JE Dunn’s preconstruction technology wins Fast Company Award
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Diving certificate:
- Align, JE Dunn’s new preconstruction tool, won the Fast Company Innovation by Design Award 2024 in the category Large Companies in July the company unveiled on August 12.
- The Kansas City, Missouri-based contractor developed Align in collaboration with local technology and consulting firm Crema. The goal of the tool is to help prospective partners better plan their budget and simplify the cost estimating process.
- Align leverages data from more than 1,400 JE Dunn projects, which the company says allows users to establish an accurate cost baseline. Some of the data points include estimated cost per square foot and total project cost, paired with images of completed jobs. According to Fast Company, it provides estimates with a 1% margin of error.
Diving insight:
The tool helps users address the logistical issues of cost estimation and imagine what the company says is physically possible.
It lets users create their own buildings with different elements and calculate costs based on completed projects. The magazine compared this process to Papa John’s pizza-building app. However, instead of toppings, customers can choose from a menu of architectural styles, amenities and building facades – all within a what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface.
According to Fast Company, Align has been used on about one in five JE Dunn projects over the past year. The projects include residential high-rises, retail properties and higher education projects.
“Instead of having challenging conversations where we have to overcome design and budget issues, we spend our time refining projects to make them more efficient or more sustainable,” Jason Hickam, national preconstruction and estimating director at JE Dunn, told Fast Company.
“This allows our clients and design teams to set a realistic baseline budget that reflects their project goals and provides certainty of results based on historical costs and visual representations, as well as live updates of estimates,” Hickman added in a JE Dunn press release.
Although the construction industry has a reputation for being slow to adopt technology, contractors and technology companies are making great efforts to bridge the gap. At the beginning of the year, eight construction-related companies were among the List by Fast Company of the “Most Innovative Companies in the World in 2024”.
