construction sites. This will allow for real-time remote monitoring of equipment, workers and materials, enhancing safety and efficiency.
also supporting automated construction using AI for quality assurance and intelligent material placement. How do you see 5G and digital twin technology transforming the future of construction?
Tony Yang (18:53)
with the advancement and with the speed of internet things. And now those sensors are become cheaper and more efficient for us. Now we can put a lot more and with many, many, many more information. And in fact, now we're able to do a digital war about any infrastructures where we're looking for. So what will happen is that we will digitize everything on the construction side. So management can actually be away from the site. So the local site, it's only the
Very few workers and mostly to shut down the facility if anything goes wrong. So they're more on the safety side, but most of the management side can be actually removed. With the 5G capability, you can actually monitor exactly what's going on in the construction side. At any moment of time, you will know where the machines are, where the workers are, what they are doing, what the status they are, where the materials are, so they can do digital construction management remodeling.
We're also working with Roger with the capability to develop onsite automated construction and this digital twin serve as a feedback. So right now with this 5G capability, we're setting our sensing technology for the full construction site. And when the goods coming to the construction site and just like Uber's now you are developing a network of supply chain coming to our construction site. Along the way,
the 5G network or the IoT things would know, my BIM my Windows, my electrical plumbing system are coming, a different schedule. Once they reach to the site, they are once again using our digital twin technology to do, and AI technology to do quality assurance. Once they are sure, okay, this passed the quality assurance, and the AI will start moving those parts to the right place and start ascent. And that's the technology we're doing today.
Amy Villis (20:48)
Building information modeling, or BIM as we often refer to it, has been a hot topic for years, with the promise of streamlining end-to-end development by integrating multiple trades, like structural, electrical, mechanical, and more, into one single platform. Despite its potential to reduce downtime, errors, and inefficiency, widespread adoption remains a challenge. What do you see as the biggest hurdle to BIM adoption, and how can companies overcome unlocking its full value?
Tony Yang (21:14)
So the idea of the BIM is potentially having a software platform allow all tray to work on the same thing. So as I changing my structures and the electrical mechanical plumbing will actually figure it out. And as they started changing it, that the other tray can figure it out. So it's a very important milestone in technology where that we could potentially reduces the downtime, overlapping and potential mistake. But it's not.
100 % adopted by the industry today and why? And it's mostly because the technology are continuing to be evolving at the moment. the companies are not fully endorsed on 100 % BIM. So they are still using most of their traditional procedure to carry it out. And in some important projects where BIM is required, then they will try to work together integrated to the BIM
Right now we have worked closely with many of the industry members, architectural, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, trying to figure out what's going on with the state of practice of now. And we just had a very large interview for many, many companies understand. Some company uses a lot and they say this is 80 % what we're doing. Some companies say we never use it and we ask why. And in order to do that, they need to have the skill set of the people who are capable of doing so.
So not all companies have that skill set of allow them to do that. Right now, we are trying to resolving this bottleneck by setting standards with this digital BIM or building information model with this digital information we have. We can do a lot more. Why do we break it down into basic BIM, intermediate and complex BIM? Because as your design progress and
You don't want to spend all your time developing it and you're not using it. So in the early stage of bidding, we require a company to send in the basic bid. And the basic bid has basic information, what material they are, what geometry, and roughly how it is about. With that information, it will allow management to actually do very high-level cost estimate and even to understand down the path.
what kind of carbon emissions that we are expecting to have.
Amy Villis (23:37)
So how would you see encouraging from an academic lens and the rubber hitting the road, how would you encourage the private sector to get involved or work within the sphere of investing in innovation?
Tony Yang (23:51)
I always felt that our research would not be useful if we never used them, we never worked with the industry. And the real research happened when we interacted with the industry and we're grateful for you to tie us to work with the industry. First of all, communications series like this allow them to know what's coming. It's not a Hollywood movie, this technology already, it's a good start.
But more importantly, when we sit down together, understand where the bottleneck on the construction industry or whatever the industry are to understand what's slowing them down, what's costing money. If we have very specific target and then if we can provide the solutions for that, then it will be win-win. We started this procedure by interacting with lots of our industry partners. They came back to us and said, Professor Yang, we have issues. We have lack of skilled workers and we have
we don't have an efficient way of constructing it. So over time, when we start hearing their bottleneck where they are, we started developing solutions that could potentially solve that. But this is not one side. It's not something that we develop something and try to find the market for. It has to be interaction. So they tell us where the issues are. And we work closely with them in developing this technology. And then once it can be matured, then it can be scaled up to many other partners in the same industry.
Amy Villis (25:15)
So the big last question, which I can't wait for your answer, is the future of construction and development. Where do you see us going? And I'm not thinking 30 years down the way. I'm thinking five, 10 years. Where do you see the big developments coming or where would you like to see them or encourage us to go to?
Tony Yang (25:34)
Yeah I think in the next 3 to 5 years, will see significant change in way building construction are being built. You heard about modular construction, that ability to build outside and assemble outside offers multiple magnitude advantages, where it reduces the demand for the outside skill worker requirement, reduces the environmental impacts on the outside area, reduces the waste of construction waste outside, and all those.
I think in the next three to five years, you will see a lot of these prefab constructions being assembled on site. And you will see these new robots actually working hand in hand in start assembling those on site. So I think in the next three to five years, you will see some sample projects being built. And maybe in the 10 years, this will automatically be the way things could be done in future.
Amy Villis (26:26)
I'd like to thank Brey and Tony for their insights and coming on the show today. As we conclude our series, it's clear that Canada has the potential to become a global leader in housing innovation. The technologies and approaches we've explored have offered exciting possibilities for creating more efficient, sustainable and affordable housing solutions. Remember, whether you're a policymaker, industry professional, academic or simply passionate about housing, there's a role for you to play in this transformation.
Let's work together to shape the future of Canada's housing landscape. Thank you for joining us on this journey of discovery and innovation. This podcast is just one way digital and folks you hear in these episodes are working together to accelerate housing production and position British Columbia as a leader in housing innovation. But there is so much more that we're doing. Digital's Housing Growth Innovation Program invests in mission-driven projects targeting key housing issues, as well as encouraging collaboration and information sharing through workshops, events, and more. We'd love to hear from you.
Reach out through our website at housing.digitalsupercluster.ca for more information. This podcast and Digital's Housing Growth Innovation Program are made possible with the financial support of the province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs.