Gearing up for the future
Robotics company offers automation as solution to the construction industry’s labor shortage
Before heading out to its first job, TyBot had to get permission from a union representative. An autonomous robot that ties rebar — the reinforcing rods that are used in building structures such as a bridge — TyBot was putting in a weekend shift after its human counterparts had placed the rebar. Because that was work those humans expected to do after the weekend, the union had to sign off.
In charge of getting that approval was Stephen Muck, CEO of Brayman Construction Corp. in Clinton Township, Butler County, and cofounder and CEO of Advanced Construction Robotics, a tech company in Hampton that is working to automate parts of the construction process with machines like TyBot.
Three days later, he got a call from the same job site: The workers had finished placing another layer of rebar and wanted to robot back to finish its job.
“That was a very early indication of the attractiveness and acceptance of the tool in the field,” said Mr. Muck, who calls the machine a “job enhancer.”
Machines like TyBot, or IronBot, Advanced Construction Robotics’ newest product that will autonomously carry and lay rebar, may be the solution to a labor shortage that has been brewing for years, according to the engineers and entrepreneurs working to automate parts of the construction process to make work safer and more efficient.
With talk of an infrastructure plan in Washington that could devote billions of dollars to bridges, roadways and waterways, those types of machines may soon be in high demand.
“There’s an existing and growing gap between the demand of the industry and the available productive labor to get it done,” said Jeremy Searock, co-founder and president at Advanced Construction Robotics. “The compounding issue is the infrastructure bill will create a bunch of new jobs, and there’s just not enough people to fill them.
“If you can’t get more people to do construction, then you have to make a single person more productive in order to get the job done.”
Concerns ‘behind the scenes’
Construction companies will need to hire 430,000 more workers this year than they did in 2020 to keep up with demand, according to a March study from the Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade associationbased in Washington, D.C.
Every $1 billion in extra construction spending generates about 5,700 construction jobs, the study found.
In the industry right now, 54% of contractors say they are having trouble filling positions, according to a January survey from the Associated General Contractors of America, based in Arlington, Va. About 60% said they anticipated inexperienced skilled labor and the workforce shortage would impact the health and safety of their workers.
“You’re hearing discussion about all this potential extra spending. Yeah, it’s great. It’ll put people to work. But at the same time, behind the scenes, everybody’s got to worry about making sure … there are enough workers all at one time to do that work,” said Scott Christie, a senior project manager with KCI Technologies, a civil engineering company based in Moon, and a member of the board forAdvanced Construction Robotics.
“I’m not saying there’s not, but at the same time, when you have technology … to be able to fill some of the roles, that’s beneficial. It takes some of the worry off.”
The industry still employs 238,000 fewer people than before the pandemic, according to a July analysis from the Associated General Contractors.
Passing on projects
After 30 years in heavy civil construction, Mr. Muck said he has watched productivity decline and skilled labor “boom out” as the number of people who are retiring continue to outpace the new hires.
Employment at Brayman Construction fluctuates seasonally, but the number usually hovers above 350 workers, Mr. Muck said.
The corporation now has about 30
openings among eight operating companies, ranging from positions that offer $20 an hour to those that come with a six-figure salary.
“It restricts the ability to take advantage of all of the opportunities that we see,” Mr. Muck said. “We have to pass on projects that we’re concerned that we can’t staff.”
Mr. Muck said he has raised wages recently to attract more workers. Though he couldn’t disclose by how much, he said that only solves the problem of stealing individuals away from other jobs at restaurants or in retail. It won’t fix the gap in skilled labor.
The industry overall doesn’t do a good job marketing itself to younger generations, Mr. Muck said, something that he hopes robotic solutions could also help with. Kids coming out of high school may not be interested in operating a jack hammer all day, but they might want to be in charge of the robot laying the foundation for a bridge.
An autonomous solution
TyBot can handle the work of four to eight people, Mr. Searock said, depending on the project and the crew. Combine that with IronBot, which is set to go to market next year, and the contractors could see production improve by 250%.
Advanced Construction Robotics, which formed as a partnership between Mr. Searock’s tech background and Mr. Muck’s construction expertise, brought TyBot to market in 2018. Since then, it has been on 29 jobs in seven states.
The company, which has about 30 employees, has received more than $15 million in funding from Mr. Muck and other investors and is gearing up for a funding round later this quarter.
There is a “robot supervisor” assigned to keep an eye on TyBot while it works, but the machine moves on its own.
It doesn’t need a remote control or any pre-mapping but instead uses computer vision to “see, think and act,” Mr. Searock said. When it comes to building a bridge, that means it looks for the intersections where the rebar overlaps and keeps a map in its head of where it has already been.
At the intersection, the robotic arm delicately ties a piece of wire to connect the two bars. The final product looks something like a small twist-tie that is a lot more durable.
TyBot can finish up to 1,100 ties in an hour, Mr. Searock said.
The “robot supervisor” works with TyBot to keep it running smoothly. The human is responsible for filling up the gas tank and refilling its wire supply when needed. The machine will beep to let its colleague know it is ready to move to a new section of the bridge, and the supervisor will press a button to nudge the whole thing over so TyBot can get to work again.
Some of that could be automated, Mr. Searock said, but the company wants to keep humans on the job site. The engineering effort to make it all autonomous might not be worth it; the supervisor role creates a new job for workers in the industry, and it adds an extra layer of verification that the job is done correctly.
In an industry like construction, there isn’t much room for robotic error.
“The construction industry is a challenging place for robotic solutions because we never build the same thing twice,” Mr. Muck said. “If we did, it would be in a different geography with a different geology with a different workforce.”
Advanced Construction Robotics plans to release IronBot, the autonomous machine to carry and lay rebar, next year.
It is working through the “critical path” of constructing a bridge, as Mr. Muck put it. In other words, it is working to automate one process at a time, working through the most labor intensive and time-consuming parts that are blocking the path forward first.
It started with TyBot, the tying of the rebar, then moved to IronBot and will eventually tackle steps such as putting down deck tin and overhang and placing and pouring the concrete.