Bricks And Bytes

Ukraine's reconstruction has been estimated at $588 billion by the World Bank's Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA5), although our guest argues the true figure is likely higher. In this episode of Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, we speak with Oleg Demydenko, Chair of Ukraine's National ConTech Cluster, about the technologies, engineering approaches and digital systems emerging during U...

"WhatsApp's the most successful construction technology tool ever built." Half a joke, but only half. That's what Prakash Senghani, Co-Founder and CEO of Navatech, told us on the latest Bricks & Bytes. His point: the workers who most need safety tech are the ones it never reaches. So instead of forcing them onto another clunky app, Navatech put its AI inside the tool they already use, in their...

"I don't see this as a technology problem. I see it as a human problem." That's Rob Painter, CEO of Trimble, on what's really holding back AI in construction In this episode he made the case that: ✅ Task productivity is largely solved, system productivity is the real unlock ✅ AI is overhyped and underhyped at the same time, the difference is industry context ✅ The barrier to AI value is organiz...

SpaceX just paid $60 billion for Cursor. On this week's Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, Patric wasn't buying the logic: "Why in the world would you buy an independent gas station chain and think that makes you more competitive with your bigger oil producing rival?" His take: Cursor is a reseller of tokens. Owning it doesn't make you a better model company — just a bigger, more exp...

The most overhyped term in construction tech right now? "AI-native startup." That's the take from Geoff Lewis, SVP of Product Management at Procore and co-founder of Honest Buildings (acquired by Procore), who joined us on Bricks & Bytes to talk about how an incumbent fights back in the AI era. Tune in to find out about: ✅ Why Procore says it has already neutralised the speed ad...

"Every GC is one poorly managed incident away from wiping out the entire profit for the project." That line from Simon Elliott, CEO of Breadcrumb, set the tone for one of the sharpest conversations we've had on construction safety tech. We sat down with Simon to dig into why most safety tools miss the point, and why the real unlock isn't compliance, it's productivity. Tune in to find out about: ✅...

Spotify Description This week's briefing covers three shifts every construction leader should be watching. Workplace incidents in construction eat four to six percent of project cost. The average contractor makes two to three percent margin. That single comparison changes how you should think about safety technology, and this week the Bricks and Bytes State of Construction Safety Tech report g...

A VC fell asleep for 30+ minutes during a founder's pitch. The round stillclosed. This week on Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, we traded the VC horror stories founders never forget, debated whether the hottest AI startups are just "reselling tokens," and brought on three founders fresh off funding rounds: Guy Saxelby (Earlytrade, $25M total raised), Adrian Rhaese (EnvioTech, €1M pre-seed)...

"We have 2,000 agents going through your document, checking every single item in detail." This week we sat down with Brandon Smith and Raymond Zhao, co-founders of Structured AI, fresh off a $4.2M seed round they closed in just five days. Tune in to find out about: ✅ How Brandon went from training an AI fighter jet at 17 to building construction AI after a single Reddit message ✅ Why agentic AI...

"I currently haven't found a use case in which I haven't been able to build." That was Brett Adams on what Palantir Foundry can do in construction. This week on Bricks & Bytes we sat down with Dan Julien (Chief Revenue Officer) and Brett Adams (Forward Deployed Engineer and Head of Construction) of ForgeSight, the i4C born team implementing Palantir Foundry across the AEC industry, to cut thro...

Seven men carrying one 140kg steel bar, on the biggest infrastructure project in Britain. The founder of Laing O'Rourke saw it and concluded that in fifty years, nothing had changed. This week's Executive Briefing is about the man he hired to fix it. Chetan Kotur designed cars at Volvo, launched Polestar globally, then spent three and a half years looking at construction with outsider'...

A venture capitalist walks into a bar. "I'll have what everyone else is having." Patrick told that joke about his own profession on this week's Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, and it set up the sharpest exchange of the episode: venture stopped backing hard problems and started buying momentum. We're joined by Alain Waha, CTO of Buro Happold, and Richard Fifita, CEO of Veyor, fresh...

"AI won't help you if you're still using clunky software with a six-month learning curve." – Anita Venkiteswaran, E3 Tech In today's episode of Bricks and Bytes, we sat down with Anita, the driving force behind E3 Tech's AI-powered M&A strategy in construction, alongside two of her platform companies: Rob Metz (Sylvan) and Chris Weaver (Egan). Tune in to hear about: ✓...

