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Bricks And Bytes

A show about construction technology, business, and entrepreneurship.

Welcome to the Bricks and Bytes Podcast, where we bring together the worlds of construction, technology, and entrepreneurship. We explore the innovative ideas and groundbreaking advancements that are shaping the future of the industry.

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Today · 51 min
Autodesk’s New AEC Leadership, Schneider’s $22.6B PTC Deal, AI’s $4.2T Revenue Challenge & Construction Conferences
Startups are paying thousands for AEC conference booths and asking what they actually got for it. AEC conference season is here, and almost nobody we talk to is coming home from these events happy. On this week's Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, Dustin told us where Ediphi's event budget is going next year: "I don't think we're gonna be spending money on these conferences." Also on the episode: • Why startups are skipping booths for side events and hyper-local customer hosting • Autodesk promotes its Media & Entertainment lead to EVP of AEC • Schneider Electric buys PTC for $22.6B in cash • Data centre planning slows while institutional work grows, and the $4.2T question hanging over AI infrastructure • Andrés Mitnik, CEO of Strong by Form (€5.8M Series A), on timber floors that compete with concrete • Alex Michalatos, CEO of Buildcheck ($12M Series A), on AI design review for GCs Is the big vendor conference still worth it, or is the side event the real event now? Episode out on Youtube and Spotify. Link in comments. #aec #constructiontech #bricksbucksandbytes #bricksandbytes Our Sponsors: Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com Chapters 00:00 Teaser 01:23 Event season is here 02:18 How to survive conference season 05:57 Are construction conferences still worth it? 09:08 Autodesk's new head of AEC, Diana Colella 11:12 Schneider Electric buys PTC for $22.6B 17:01 Is data centre construction slowing down? 18:23 Is AI a bubble? The $4.2 trillion question 23:13 Help to Buy and the housing affordability problem 24:04 Strong by Form calls in from Berlin 24:24 Can wood replace concrete floors? 27:14 Timber vs concrete: the real cost comparison 31:08 Is mass timber sustainable? Reuse vs recycling 34:15 Why new building materials struggle to scale 36:24 Buildcheck calls in 37:27 How AI checks construction drawings for errors 42:21 How Buildcheck prices AI design review 46:04 AI design review vs BIM clash detection 48:40 How construction tech startups win over GCs
Today · 19 min
AI Could Take 20% Off the Cost of a Building According to MIT. Here Is the Caveat.
This week’s briefing covers three things that landed in the same week and all point at the same uncomfortable gap between what AI promises and what it actually delivers. Suffolk, one of the biggest contractors in the US, published a white paper with MIT’s Center for Real Estate and MIT Media Lab this week. They took a real building, a 118,000 square foot multi-family block in San Francisco that finished in 2024 at 179 million dollars, and ran six AI levers across it simultaneously. Design automation, offsite manufacturing, permitting, scheduling, labour and subcontracting, and supply chain. The model took 28 million dollars out of 128 and seven months out of 30 on the construction phase alone. The unlevered return to the developer goes up by 5 to 6 percentage points, which the paper says can be the difference between housing getting built and housing not getting built at all. Then the authors themselves. The per lever gains come from early stage pilots and should be treated as directional rather than construction validated benchmarks. The six levers only compound if data flows between them, and the paper says that needs a shared data infrastructure layer the levers themselves do not provide. The practitioners in the room ranked robots last despite academic studies being the most optimistic about them, because the studies measure performance in controlled conditions and practitioners are pricing in what it costs to create those conditions on a live site. Suffolk calls its own model a first pass. The work to prove it runs in 2027. Then the market as it actually stands. Gardner and Theobald describe it as selective not cheaper. 69% of contractors say they are more selective than a year ago. MEP is the pinch point with 68% reporting tighter availability. In the US, contractors have absorbed roughly half the material cost rises from this year and JLL expects the rest to land in bids before year end. And on labour, UK right to work rules extended to the self employed and subcontractors from October 1st with fines of 60,000 pounds per worker. In the US, immigration enforcement is discouraging legal workers from reporting to sites in a workforce already 300,000 to 400,000 short. Drop your answers to this week’s questions in the comments of this week’s LinkedIn post.
