Bricks And Bytes

"41% of the construction workforce is retiring in 5 years. Half the people on the biggest jobsites have less than a year of experience. Nobody has a plan." That stat from Mallorie Brodie at Bridgit is the one we keep coming back to. This week on Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, We sat down with Mallorie to unpack the 2026 Construction Workforce Benchmark Report, then brought on Chase Gilbert a...

"Even if AI doesn't work, it's allowing us to reinvent construction." That's Alain Waha on why the data center build-out is the most important thing happening in our industry right now, even if you don't care about AI. Tune in to find out about: ✅ What the Document Crunch, Speckle and A16Z deals actually signal ✅ Why physical AI and world models matter for AEC, and when they don't ✅ How composa...

"Owners want buildings, not software." That one line from Andrew Zukoski (CEO, JOIN) reframes the entire AEC tech market. In B&B Fight Night 3, Andrew goes head to head with Clifton Harness (CEO, TestFit) on AI, architects, venture capital, and what the next five years look like. Tune in to find out about: ✅ Why only 3 AEC companies have IPO'd in 15 years and what that means for...

"HCSS fills the missing middle where plans become production." That's how Usman described the $2.4B Nemetschek + HCSS deal on this week's Bricks & Bytes. We sat down with Yves (CEO, Nemetschek Group) and Usman (Build Segment) to unpack the strategy behind one of the biggest construction tech deals of the year. Tune in to find out about: ✅ Why Nemetschek structured this as a...

Two AI-backed private equity firms just confirmed the same thesis in the same week. They're not buying construction software. They're buying the firms that use it. This week: I sit down with the team behind Zero RFI (General Catalyst-backed) and a partner at E3 Tech (the Andreessen Horowitz JV) to unpack the rollup playbook coming for owner's reps and trade contractors. I cover the UK...

"AI is about to create the biggest divide humanity has ever seen." That's the warning Chinn, founder of dConstruct, dropped on Bricks & Bytes. He sold his startup to Autodesk. Built Singapore's Smart Nation. Now he's putting AI robots on construction sites that see every flaw in millimetres. Tune in to find out about: ✅ Why perfect site data is bankrupting construction p...

Nemetschek just dropped $2.4B on a software company nobody's heard of.  This week on Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, Owen, Patric and Martin dug into the biggest AEC deal of the year, plus two robotics founders changing how we build.  Tune in to find out about:  ✅ Why HCSS is the smartest AEC acquisition of 2026 ✅ Why Kawazu ditched construction for oil and gas ✅ Mesh Robotics on solving rebar,...

Most of you are spending the wrong 80% of your AI budget right now. And the man who said it has been at Stanford for 40 years. This week: we unpack Professor Martin Fischer's uncomfortable 80/20 reallocation and why building digital feedback loops has to come before the AI layer. We sit down with Suffolk Construction's CTO Jit Kee Chin and Speckle founder Dimitri Stefanescu on what happens...

"Architects might start feeling useless." That's Dimitrie Stefanescu, founder of Speckle, on this week's Bricks & Bytes — on why GCs moving upstream into design is triggering an existential crisis across AEC. Joined by Jit Kee Chin, CTO of Suffolk Construction and co-founder of Suffolk Technologies, who just led Suffolk's investment into Speckle. Tune in to find out about...

Every building you've ever been in was designed by software built in 1997. That's the headline a16z used to put the bat signal out to AEC founders — and Joe Schmidt got dragged for it on LinkedIn. But he's not a tourist. His grandfather invented the concrete pump. In today's episode of Bricks & Bytes, we had Joe Schmidt from Andreessen Horowitz and got into the three attack vec...

Allbirds just pivoted to AI and the stock jumped from $2 to $21 overnight. This week on Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, Mo (founder of Build Crew, backed by Vinod Khosla) joined us to break down what's actually happening in construction tech right now — and Nitin from Planera dropped in to launch their AI scheduling assistant, Manny. Tune in to find out about: ✅ Why Allbirds' AI pivot looks like a 199...

The business you build around it is. The AI you buy isn't the advantage The man who built Facebook's computer vision team says reading a construction drawing is harder than what he was doing at Facebook. That line reframes the whole AI conversation in construction and it's just one of the threads in this week's briefing. In this episode: The procurement story we've been buildin...

