“Manual Quantity Takeoffs Are Dead”: Accenture Construct CEO on AI Replacing Traditional QS Work, Why Megaprojects Fail & the $2.5 Billion Construction Bet

Is AI about to wipe out a whole category of construction tech startups?Mike Powers of BuildVision thinks so, and he joined us this week to say it out loud.This week on Bricks Bucks and Bytes, Owen, Martin and Dustin are joined by Mike Powers who argues that reading construction documents is about to become a commodity and that a long list of funded ConTech startups are standing in the way of the foundation models.Core topicsJensen Huang's resignation from Nvidia and the hosts' first reactionsWhether the Democratic wave, including Texas, slows data centre construction and who gains if it doesWhy Mike and Dustin think takeoff, drawing review and contract review tools are heading to zero on price, and where they would build insteadWhat Owen and Martin learned at Groundworks about who pays for robotics on siteHotter GPUs, dry coolers and what that means for chiller manufacturersFull episode live on Youtube and Spotify. #constructiontech #ai #construction #aec #bricksandbytes Chapters00:00 Intro01:17 Jensen Huang Resigns as Nvidia CEO: Our Reaction06:16 US Midterms 2026: Will Data Centre Construction Slow Down?09:49 Data Centres in Space: Engineering Problem or Fantasy?11:30 State vs Federal: Who Controls the Data Centre Boom?13:45 Why Neoclouds Could Get Crushed by the Hyperscalers15:59 Is AI Commoditising Construction Tech?18:26 Why VCs Got Construction AI Wrong22:55 What to Build in Construction Tech Now26:05 Construction Robotics Reality Check: Lessons From Groundworks London29:03 Who Pays for Robots on Site? Subcontractors vs General Contractors31:32 Prefab Factories vs Jobsite Robots and Union Pushback34:56 Hotter GPUs and Data Centre Cooling: The End of Chillers?36:22 Claude vs ChatGPT vs Gemini: What AI Costs a Startup38:37 Will AI Replace Structural Engineers?40:24 Generative Design and Pricing 50 Design Options43:24 How AI Will Split Large and Small Contractors44:57 Empire State Building vs Modern Construction Productivity46:54 Are We Living in Extraordinary Times for AI?49:06 What Jensen Huang's Exit Means for Nvidia and China

Six vendors can all deliver their scope successfully, and the project can still fail.That is the problem Accenture Construct says it was built to solve. We sat down with CEO Adam Shaw to ask why Accenture has put $2.5B into capital projects, and what “one accountable partner” means in practice.Why the industry buys effort when owners want outcomesWhy owners end up owning the gaps between their vendors73 to 77% of senior leaders say they positively influence cost, planning and schedule. Only 13% of workers say those decisions consistently shape their daily work.Where AI is already changing project decisionsAdam’s view is that the talent is already there, and fragmentation is what holds projects back.Full Episode live on Bricks and Bytes YouTube and Spotify. Link in comments.#construction #capitalprojects #contech #AI #bricksandbytesOur Sponsors:This episode is brought to you by our friends at Miter. If you haven’t heard of Miter, you’re missing out. Today, 2 of every 100 construction workers in the U.S. are paid through their AI-powered platform that connects payroll, HR, field operations, and job costing. And that number is growing fast. Miter is on a mission to defeat what they call “the Frankenstack”, the tangle of 1980s software, spreadsheets, and paper that every construction back office is familiar with. Learn why thousands of contractors are running everything from prevailing wage payroll to time tracking to per diems on Miter at miter.com (M I T E R .com)https://www.miter.com/?utm_source=bricks-and-bytes&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=bb-sponsorship-q4-2026&utm_content=bb-podcastAphex 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.com Chapters00:00 Teaser00:42 How Owen and Adam first connected 10 years ago02:30 Quick fire: "Manual quantity takeoffs are dead"05:25 Why Accenture launched Construct07:40 Sponsors: Miter, Aphex and Archdesk10:45 Owner's rep, contractor or something new?14:40 The research: why capital projects fail18:36 Is fragmentation a data problem?21:41 Build or buy: how Construct thinks about technology26:25 Does Accenture build its own tech?27:51 What AI makes possible now29:26 AI use cases inside Accenture Construct33:28 Leaders vs the field: the 13% gap37:00 What "one accountable partner" means39:45 $2.5B and the acquisitions behind Construct41:56 Integrating acquired firms without destroying them45:44 Capital project delivery in five years47:46 Closing thoughts