Tuesday · 59 min
Why Construction Procurement Is Broken: The 15–20% Cost, AI Agents & The Future of Buying Materials
Can a CEO tell you what their company bought last year? In today's episode we have Eldar Sadikov, CEO of Field Materials. He says most contractors can't, and he estimates 15 to 20% of materials spend gets lost to the mess. Around 25 to 30% of purchases are will calls, bought on the fly with no planned buyout behind them He reckons 50% or more of contractors still pay suppliers by cheque His bar for a good CEO: "the CEO should be in the position to go and query this." Episode live on YouTube & Spotify. Link in comments. #aec #constructiontech #ai #bricksandbytes Our Sponsors: Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com Chapters 00:00 Intro 00:48 Why Is Material Procurement Broken in Construction? 04:50 What Are the Hidden Problems Behind Construction Material Procurement? 09:05 How Much Do Material Procurement Issues Cost Construction Projects? 14:27 How Does the Construction Material Procurement Workflow Work? 16:22 Sponsor Message 24:36 How Does Field Materials Solve Construction Procurement Challenges? 34:59 Who Are the Key Stakeholders in Construction Procurement? 36:12 How Will AI and OpenClaw Change the Future of Procurement? 36:26 How Does Onboarding and Implementation Work for Procurement Software? 38:47 What Does a Day in the Life of a Project Manager Look Like With Procurement Software? 40:39 Who Are the Customers for Construction Procurement Software? 42:59 How Do You Measure ROI on Procurement Software in Construction? 46:43 What Role Will AI Play in Construction Procurement? 49:38 How Do You Evaluate Construction Procurement Software? 53:05 Why Do Procurement Software Implementations Fail? 56:57 Where Do Major ERP Players Fit in Construction Procurement? 1:00:48 What Is the Future of Construction Tech?
Saturday · 21 min
Accenture Just Entered Construction. Your Software Bill Is Moving to Per Token. And One 11 Billion Dollar Builder Stopped Innovating on Live Sites.
This week's briefing covers four things that landed in the same week, starting with a story about an intern, a spreadsheet and eighteen thousand snags. Gene Hodge is Vice President of Innovation at Mortenson, a family owned American builder with 11 billion dollars of revenue and the tenth biggest contractor in America. He started his career printing off punch list items and walking the site with a pen. Twenty three years later, someone still walks the site with a list. His answer to why is that the industry is structurally fragmented, and the way past it is trust, collaboration and simplifying what it takes to build. Mortenson's data centre built the industrialised way, with precast duct bank, prefabricated wall panels and as much made offsite as possible, uses half the on-site labour hours of a non-industrialised one. It took seven years of failures and a 90,000 square foot research and development facility to get there. On AI on site his answer was blunt. It is not making a big impact yet. Then your software bill. Alain Waha, Chief Technology Officer at Buro Happold, was at Autodesk University in Las Vegas and came away with one takeaway. The week was about how Autodesk plans to charge more. The shift he is describing is from per seat licensing to per token, paying for how much thinking the machine does on your behalf. His example is adding a floor in Revit. Today that takes a day of your time. Tomorrow the AI does it and the vendor charges accordingly. The question is whether you would know what you actually bought. Then the quickfire. Diesel hit two pounds a litre on Monday, a record, up 42 percent since January, adding roughly 590 million pounds a year to UK infrastructure costs. Accenture has launched a construction business, 5,000 people built from 11 acquisitions, aimed at owners of airports, grids, data centres and factories. Turner, Kiewit and AECOM have all reported unauthorised access to their systems since July, and 48 percent of construction firms said they are not big enough to be a target. And Bricks and Bytes has announced Groundworks, a robotics event on the 11th of November in London. Drop your answers to this week's questions in the comments of this week's LinkedIn post.
October 2 · 1 hr 3 min
Autodesk’s Next Chapter: Design to Operations, AI Pricing, Miter’s $40M & Kuro’s €10M
Autodesk now runs from the first sketch to the maintenance ticket. So who is left to compete? We got back from Autodesk University and put that question to three people this week: Connor Watumull on Miter's $40M Series B, and why payroll was the way into the whole contractor back office. Lea Scherer on Kuro's €10M seed, and how a two year old startup ended up working with Goldbeck and Hochtief Infrastructure. Alain Waha, CTO of Buro Happold, on why AI could push software bills up from here. Episode is live! #aec #constructiontech #ai #bricksbucksandbytes #bricksandbytes Our Sponsors: Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:12 Autodesk University 2026 recap 02:45 Autodesk's plan to own design, construction and operations 04:49 Can startups compete with Autodesk? 07:23 Most internet traffic is now AI bots 08:49 Miter raises $40M Series B 11:15 What is Miter? Construction payroll and workforce software 14:01 Why construction payroll is so hard 16:28 From payroll to field operations and safety 19:04 How construction software startups win customers 20:37 Replacing the construction Franken Stack 22:08 Kuro raises €10M seed for AI for general contractors 23:12 How AI reads construction documents and tenders 26:01 Why Kuro targets Europe's biggest general contractors 28:22 How AI startups stay defensible against ChatGPT 33:09 Building construction tech in Europe vs the US 34:12 Kuro's growth and hiring plans 38:11 Jevons paradox: why software keeps costing more 38:37 Can Autodesk be disrupted? 39:53 Why construction is slow to adopt new tech 41:57 Why switching away from Revit is so hard 43:47 AI as a generational shift in design 46:04 Will AI replace Revit? Snaptrude, Motif and AI design tools 48:11 Should you build your website for AI agents? 52:41 Humans plus AI: the chess grandmaster lesson 53:43 Autodesk AI pricing: from seats to tokens 59:34 Is AI actually creating value in engineering?