PrimePoint just raised $10M to solve the one problem AI still can't crack in construction: drawings. Lubomir Bourdev built the first computer vision system at Facebook. Sold a neural net startup to Apple. Hamid was employee five at Trello. Now they're betting that drawings are the key to unlocking AI's full potential in construction. Tune in to find out about: ✅ Why LLMs fundamentally...

"If you're a small firm saying you're too busy to think about AI — that's career suicide." Maryrose Lyons trains mid-sized architecture, engineering and construction firms across the UK and Ireland on AI — and she's seen exactly what separates the ones making progress from the ones going nowhere. Tune in to find out about: ✅ Why firms between 50 and 500 staff are outpaci...

92% of construction projects overrun their budget. And the data now says the main reasons are inside your organisation, not outside it. This week: we tease findings from our upcoming supply chain report (the numbers will make you uncomfortable). We get an economy update from ABC's chief economist. We break down how one insurance company is cutting premiums for contractors who use construction...

"AI told them the idea was great. They built the whole thing. It was wrong." In this episode of Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, Owen, Martin and Dustin unpack why AI models are built to agree with you — and why that's genuinely dangerous in construction.  They also tear apart the claim that 96% of projects overrun on budget (spoiler: it's not a design problem), then sit down with Just...

Two major acquisitions landed in one week. Trimble bought Document Crunch. Autodesk closed on Rhumbix. And the message is the same: the platforms you already use are getting smarter, faster, and harder to leave. In this week's Executive Weekly Briefing, Owen unpacks what the consolidation wave means for your technology decisions, why UK construction input costs just hit a 41-month high, and a...

Four companies. One acquisition. One $852 billion valuation. Forty-five minutes turned into four days. This is the biggest episode we've ever recorded. Document Crunch just got acquired by Trimble. Josh told us live, before most of the industry knew. In this episode of Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, Owen, Patric, and Dustin cover the biggest week in construction tech in years. Trimble acquires Doc...

Josh Levy built Document Crunch for 5 years. Trimble has 32 million projects on their platform. Tens of millions of documents. And they looked at the entire market and picked Document Crunch. That's not a small bet. We got both of them live on Bricks & Bytes this week. Josh broke down exactly how this happened, the moment the deal became a no brainer, and where he's taking this next. M...

12 years. $53M raised. One acquisition. Zach Scheel is talking about all of it. Zach Scheel, co-founder of Rhubmix, sat down with Owen the day after Autodesk officially closed its acquisition of the 12-year-old construction labor tracking platform. He didn't hold back. Tune in to find out about: ✅ Why Autodesk acquired Rhubmix — and what gap in their product suite it fills ✅ The financial me...

"The biggest mistake a construction exec can make right now? Assuming the existing business model is going to stay the same." In today's episode of Bricks and Bytes, we had Carl McFarland from Big D Construction and we got to learn about why the industry is sitting in a Blockbuster moment, how Apple generates the entire annual net income of a $30 billion construction firm in under 48 hours, and wh...

The world's largest asset manager just wrote a $100M cheque to train electricians. Google put up $50M. Microsoft named electrical talent as the single biggest challenge to building data centres. The firms selling the AI dream just discovered they can't deliver it without construction workers. This week on the Executive Briefing: Why data centre companies are paying $150K starting salaries...

Your construction back office admin hasn't taken a vacation in ten years. And it's your software's fault. In this episode of Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, Owen, Patric, Martin, and Dustin break down what four AI CEOs said at NVIDIA GTC and what it means for construction. Then Anna Berger joins fresh off raising $10M in three weeks to expose the chaos inside every specialty contractor'...

The cost of intelligence is heading to zero. Construction still hasn't figured out what to do with that. In today's episode of Bricks and Bytes, we had Matt Gough and we got to learn about why AI adoption in construction is solving the wrong problem, what a genuine industry moonshot could actually look like, and why the contracting model itself is blocking real transformation... and many m...

"The number one cause of contractor bankruptcy is taking on work outside your niche." In today's episode of Bricks and Bytes, we had Matt Stevens Senior Lecturer at Western Sydney University and we got to learn about the financial patterns behind contractor failure, the metrics most firms never track, and why the construction industry is far more innovative than people give it credit...