Microsoft Cut $5 Billion From Data Centre Spending, MEP Contractors Lost 15% in a Day, and Accenture Just Entered Construction With 5,000 People.This week’s briefing covers three things that landed in the same week and all point at whether the data centre boom is about to change shape.This week’s episode is sponsored by Buildots, the construction intelligence platform turning site data into actionable insights for over 100 of the largest owners and contractors including Turner, Multiplex and Vinci Construction. Find out how to join them at https://buildots.comFirst, Microsoft. A generator fire in Texas, late hardware deliveries, cabling problems, and a $1 million fine for running generators without permits on a New Jersey site. At the end of October Microsoft’s finance chief cut this year’s data centre spending forecast by $5 billion, citing third party capacity delays. Microsoft has now tightened oversight on three neo-cloud companies, walked away from a $3 billion deal in Texas due to grid delays, and cancelled a letter of intent for 1.35 gigawatts in West Virginia. The day after the American midterms, where voters passed 40 of 41 ballot measures putting new restrictions on data centre construction, Comfort Systems fell 15%, Quantum fell 12% and the NASDAQ dropped 5.5%. On the same day Skanska matched its all time record for new orders, with roughly a third in data centres, and its CEO said the company is turning some of that work away because it cannot find the right electrical subcontractors.Then Accenture Construct. In September Accenture launched a new global business with more than 5,000 people aimed at the owners of big projects. Accenture puts that market at $260 billion a year. Owen interviewed CEO Adam Shaw this week. His argument is that on a large project an owner might hire six different firms, all of whom could complete their own scope successfully, and the project could still fail because of the gaps between them. Today the owner carries all of those gaps. Accenture’s pitch is to sit on the owner’s side of the table as one accountable partner. Between 73 and 77% of senior leaders in Accenture’s research said they were having a positive influence on cost and schedule. Only 13% of workers agreed.Then the market numbers. US construction fell 1.9% in September when economists expected a small rise. Excluding data centres and power, private non-residential work was down 7.8%. UK housebuilding PMI came in at 35.1. The Bank of England raised rates to 4%, its first increase since August 2023. The forecasters agree on which parts of the market are growing and which are shrinking. They do not agree on what any of it means.Also sponsored by Miter, the AI-powered operating system built for construction that connects payroll, HR, field operations and job costing in one platform. Today 1 in 50 US construction workers is paid on Miter every week. Learn more at https://www.miter.com/?utm_source=bricks-and-bytes&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=bb-sponsorship-q4-2026&utm_content=executive-briefingDrop your answers to this week’s questions in the comments of this week’s LinkedIn post.

Can an owner be their own architect?Altaf Ganihar says owners and developers are now asking Snaptrude exactly that.Alain Waha's answer: the design team's deliverable "ain't a set of drawings" anyway.Also in this week's Bricks, Bucks & Bytes:Dustin DeVan on why takeoff isn't the hardest problem in preconAutodesk University and Groundbreak in the same week of 2027Nomadic Drones, whose drones land and recharge on live power linesSo who moves first, the architect or their client?Full episode live on Youtube and Spotify. Link in comments.#aec #construction #constructiontech #ai #bricksandbytesOur Sponsors:Aphex 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.com Chapters00:00 Intro00:46 Dustin calls out a competitor's testimonials09:42 Autodesk University and Groundbreak in the same week12:02 Why VCs are piling into MEP design18:41 Why use AI to read drawings when the model exists?23:04 Outsiders, Katerra and uninformed capital25:39 The gap for an AI first MEP firm29:11 The return of the master builder38:35 Construction is like Asia40:32 Dustin's read on Groundbreak 202641:51 Altaf Ganihar on the Snaptrude Agent launch45:12 Will owners bring design in house?50:22 What architects really sell, and the stamp53:31 Altaf's AI hospital redesign test57:46 Value engineering is not value engineering1:00:37 Andreas Moldskred: drones that live on power lines1:05:22 What grid operators do with the data1:08:05 Where the idea came from1:11:06 Range, air rights and scaling up1:17:25 Wrap up

“Show me you can use these tools to 10x your productivity and you got a job. I don’t care how old you are, I don’t really care what college you went to.”In today’s episode of Bricks & Bytes we have Patrick Murphy. Youngest member of Congress at 29, now founder of Togal.AI and chief investment officer at Coastal Construction, a $7.5bn pipeline contractor in Miami.Here’s what we cover:Why one click takeoff doesn’t exist, straight from someone selling AI takeoffHow many of the AI takeoff startups raising money today are still around in five years (his answer: about one in ten)The estimator who uses AI gets hired on the spot. The one who doesn’t, less soWhat winning a congressional race by 2,429 votes teaches you about winning workWhy Washington is broken, in his words, and what short term incentives do to any businessWhere US construction costs go next and who is really being priced out of South FloridaFull episode out on Youtube and Spotify. #constructiontech #ai #aec #construction #bricksandbytesOur Sponsors:This episode is brought to you by our friends at Miter. If you haven’t heard of Miter, you’re missing out. Today, 2 of every 100 construction workers in the U.S. are paid through their AI-powered platform that connects payroll, HR, field operations, and job costing. And that number is growing fast. Miter is on a mission to defeat what they call “the Frankenstack”, the tangle of 1980s software, spreadsheets, and paper that every construction back office is familiar with. Learn why thousands of contractors are running everything from prevailing wage payroll to time tracking to per diems on Miter at miter.com (M I T E R .com)https://www.miter.com/?utm_source=bricks-and-bytes&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=bb-sponsorship-q4-2026&utm_content=bb-podcastAphex 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.com Chapters00:00 Teaser00:51 Intro and quickfire01:31 Washington is broken: Patrick's three words02:11 Why hundreds of millions are going into AI takeoff03:03 Will AI replace the estimator?04:44 Would he go back to Congress?06:08 Where US construction costs go next08:11 The K shaped construction market09:50 Who is Patrick Murphy11:19 One click takeoff: does it exist?15:34 Why so many startups are chasing takeoff17:02 Productivity and pay: the estimator who uses AI19:55 What Togal.AI customers actually saw21:51 Sponsors: Miter, Aphex and Archdesk24:33 Bricks & Bytes newsletter24:56 Winning Congress by 2,429 votes at 2928:10 United Solutions and the night the bill died31:05 Getting a room of people twice your age to take you seriously32:33 The jet engine killed democracy34:43 Immigration enforcement and the labour market36:09 Coastal Construction and the next three to five years37:40 Florida's affordability crisis38:57 Infrastructure underwater42:39 RENCO: the fourth way to build43:44 Robotics, prefab and controlled environments47:18 The frat house, the family business and the CIO role49:44 Buyer and seller: sitting on both sides of the table51:48 The greatest revolution in history53:01 Togal.AI today and the roadmap58:18 How AI disrupts the general contractor model01:01:24 Wrap