September 29 · 45 min
Inside Mortenson’s $10.8B Business: The Bet on In-House Innovation | Gene Hodge
A few years ago, Mortenson's own leadership group told them they were treating innovation "kind of like a hobby". This year they're No. 10 on ENR's Top 400, running a 90,000 sq ft R&D facility and about to launch a joint venture with Goldbeck. So we asked Gene Hodge, their VP of I4 and Innovation, how he proves the ROI on all of it: "I think anyone asking what's the ROI on innovation is not interested in innovating, most likely." CFOs, we'd love to hear you push back on this one. #construction #constructiontech #aec #ai #bricksandbytes Our Sponsors: BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com 00:00 - Teaser 00:43 - Intro 01:36 - Who is Gene Hodge & Mortenson Overview 02:31 - Quick-Fire Questions: Builder vs Technologist 03:10 - Sponsors 06:19 - Is Most Construction Tech Worth the Money? 06:49 - How Has the Jobsite Changed Since 2005? 07:43 - The Reality of AI on the Construction Site 08:29 - Autonomous Equipment & Robots in 5 Years 09:30 - What Actually Moves the Needle on Projects 10:04 - Mortenson's In-House R&D & Innovation Spending 11:39 - Data Sovereignty: Which Tech Mortenson Refuses to Buy 12:33 - Goldbeck Joint Venture & Industrialised Construction 14:57 - Real-Time Jobsite Visibility vs Manufacturing 16:03 - Standardisation vs Bespoke Client Architecture 17:27 - Data Centres & the Hyperscaler Effect 18:56 - Industrialised Construction Across Resi & Defence 21:19 - Day-to-Day Role & The ROI of Innovation 23:04 - 30 Years After VDC: Why Has Productivity Stagnated? 25:35 - Lessons from 2003: 18,000 Punch List Items on Paper 28:29 - Precast Duct Bank Innovation 30:24 - Building a Corporate Culture of Innovation 32:38 - BLUvera: Scaling Offsite Manufacturing 34:38 - Redesigning the Jobsite Trailer & Field Wellbeing 36:41 - AI Hype vs Real Jobsite Workflows 38:46 - Machine Learning in Pre-Construction & Estimating 40:44 - Measuring AI ROI & Enabling Growth 41:49 - How to Pitch Tech to Mortenson 42:57 - What Keeps an Innovation VP Up at Night 45:19 - Cross-Industry Collaboration & The Future Contractor Model 48:19 - The #1 Tech for 2035: Generative Design & Real-Time Costing
September 21 · 13 min
Autodesk Just Closed the Loop From Design to Operation. The RFI Is Being Erased. And the Master Builder Is Coming Back.
Autodesk Just Closed the Loop From Design to Operation. The RFI Is Being Erased. And the Master Builder Is Coming Back. This week's briefing comes straight from Autodesk University in Las Vegas, the biggest technology conference in the AEC industry, where Owen was invited as part of the media and analyst cohort. Three things stood out above everything else. First, agents. Autodesk showed agents checking submittals against specifications, comparing subcontractor bids against scopes of work, and tracing the impact of a single RFI through a building model and into the project schedule. But the more important point came from Andrew Anagnost, CEO of Autodesk. He said the agents will get so smart that the whole concept of an RFI gets erased over time. His aim is to spot the problem while the design is still being made so the RFI never happens. His line on what comes next was direct. Transparency is coming for AEC whether AEC likes it or not. The catch, and it is the same one we keep coming back to, is that every demo on that stage worked because drawings, model and schedule all sat in one connected place. Most firms listening to this are not there yet. Second, the platform war. In a live keynote demo a planner, an architect and a civil engineer each worked on the same project from one set of data, carried all the way through from design into construction. That is Autodesk Forma's core argument against Procore. If the design already lives in Autodesk, why move it somewhere else to manage the build. The MaintainX acquisition for 3.6 billion dollars closes the final gap. Design in Autodesk, build in Autodesk, operate in Autodesk. Once an owner is on the platform they can mandate it across their entire supply chain. Several Procore customers at the event said they were looking at making the switch. Third, the master builder. Anagnost said Autodesk set out over a decade ago to automate the making of the model and they are very close. His line was that the act of creating a model is not where the value is created. More people at this year's conference than ever before said the industry is heading back to the master builder, the model where one firm both designs and builds, before architect and contractor became separate jobs. Owen argued that exact point on the show back in April. It is no longer a fringe view. Drop your answers to this week's questions in the comments of this week's LinkedIn post.
