Bricks And Bytes

"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...

"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...