b'With AI, Walk Before You Run:Then, we have an Operational Risk Sidekick, which is one of my other favorites, for our folks in the field. Its comprised of Skanska USA Exec thousands of case studies and experiences across different pro-ject types and building systems. It gives you strategies and miti-Anita Nelson wants you to start small with artificial intelli- gation plans for existing risks on jobs. gence. The chief strategy officer for Skanska USA Building, the U.S.Safety Sidekick is the newest member of our suite. arm of the Swedish builder and developer, Nelson discussed the suite of AI products that the contractor has rolled out to its em- What hurdles did you have to clear to make this AI availa-ployees, which it calls Sidekicks. ble to your team? The Safety Sidekick, Skanskas newest internal offering, helps employees access Skanska data on safety and jobsite condi- Because we had developed others, it was really about making tions. It helps employees plan toolbox talks and huddles, andsure that we got the documents in place. gives them a resource at their disposal.Our early users constantly give us feedback in real time on whats working and whats not. We dont launch things, you know, to all 3000-plus building employees right away. We take Here, Nelson talks with Construction Dive about the Safetytime to pilot, see whats working, see whats not.Sidekicks origins, how it fits into the companys current AII dont think we ran into any hurdles on this particular launch, suite and the advice she has for builders looking to incorporatebecause the technology is there. AI into their own workflows.I dont want to say its as easy as plug-and-play, because my data scientists would tell me its more complex than that. But Editors Note: This interview has been edited for brevity andreally, a lot of our challenges are going to be about the quality clarity.of the data and whether our data warehouse has the right infor-mation. CONSTRUCTION DIVE: How did the idea of the Skanska Safety Sidekick come about?What have been the benefits? ANITA NELSON: We saw a need to make these insights moreOur early users are definitely reporting time saved when prepar-immediate and more actionable on jobsites. This data is noting safety briefings and improved jobsite engagement. I think often leveraged in real time. Sidekick allows us to look at thatthat is critical.data in a specific way. When youre preparing for a morning huddle, you might be preparing for that the night before. You might be planning that Using generative AI trained on Skanska-specific safety data andday before on your commute. jobsite conditions, it allows us to deliver custom toolbox talks,This makes it really easy for people. Theyre not getting to the safety observations and proactive suggestions to workers.trailer and figuring it out. Theyre not staying late the night before to figure it out. On a day-to-day basis, that means workers can ask the AI tool safety related questions via mobile or desktop and get instantWhat advice would you give a smaller contractor who wants support for planning a morning huddle or addressing a newto implement this kind of tech? hazard.Start with the data that you know. You start with the low hang-ing fruit. When youre looking at generative AI or language Beyond text, if youve got a picture of site conditions that day,models, if you have documents and you want to have them you can ask questions related to that image. The tool is alsoscanned and create a chat bot on top of it, thats all well and embedded into our workflow, so its not an added step in thegood. day, its very user friendly.But, if theres not an infrastructure that you invest in to do that, thats where youre going to run into trouble.Safety Sidekick is one of a suite of AI offerings that SkanskaAdditionally, we were able to build this ourselves. Dont think has. How does it fit into that?you have to build it yourself. We have a big enough organization and a lot of our own sys-Our data solutions team, in collaboration with information tech- tems and protocols that require that. But there are products off nology, theyve developed four secure internal AI tools. the shelf. I wouldnt be able to list them or the sites, but I know they exist, and so you can start small by testing one thing. Theres Skanska Sidekick, which is based on OpenAIs GPT-4o model. Thats a general use chat bot that protects user businessI think for us we started with operational risk. We started with data so you can ask it anything within our organization or out- the general Skanska Sidekick to play around with these things, side our organization. to answer immediate challenges. Safety was not the first tool. While it was at the top of the list, we wanted to make sure that Then we have three expert sidekicks. we have this right, because you dont want to have the wrong safety information. Ones called My Skanska Sidekick, and that searches for key documents on our internal intranet site. So, if youre looking forYou want to walk before you run. a risk management protocol or our sustainability report, or whos the leader of something, you can ask it for that.Matthew Thibault Reporter 25'