September 15 · 38 min
Is Your Construction Data Ready for AI? | The Blueprint for Contractors
"My data is too messy for AI." We hear it on almost every call. Barry Chiu thinks it's the wrong way round. Consider this a contractor's guide to data and AI. Nobody has clean data at the raw level. Not one contractor. You can't know how bad yours is until it's all in one place and you can put the systems side by side. When you find that job numbers don't match across two systems, that's your first win, not a setback. His line on it: "you're already a step ahead of a lot of people, because people are not even aware of how bad the data is." Waiting until your data is clean means waiting forever. In today's episode of Bricks & Bytes, we sit down with Barry Chiu, CEO and co-founder of Kroo, to unpack why the obsession with "clean data" is holding contractors back from using AI. Full episode out on YouTube and Spotify! Link in comments. #construction #constructiontech #ai #aec #bricksandbytes Our Sponsors: BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com 00:00 Intro 01:12 How the company grew and where it is now 03:39 What AI actually does in construction tech today 06:54 Why construction data is useless without context 09:13 Connecting data across your project systems 10:08 Sponsors 13:09 Real customer examples of unified project data 15:33 Why construction data management is so hard 18:05 AI readiness: what you need in place first 23:24 How to build a strong construction data foundation 24:37 Data permissions and security in construction software 26:24 Should you use third-party data tools? 28:41 Why subcontractors are winning with tech 29:59 Data sovereignty and competitive advantage explained 31:07 How to get real value out of your data 32:59 Questions to ask a software vendor before you buy 34:52 What's next for Crew and AI in construction
September 12 · 23 min
Three Central Banks, 20 Months of Contraction, and an AI That Just Built a House From a Text Prompt.
This week's briefing covers three things landing in the same week that construction leaders need to understand before they plan anything for the rest of the year. First, interest rates. The European Central Bank raised rates for the second time this year on the tenth of September, to two and a half percent, with markets now pricing more than three further rises over the next twelve months. The US Federal Reserve decides on Wednesday the sixteenth, with traders putting the chance of a rise at around seventy percent. The Bank of England decides the day after, and is expected to hold at three point seven five percent. A hold is not a cut. The scheme that only works if rates come down is still waiting. And the thing pushing rates up, energy, is the same thing pushing material costs up. Construction takes the cause and the cure at the same time. Then the numbers. UK construction has now shrunk for twenty consecutive months, with housing falling to its weakest reading in August. Eurozone construction has contracted for fifty two months in a row, with France posting its steepest fall since lockdown. In the US, the chief economist at Associated Builders and Contractors said the increase in non-residential spending in July was entirely due to data centres. Take them out and non-residential is at its lowest since September 2023. One type of building is holding up the entire market on both sides of the Atlantic. Then OpenAI released a model called Astra on the third of September. In the launch demos it opened a 3D modelling tool, built a house, and exported it into a game engine you could walk around in. It rebuilt the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco overnight from old drawings and photographs. A post on LinkedIn this week asked the question nobody has a clean answer to yet. If the model can produce the design, what is the architect for? The comments split five ways, and none of them are comfortable. Drop your answers to this week's questions in the comments of this week's LinkedIn post.
September 11 · 48 min
The Human Extinction by AI Debate, OpenAI's Astra Model, $616M AEC Funding & Why AI Data Centers Fuel Inflation
Anthropic's own alignment lead says there's a greater than 10% chance AI kills us all within a decade. He was backing up a researcher who'd just quit the company over exactly that. On this episode of Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, we read the entire doomsday scenario out loud: the data centres, the autonomous research, the whole thing. Then we picked it apart. Martin's take: it's a fairy tale that conveniently justifies more regulation. Dustin's take: the AI can't even build its own infrastructure without us, so who's actually building the robots to run it?Bernie Sanders wants to ban superintelligence outright. Anthropic's own safety lead admits nobody has a plan to stop it either way. Full breakdown in the episode.. #ai #bricksbucksandbytes #constructiontech #bricksandbytes Chapters 00:00 Intro01:16 AI Extinction Risk: Are We Really in Danger? 04:19 How AI Could Actually Wipe Out Humanity 07:18 AI vs Architects: The Commoditization Threat 10:18 Can AI Ever Be Truly Creative? 13:11 AI, Laziness and the Erosion of Critical Thinking 16:12 OpenAI's Astra: Designing Full Homes with AI 27:38 $616M Funding Boom in AEC Startups 30:34 Why Foundational Models Threaten Construction Startups 33:17 VCs Pile Into Physical AI and Robotics 35:57 Europe's Construction Industry in Freefall 37:50 Rising Interest Rates Crush UK Housebuilders 41:25 AI, the Fed and the Next Economic Crisis 44:50 Apple's $2,000 Folding iPhone Verdict 🎧 Listen to the Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/3P7JkiN9X3N4Kh6jlDsOgi?si=91JP5nxvQbKStkp8AQdAOg 📩 Subscribe to the Bricks & Bytes Newsletter: https://bricks-bytes.beehiiv.com/🌐 Visit our website: http://bricks-bytes.com/📲 Follow us: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bricks-bytes/ Twitter: https://x.com/bricksbytespod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bricksbytes/Our Sponsors: BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.comEnjoying the insights? Hit that Subscribe button to stay ahead in construction tech, AI, and the future of how we build.
