GENERATIVE AI IN ENGINEERING AND CONSTRUCTION
Gamuda infuses Google cloud’s Genai into delivery of infrastructure projects
TO expedite the integration of generative AI (GENAI) into its engineering and construction operations, Gamuda Berhad has made enterprise-level GENAI capabilities accessible for all its employees.
In a long-standing collaboration with Google Cloud, this initiative by Gamuda Berhad empowers its employees to more efficiently and innovatively deliver engineering, construction, and public infrastructure projects in the region.
“Always a forerunner in technological adoption, GENAI for Gamuda is another step forward in our continuous digital innovation journey to transform a highly traditional industry, which is engineering and construction,” says Gamuda Berhad group chief digital officer John Lim Ji Xiong.
“Through the Gamuda Innovation Hub, we’re breaking new ground with a digital and data-driven approach for construction while upskilling talent in Google Cloud competencies to set them on new career paths in our industry.
“Google Cloud is our cloud provider of choice because of their vast expertise in planetary-scale data management and cutting-edge AI, coupled with the intuitiveness of their developer platforms and tools.
“These make it very easy for our workforce to even build their own GENAI tools to address challenges in their work – in a manner that is private and secure,” says Lim.
Unified data cloud platform
To give employees enhanced operational visibility and lay the groundwork for GENAI adoption, Gamuda developed the Gamuda Digital Operating System (GDOS), which is a standard ecosystem of tools for every Gamuda project where enterprise data is consolidated and underpinned by a unified data cloud platform.
This includes data from mission-critical systems like Autodesk Construction Cloud and SAP S4/HANA.
Notably, this follows the successful migration of Gamuda’s SAP S4/HANA systems from another hyperscaler to Google Cloud in 2023, supported by Google Cloud partner Cloudspace.
“Moving all our compute workloads, including SAP S4/HANA, to Google Cloud enabled us to harmonise our compute and data in a single cloud platform – thereby enabling the team to focus on driving value-creating use cases and shifting the focus away from managing infrastructure.
“Google Cloud’s Bigquery data warehouse and workload-optimised infrastructure delivers cost savings, is easy to use, and helps us derive more value from our data footprint,” said Lim.
A unified data cloud provides Gamuda’s design, engineering, finance, supply chain, and field operations teams with a holistic, integrated, and real-time view of all project workflows.
This enables agile, data-driven decision-making throughout the process of delivering complex, long-term projects in Malaysia, Australia, Vietnam, Singapore and Taiwan.
To safeguard its enterprise data and core digital systems, Gamuda has implemented Google Cloud’s Security Command Center Premium platform, which is powered by machine learning, for advanced threat detection and prevention, attack path simulation, and upholding regulatory compliance.
Enterprise data + GENAI
One initiative that delves into Gamuda’s tunnelling competencies is the use of Google Cloud’s Gemini models on the Vertex AI platform to build and integrate a Genai-powered conversational agent into its cloud-based Tunnel Insight platform, with support from Google Cloud partner Cloudmile.
Powered by Google Cloud, Tunnel Insight ingests, presents and analyses sensor data from the world’s first autonomous tunnel boring machines (A-TBMS) developed in-house by Gamuda.
Guided by sophisticated algorithms to automate repetitive operational tasks like machine steering and, advance and muck excavation, these A-TBMS are being used for better tunnelling in construction projects like the Defu and West Coast stations and tunnels for the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Cross Island Line in Singapore.
The vast amount of data that is continuously generated by such operations can make it challenging for staff to speedily extract insights for timelier responses to geological changes or maintenance needs.
The Genai-powered conversational agent is therefore being used by staff to quickly extract relevant summaries and instructions from a vast repository of machine documentation to ease the maintenance process and easily interpret data charts on machine performance in natural language.
Insights at the fingertips
Gamuda has also been using Vertex AI Search and Conversation to build generative search and chat applications for its market intelligence, design, and technical teams.
These employees can now synthesise thousands of pages of research documentation into crisp summaries within minutes and query data from hundreds of past projects to gain insights for new project tender proposals.
This marks the start of Gamuda’s efforts to empower more employees to build customised generative search and chat applications – with just a few clicks – to support their specific role or function, and make them accessible to the rest of the workforce through an internal marketplace called Botunify.
With Vertex AI Search and Conversation, Gamuda and its employees retain full control over what information sources their generative applications access, ingest, and index.
This allows them to ground these applications’ outputs in enterprise data and implement features like source citations – thereby boosting user confidence in the relevance and quality of their responses.
“Google Cloud’s enterprise AI stack has accelerated our GENAI innovation cycles, allowing us to go from concept to impact much faster than we had hoped,” says Lim.
“With Vertex AI’S out-of-box capabilities, even employees with zero specialist AI knowledge can build, deploy, and gain value from functional generative applications in a matter of weeks.
“With access to world-class foundation models and easy-touse APIS, Google Cloud enables Gamuda to lay the groundwork for a marketplace of expertise and insight at our fingertips,” he says.
Google Cloud country manager of Malaysia, Patrick Wee, comments: “Construction has traditionally been a labour- and process-intensive industry with lengthy project cycles, but Gamuda has swiftly transformed this paradigm by embracing digitalisation and GENAI at scale on Google Cloud.
“They are merging diverse data streams to solve real-world challenges while saving time and costs, and they are setting a powerful example for enterprises seeking rapid innovation through the convergence of modern infrastructure, data analytics, security, and AI.
“We are excited to be supporting Gamuda’s Genai-powered advancements across autonomous drilling, building information modelling, augmented reality, and more, equipping its 4,200-strong workforce with future-forward tools to shape the built environment in Malaysia and beyond.”