Larissa Drawhardt employs a robot dog in her construction company-a four-legged machine, which is equipped with various cameras and sensors to document the daily work in Berlin-based business lat.
LAT specializes in laying high -voltage cables along the railway rails, and Drichhardt says that none of her 130 employees is really interested in getting back to the office to write down what was done after a complete layer on the construction site. Without proper documentation, the next shift would not know exactly where the cables are, she told DW.
This is where the new Robo-Dog from LAT comes into play because the high-tech mobile machine roams along the tracks, records locations and transfers the data directly into a virtual 3D model of the structure, so that human colleagues can access it.
This type of automated data acquisition also helps to prevent damage to cables that could ultimately lead to power failures and costly repairs if your precise location is not known.
A “sisterhood” of entrepreneurs
Achhardt and her sister Arabelle Lateryser took over the medium -sized family business a decade ago after the sudden death of her father. Her enthusiasm for modern technology was dare to digitally change the old -fashioned construction business.
Drawhardt said that the transformation was partly born out of mere necessity.
The electrical engineer was pregnant when her father died, and her sister kept bringing new documents home to sign them. Finally, the couple became tired of dealing with binders and decided to digitize the entire administration so that they could work from anywhere.
On -site employees also use digital apps for documentation, tool management and occupational safety documents that have been consolidated in a database for construction sites.
“Our working hours are tough,” Achhardt told DW, and the administrative work often has to be done at night, weekends or during the holidays. Therefore, she tries to relieve her paper team, wherever possible.
Building still has no work for women
The construction industry has the reputation of being dirty, loud, male and technologically conservative. Problems such as production with high waste and carbon emissions are ongoing challenges.
The biggest problem in the industry is the lack of qualified workers. According to the German Construction Industry Association (HDB), a quarter of specialists will retire within the next decade. However, younger workers – especially women – will be only a few widespread in the coming years.
According to HDB, the construction sector has only 14%very female employees in Germany. Even years of strong economic growth in the industry with good earnings potential did not make a big difference.
In shops that require heavy manual work such as bricklayers, street repairs and underground construction, only 2% of employees are women – a number that has hardly increased in the past two decades, as HDB data show. When planning and monitoring projects, however, the proportion of women is a little better 28%.
After all, it is difficult to bring yourself from the construction site to the construction site that is part of the job. We can use one supported by the construction industry and called it. Building in German (We Can Construction) to attract more women for careers and to demand more flexible hours, childcare support and remote work opportunities.
Although LAT a “small company that does not invest a lot in recruitment”, Lat received a number of “impressive applications” from women and young people. She gave this to the modern image of the company, which has already received awards for family friendliness and for projects with startups.
Never bothered because they are “the only women”
Bianca Weber-Lewerenz told DW that digitization and artificial intelligence (AI) create a new roles for women in construction.
Weber-Lewerz itself was lifted in 1997 in the regional German state of Baden-Württemberg, only three years after West Germany his ban on women who worked on construction sites.
After the bricklayer has learned from scratch, the civil engineer, who is now doing her doctorate -helps to convince the entire workforce that construction, women and AI fit perfectly.
“At that time, the Crane technology made us easier for us from serious physical work. With AI it is the same,” she said. “When I put whistles, I take a photo and send it to the billing department. Thanks to the AI image recognition, you can immediately generate an invoice because the completed section is identified.”
Such tasks – as well as measurements, planning and design – can be treated efficiently by a home office, she said. However, an architect or engineer sometimes has to be on site. “But the only question is how often and how long.”
Weber-Lewerenz said that he was the only woman among men she never bothered during her career. She said she was friends with her former manager.
“The men were amazed that the first female apprenticeship mason on a construction site. Sometimes they started to trust me physically demanding tasks. Men respect women who can handle difficult conditions outside of all weather and who have a plan.”
Weber-Lewerenz said that modern tools meant that contemporary construction requires much less muscles. As a mentor in the so-called top women organization of top-femal managers in Germany, she also advises students who are interested in career in construction work.
Effective use of AI
High hopes are set up on BIM (building information modeling) – a digital platform that is increasingly visible on German construction sites that give all business in a project access to documentation.
Weber-Lewerenz said BIM simplified communication and prevents “a lot of chaos and conflicts”.
“My focus is on the identification of the tools that make sense for a company that enable machines to take on heavy and monotonous tasks, to build more efficiently, to reduce and protect material waste,” she said, adding that this can increase the “basic values of appreciation, reliability and quality” in the industry.
In 2020, she started a so -called initiative for excellence, which aims to promote “sustainable, people under construction”. The initiative made them a pioneer for linking ethics, AI and construction and has received support from the German construction industry and beyond since then.
This article was originally written in German.