September 8 · 49 min
How A Specialty Contractor Became A ConTech Investor | BarrierCube Ventures, Track3D, and the CFO's Vendor Test
"I think what dies is when you have someone show up and they don't actually understand the problem they're solving and they can't relate to a builder." That's Brett Dahmer, CFO of Performance Contracting Group, on what actually kills a vendor pitch inside a 60+ office, employee owned specialty contractor. We sat down with Brett for a rare finance side view of ConTech decisions. He walked us through: BarrierCube Ventures, PCG's own venture arm, and why a contractor started writing cheques into startups The Track3D investment, and what happens when you're both a startup's investor and its biggest customer The line KP Reddy gave him early on that he still uses to size up every founder Brett's quick fire answer on ROI in construction tech is worth the listen alone. A vendor once quoted him a figure for a company he knows personally, and it didn't hold up. Full episode live on Youtube and Spotify. #aec #bricksandbytes #construction #constructiontech #vc Our Sponsors: BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:00 Introduction to Brett Dahmer and Performance Contracting 03:53 The Role of Technology in Construction 08:51 Establishing a Venture Arm: Barrier Cube Ventures 11:30 CFO Perspectives on Technology Investments 17:19 Investing in Track Free D: A Case Study 22:43 The Dual Role: Investor and Customer 26:19 Challenges in Selling Technology to PCG 26:49 Understanding the Pain Points in Problem Solving 28:01 The Importance of Humility in Innovation 29:57 Navigating Technology Implementation in Construction 33:12 Consolidation of Technology for Efficiency 35:13 Exploring Robotics and Automation in Construction 37:32 Evaluating New Solutions: The First Questions 40:12 The Role of Empathy in Founders' Pitches 42:40 Reflecting on Investment Trends in Construction Tech 45:37 Challenges of Fragmentation in the Construction Industry
September 5 · 21 min
Unusual Partnership Between Two GC's Signals the Future of Construction
This week's briefing covers three shifts reshaping industrial construction, supply chain efficiency, and margin health on the ground. For decades, European legacy builders insisted you couldn't make adequate margins delivering whole buildings from start to finish. Now, German construction powerhouse Goldbeck is breaking into America through a massive joint venture with Mortenson, bringing 24,000 shared staff to deploy serial, Lego-like prefabrication across US jobsites. The timing isn't accidental: hyperscalers building the world's largest AI data center campuses are actively squeezing contractors, demanding identical scopes of work for 20% less capital. Next, the fatal flaw in construction productivity. On complex mega-projects, 40% to 50% of the budget no longer goes to labor or raw materials—it is entirely eaten up by the compounding overhead of managing project complexity. Contractors are drowning in hundreds of disconnected software point-solutions that function as expensive band-aids, creating busywork while failing to budge the profit-and-loss sheet. Finally, re-engineering the labor equation. Industry veterans argue that true productivity isn't about software efficiency, but standardizing demand so supply can finally scale. Cutting runaway project management complexity in half could instantly free up the capital contractors need to invest directly in trades, boosting wages and genuinely reversing the chronic craft labor shortage. Drop your answers to this week's questions in the comments of this week's LinkedIn post.
September 4 · 59 min
Why Software Costs Rise but Productivity Doesn't, Solow Paradox Explained & How OpenAI Agents Breach Hugging Face
700 AI agents hacked Hugging Face. They built a secret notice board inside OpenAI's own infrastructure, swapped over 70,000 messages on it, split the work between them and then tried to cover their tracks. The headlines called it a warning shot for humanity. So we asked two people who actually deploy this stuff inside construction what it means for us. Alain Waha, CTO at Buro Happold: "It's PR gold and it's sales gold." Dustin DeVan, CEO at Ediphi: "I think that there's probably a bit of fear mongering." Their view: the vendors who created the agents now get to sell you agents to defend against agents. Convenient. The part that should actually bother a contractor is smaller. The agents got in using leaked passwords they found online. Count how many logins your project teams hold across estimating, PM, document control and the rest. That is the exposure. And then the flip side, which is where the episode gets interesting. ✅ An agent with infinite time will read a six week bid pack more completely than any human ever has (Alain) ✅ Preconstruction is a capital allocation equation, and most of the industry still treats it as "ingest a design and price it" (Dustin) ✅ Give an agent the wrong goal and it cheats. Give it the right one and it finds the complexity in your design that never needed to be there Jake Olsen from Stratus joins for the second half on why data centres are forcing MEP contractors to become manufacturers whether they like it or not. Full episode live on Youtube and Spotify. Link in comments. #bricksbucksandbytes #constructiontech #ai #aec #construction Our Sponsors: BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:11 OpenAI AI Agents Hack Hugging Face