"$75M in 13 months. a16z just led their Series A." We sat down with Niklas Lindgren, Co-Founder & CEO of Endra, fresh off their $50M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, taking total funding to $75M in 13 months. Endra is building the purpose-built workspace for MEP engineering, already partnering with AtkinsRéalis, Buro Happold, WSP, Hoare Lea, Ramboll and AFRY. Tune in to find out...

"You could get 60 reviews of a pizza in six seconds, but finding a new contractor takes 12 months and spreadsheets." That's how Riggs Kubiak described the construction industry in 2011 when he started Honest Buildings as a marketplace to connect owners with contractors. It didn't work. The pivot? A project management platform that became so valuable, Procore acquired it. We sat d...

Missed an episode of the Executive Briefing last month? This is your ten-minute catch-up. Four stories from the last four weeks, what each one means for your business, and which are worth going back to in full. Inside: The new kind of buyer circling construction, and why they want your firm, not your tech The market split the banks have started to price in The contractor who killed his ERP, his di...

"80% of the decks landing on her desk had AI on slide one." This week on Bricks & Bytes we sat down with Jennifer Davis, who recently joined Suffolk Technologies after five years as Managing Director of Techstars Boston, where she reviewed thousands of applications and ran 65+ companies through the program. She brought the kind of pattern recognition you only get from saying no a few...

This week in construction: the official verdict on HS2 landed, and it's worse than most people realise. Cost to complete is now £87.7-102.7bn. First services delayed to 2036. Britain is paying 15-20x the European rate per kilometre for high-speed rail. But the more interesting stories happened underneath it. Owen breaks down what every construction executive needs to know about three things co...

"Mandating how many AI tokens your engineers burn isn't a productivity metric. It has nothing to do with outcomes." That's Dustin Devan, CEO of Ediphi and it's one of the sharpest takes on the AI spend debate we've had on the show This week on Bricks, Bucks and Bytes we're joined by Cameron Page of ClearStory, processing $3.5B in change orders every month, and Sophia...

"If you're not tinkering with AI today, it's going to be a problem for you in the future." This week on Bricks & Bytes we sat down with David Niewiadomski from Zero RFI — KP Reddy's new venture backed by General Catalyst that's rolling up owner reps, advisory, and building data firms under one roof. Tune in to find out: ✅ Why standalone construction tech software is...

"Pre-construction has become less efficient than construction itself." That is the claim Dustin Devan made on this week's Bricks, Bucks & Bytes after returning from Advancing Pre-Con. Martin, Patric Hellermann and Dustin also dug into the proposed California wealth tax, Bentley's Q1 earnings, and why VCs keep funding the 51st AI takeoff company. Tune in to find out about: ✅...

A 350-person Canadian contractor just did what most of the industry would call insane. They put their entire business inside the same software platform that powers the CIA. They've killed their paper time cards, their dispatch system, their safety software — and now they're killing their ERP. This week, Owen unpacks the Cavanagh playbook with their head of digital strategy and asks the har...

"Companies are bought, not sold."That single line from Yves Frinault reframed the entire conversation on our first-ever Exited Founder Acquisition Roundtable. We sat down with four construction tech founders who collectively sold their companies for hundreds of millions:✅ Yves Frinault (Fieldwire → Hilti) ✅ Dustin DeVan (BuildingConnected → Autodesk, $275M cash + $40M stock) ✅ Mo Akba...

EXCLUSIVE: ProcurePro just closed an $11M round and we got the founder on the mic first. "Control your risks, control your margins." That's the line Alastair Blenkin, CEO of ProcurePro, kept coming back to on the latest Bricks & Bytes — and it's the bet behind their fresh raise. Procurement is the most underinvested workflow in construction tech. By the time you're on sit...

The UK's official construction forecast for 2026 was just slashed from plus 1.7 per cent growth to a 2.5 per cent decline. Same week, Caterpillar reported 63 billion dollars worth of equipment already on order, up 79 per cent in twelve months. In this week's Executive Weekly Briefing, Owen walks through what the macro really says about your business, what the latest results from Caterpilla...