Explained 02:03 How 700 AI Agents Breached Hugging Face 05:01 AI Cyber Attacks: Real Threat or PR Gold? 07:39 AI Fear Mongering, Regulation and Big Tech 10:36 Anthropomorphism: Do AI Agents Think Like Humans?13:23 AI Agents in Construction Bidding and Preconstruction 15:53 Preconstruction as Capital Allocation (IPD Explained) 18:32 Human in the Loop: Generative Design and Cost 21:23 Solow Paradox: Why Construction Software Costs Keep Rising 24:07 Why AI Adoption Fails in Construction Companies 26:53 Sam Altman iPhone Moment, Point Solutions vs Platforms 32:32 Stratus: MEP Fabrication Software Explained 34:07 Why Data Centers Are Driving Prefab Construction 38:44 Industrialized Construction: Will Contractors Go Back?41:42 Goldbeck Mortenson Joint Venture and the Future of MEP 49:20 a16z MEP Thesis: Is Revit Really Outdated? 55:26 Revit vs Fabrication Design: LOD 400 and PLM
September 1 · 59 min
Boldt VP: The Labour Shortage Is Not Construction's Biggest Problem
"If you're considered a feature, you're dead." Klas Berghede has spent nearly twenty years at Boldt, a 100% employee owned contractor that has been building since 1889. We asked him whether there is still room for point solutions in construction tech. He said the door is closing. Adoption of AI across the industry is high. Measured improvement is close to zero. McKinsey's latest numbers back him up. Klas reckons roughly half the cost of a complex American build is no longer labour or material. It's the coordination around it. The near term winners will own a whole workflow end to end, not one clever step inside it. Half of ConTech will hate this. The other half already knew. In this episode of Bricks & Bytes, Klas argues that construction has an addiction to solving complex problems with complex solutions, that the industry starts every project from scratch and expects to improve anyway, and that the labour shortage is not the biggest problem we have. Episode out on Youtube and Spotify. #bricksandbytes #bricksbytes #aec #constructiontech #aiOur Sponsors:BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.coAphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.coArchdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.comChapters00:00 Intro01:10 Quick-fire round02:10 Construction's addiction to complex solutions03:33 Who is Bolt? 135 years, employee-owned, self-performing05:32 Inside the data center boom08:55 Data centers and rebuilding the power grid11:12 Inelastic buyers and the scramble for equipment14:45 What industrialized construction really means20:07 The 80/20 rule and the industrialized continuum24:04 AI: better, or just busier?29:13 Workflows over data, and the "definition of insanity"34:16 Why doesn't the whole industry go industrialized?38:24 Is there still room for point solutions?44:12 The flood of copycat AI tools48:43 The real problem isn't the labor shortage54:40 Why projects keep getting more complex56:58 Advice to leaders: never do it twice from scratch📩 Subscribe to the Bricks & Bytes Newsletter: https://bricks-bytes.beehiiv.com/🌐 Visit our website: http://bricks-bytes.com/📲 Follow us: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bricks-bytes/ Twitter: https://x.com/bricksbytespod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bricksbytes/
August 29 · 24 min
Site Layout Faceoff, Chinese Hardware Warning, and Largest US Contractor Breached as AI Ransomware Hits Machine Speed
This week's briefing covers three shifts reshaping jobsite technology, supply chain security, and risk on the ground. For five thousand years, construction has relied on chalk lines and measuring tapes to decide where walls go. While robotic total stations arrived twenty years ago, adoption has stalled near 16%. Now, layout automation is splitting into two clear approaches: printing robots that paint permanent lines and text directly on the slab, and optical projectors that beam designs onto floors, walls, and ceilings. Early data shows the value isn’t just labor reduction—it comes from re-sequencing the job. In one hospital build, setting full layout in a single pass let mechanical contractors work ahead of framers, cutting schedule risk and saving $2.5 million. Meanwhile, vendors are pivoting to outcome-as-a-service models rather than pure hardware sales. Next, the pricing shock in physical AI. At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, Chinese models demonstrated sub-$10,000 price points—with the Unitree R1 starting near $5,900—compared to US equivalents estimated near $250,000. But cheap hardware comes with hidden supply chain dependencies and security exposures. Chinese brands already account for roughly 97% of the commercial construction drone fleet, which now faces looming regulatory freezes, tariffs, and potential data-sharing liabilities on secure sites. Finally, the target on your digital infrastructure. Construction has surged to become the fourth most-targeted industry for ransomware, with 22 distinct cybercrime groups hitting contractors in Q1 alone. Last week, America's largest contractor, Turner Construction, disclosed a breach compromising thousands of personal files and project records. The threat landscape is shifting rapidly: autonomous, AI-driven agents are now conducting reconnaissance and executing automated attacks at machine speed, rendering traditional human-speed incident response obsolete. Drop your answers to this week's questions in the comments of this week's LinkedIn post.
August 28 · 53 min
Bill Gates Warns On Robots By 2030, Meta's AI Wrote 220% More Code And Shipped Almost Nothing, Meta's $18B Settlement, & The First Software Tax In California History
Bill Gates says robots will take construction jobs by 2030. Dustin DeVan offered to bet his entire net worth against it. In this episode of Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, Owen, Dustin and Martin pull apart the 6,000 word essay Gates published this week and ask the question nobody in construction wants to answer out loud: if AI is making everyone so much more productive, why has nobody's headcount actually gone down? What they get into: Why Bill Gates thinks construction and hospitality roles shift to robots by 2030, and why the panel thinks he's wrong Meta's own internal numbers: code changes up 220%, features that reached users up just 36%, security incidents up 40% The Architecture Billings Index at 46.6, the longest slump since records began in 1995, and what it says about 2027 California's new sales tax on software and what it does to the cost of running a business #aec #construction #tech #contech Our Sponsors: BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:00 Why AI Job Loss Predictions Keep Missing 01:49 Bill Gates AI Essay Explained: Which Jobs Disappear First 03:48 Can AI Hack Real Systems? Gates on Cybersecurity Risk 06:37 Will Robots Replace Construction Workers by 2030? 09:35 AI Companions and Teen Mental Health: The 72% Problem 12:14 Meta $18 Billion Settlement: What It Means for TikTok and YouTube 17:38 California SB 122: The New Sales Tax on SaaS 28:30 Why Free Government Services Are Never Free 30:40 Will Businesses Leave California Over Taxes? 31:21 Architecture Billings Index 46.6: The Longest Slump on Record 35:08 Data Centers vs Everything Else: The Construction Split 41:40 How to Hire Software Engineers: In-House vs Agency 47:18 Can You Rebuild an Estimating Platform with AI?
August 26 · 1 hr 10 min
Robots vs Laser Projection: Who Will Win Construction Layout?
Four founders competing in construction layout walked into the same room.Nobody expected them to agree on much.But across the conversation, all four revealed the same thing about who they are really up against.Not each other.Tessa Lau, CEO and co-founder of Dusty Robotics: “Pretty much our biggest competitor is chalk lines and measuring tape.”William St-Pierre, CEO of Mechasys: “Our biggest competitor today is like DeWalt or Milwaukee with their tape measures.”Tomer Elran, co-founder of LIGHTYX: “They are not transferring from one technology to the other. They’re transforming from almost zero technology.”Derrick Morse, founder and CEO of Rugged Robotics, on HP entering the category: “HP has a marketing machine and a budget that I can only dream of. So for them to enter the race and to participate, I think is a net net win for everyone.”Eight rounds. Sixty-second answer caps. No slides.They debated accuracy, distribution, union adoption, capital, robots versus laser projection and whether construction layout could become a winner-take-all market.It took us more than eight months to get these four founders into the same room.Huge thanks to Christian Reed, founder and CEO of REEKON Tools, for moderating and to Tessa, Derrick, William and Tomer for taking part.#bricksandbytes #construction #constructiontech #constructionrobotics #aec**Chapters**00:00 Intro01:00 Why Construction Layout Is Ready for Automation02:51 Meet the Four Founders Competing for the Floor05:44 Chalk Lines, Tape Measures and 5,000 Years of Habit08:50 Debris, Dust and the Mess Nobody Plans For11:37 The $18M Hospital That Reportedly Saved $2.5M14:49 HP Entered the Market. Its Rivals Welcomed It17:41 Sub-Millimetre Accuracy or Simplicity?20:57 What Happens When the Model Meets the Slab23:59 Getting Contractors to Use the Technology26:31 Who Should Own Layout: The GC or the Subs?29:35 From Union Resistance to Training Programmes32:33 Four Founders on What Drives Adoption36:12 Why Rugged Sends Its Own Operators to Site38:33 Why Distribution Could Decide the Winner40:17 When Does the Price Make Sense?41:32 The New Jobs Created by Construction Robotics43:15 What Is Stopping This Market From Scaling?48:21 Could Construction Layout Become Winner-Take-All?52:57 Venture Timelines vs Construction Timelines56:41 Lightning Round and Audience Questions📩 Subscribe to the Bricks & Bytes Newsletter: [https://bricks-bytes.beehiiv.com/](https://bricks-bytes.beehiiv.com/)🌐 Visit our website: [http://bricks-bytes.com/](http://bricks-bytes.com/)
August 25 · 59 min
The Problem With AI in Construction Is “99% Have No Clue” | HoloBuilder Founder on BuildCrew, Digital Interns and the Future of Estimating
“We never use the word AI anywhere. You’re saying we’re an AI company, not me.” Mo Akbari-Hochberg built HoloBuilder and sold it to FARO. Now he is back with BuildCrew, a preconstruction platform backed by Khosla Ventures that uses digital workers to help contractors with estimating, trade scoping, bid levelling and preconstruction RFIs. In this episode, Mo explains why he believes 99% of construction AI teams do not properly understand the technology they are building with, why access to the same AI models does not produce the same results and what contractors should look for when buying AI software. We also discuss how BuildCrew can produce a rough order of magnitude estimate in 4 to 5 hours, compare 10 electrical bids in around 20 minutes and identify gaps across construction drawings and project documents. 🎥 Link in comments. #BricksAndBytes #ConstructionAI #ConstructionTechnology #Preconstruction #ConstructionEstimating Our Sponsors: BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:00 How Mo Built a Startup: Founder Story 03:27 How to Build a High-Performing Team 05:30 AI in Construction: The Complete Breakdown 08:13 What is an AI Digital Intern? 11:16 BuildCrew AI vs Traditional Construction Tech 14:09 UI/UX & Reliability in B2B SaaS 16:33 Biggest Pain Points in Pre-Construction 19:29 High-End Residential Construction Challenges 22:23 Scaling Beyond Luxury Homes to Commercial 24:44 Customer Feedback & Product-Market Fit 28:54 How BuildCrew AI Saves Time on Site 31:02 Scaling Your Core Startup Team 34:19 Startup Hiring Strategy: Attracting Top Talent 35:58 Biggest Founder Mistakes & Lessons Learned 37:10 How to Build a Great Tech Product 38:10 How to Raise Venture Capital (VC Strategy) 39:29 AI Productivity Benchmarks & Industry Insights 43:38 Practical Use Cases of AI in Construction 47:26 Biggest Misconceptions About AI 52:17 Adapting to Rapid Changes in AI & Tech 54:52 Will AI Replace Estimators? (Future of ConTech)
August 22 · 24 min
$2 Billion Into Self-Driving Construction Machines in 5 Weeks, Housebuilders Down 12.4%, and the Data Centre Boom Just Hit a Wall That Isn't Money or Power.
This week's briefing covers three things that landed in the same week and all point at the same question. Where is the work going next. In the last five weeks more than two billion dollars has been poured into construction machines that drive themselves. TerraFirma raised 115 million. Travis Kalanick, the man who founded Uber, raised 1.7 billion for Atoms, which includes an autonomous mining division. Komatsu signed a partnership to put autonomous bulldozers and excavators on American jobsites. And Bedrock Robotics, who regular listeners will remember from our Texas site visit, announced fully autonomous excavators working on live customer sites in Nevada and Texas. But this is not one market. There are five distinct business models in play, and they do not all sit on your side of the table. One of them is bidding against you for the same earthworks contracts. Then the reason all this money is chasing machines in the dirt. Travis Kalanick put it simply. Manufacturing changes atoms, real estate stores them, transport moves them. Uber was the network layer for moving things. His new company is building the same thing for entire industries. Construction sites may be where AI learns to understand the physical world, and every hour an autonomous machine works it is banking data that no lab can buy off a shelf. Then the two numbers that matter for your order book. American housebuilders dropped 12.4% in July to their weakest level since November 2022. The strange part is that permits went up 5% to 1.44 million. Builders are paying for permission and refusing to break ground. That is them telling you in the clearest language they speak that they do not trust demand at today's prices. And the work that has been filling the gap, data centres, hit a new kind of wall this week. Not money. Not power. Votes. Fort Worth voted unanimously to pause new data centre construction. Louisville voted 24 to 1 to pause approvals for six months. New York already has a statewide freeze in place. Permission has become the scarce input, and it is being decided city by city. Drop your answers to this week's questions in the comments of this week's LinkedIn post.
August 21 · 53 min
The Excavators Operating Without Drivers, Gravis Robotics’ $200M Round & Physical AI’s Breakout Week
We spoke to Kevin Peterson this week. He runs the tech at Bedrock Robotics. He told us their control room "looks like StarCraft, actually." You click on an excavator on a screen and give it a job. Then it just digs. Nobody sitting in it. This went live on real customer sites on Monday. The same day, a company called Gravis Robotics got $200 million from SoftBank. We asked Kevin about the timing. Nobody seems to know. Full chat with Kevin and Alain is out now on Bricks Bucks and Bytes. #bricksbucksandbytes #bricksandbytes #aec #constructiontech #ai Our Sponsors: BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com Chapters00:00 Intro 00:55 Construction Autonomy's Biggest Week04:25 Bedrock Robotics Goes Fully Autonomous + Gravis $200M SoftBank Round06:54 Why Autonomous Machines Took 25 Years to Arrive09:52 How Waymo Technology Made Jobsite Autonomy Possible12:50 What Does Fully Autonomous Actually Mean?16:06 Who Is Investing in Construction Robotics (SoftBank, CapitalG, NVIDIA)18:59 Autonomous Excavation vs Excavators: The Real Market22:01 Kevin Peterson Interview: No Driver, No Operator, No Oversight24:48 Bedrock vs Gravis: The Autonomy Race Heats Up28:01 Self-Driving Cars vs Construction: Which Is Harder?31:42 How Autonomous Excavators Handle Safety on Site33:39 Training an Excavator Like an LLM: Physical AI Explained36:44 Orchestrating Machine Fleets on Construction Sites39:10 Why Construction Sites Break Self-Driving Logic44:33 World Models, Procore DroneDeploy Deal & AI Consolidation51:16 Will AI Replace Construction Consultants?

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