This week's briefing covers three things that landed in the same week and all point at where construction is actually heading.First, Boston. Suffolk, a 13 billion dollar privately held contractor, opened a 50 million dollar innovation facility called 100MAG in Roxbury this week. Inside it sits their in-house design and engineering team, a materials sourcing arm, a venture fund, an accelerator, and AI engineers embedded directly into live project teams. John Fish, who founded Suffolk and has run it for four decades, built the evening around one line. The cost to build a building today is now higher than the value of the finished building. He said it is the first time in his career that has been true. From that he gets to his argument that the next five years will be the most pivotal the construction industry has seen, and that Suffolk intends to be the one doing the disrupting.Then Bedrock Robotics. On Monday the company announced a 600 million dollar raise at a 4.1 billion dollar valuation. The company is two and a half years old, founded by engineers out of Waymo, and retrofits excavators so they dig without anyone in the cab. Total raised since launch is now just under a billion dollars. Kevin Peterson, Bedrock's co-founder and CTO, told Bricks and Bytes the strategy unlocked the round, not the other way round. The plan does not change. More customers, more capable machines, and next year fleets of different machine types working together overnight. The detail that struck Owen most: the data from the sensors is already paying for itself before the autonomy does. Site managers are seeing productivity dips at the start and end of shifts they had no idea existed.Then Harvard. A study covering nearly 10,000 leaders across 108 countries found that the organisations making the most progress on digital transformation are the ones engaging a specific type of employee. Harvard calls them digital wayfinders. They are frequently junior, they are already using AI without asking, and they challenge how things are done out loud. The companies getting somewhere are the ones that have found a way to use them rather than stop them. The authors have three recommendations: candid two-way communication, removing unnecessary bureaucracy while keeping clear guardrails, and giving wayfinders visible sponsorship and a seat in the room where real decisions get made.This week's episode is sponsored by Buildots, the construction intelligence platform turning site data into actionable insights for over 100 of the largest owners and contractors including Turner, Multiplex and Vinci Construction. Find out how to join them at https://buildots.com/lab/global-construction-benchmarks-report/Also don't forget to check out our other sponsor Miter, the AI-powered operating system built for construction that connects payroll, HR, field operations and job costing in one platform. Today 1 in 50 US construction workers is paid on Miter every week. Learn more at https://www.miter.com/?utm_source=bricks-and-bytes&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=bb-sponsorship-q4-2026&utm_content=executive-briefingDrop your answers to this week's questions in the comments of this week's LinkedIn post.

Should founders take advice from investors who have never run a company?Owen's view on this week's Bricks, Bucks and Bytes was blunt: it's like hiring a personal trainer who has never stepped on a treadmill.Maria Davidson spent eight years building Kojo in what she calls construction's "hard mode". She has now launched Relational Capital, a $50M solo GP fund writing $1M to $5M cheques at pre seed and seed.Also on the show, Bedrock Robotics co-founder and CTO Kevin Peterson on how a company founded in 2024 just raised $600M at a $4.1bn valuation.Operator investors or career VCs. Which have actually been more useful on your cap table?Full episode live on YouTube and Spotify.#vc #constructiontech #aec #bricksandbytesOur Sponsors:Aphex 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.com Chapters00:00 Intro01:12 Inside Suffolk's 100MAG and why the next five years matter03:59 Bedrock Robotics raises $600M08:04 How a two year old company hits $4.1bn, and where the money goes11:54 Deployment challenges and "the wolves at the door"16:56 Maria Davidson's $50M fund and why operators make better investors25:05 Where Maria is investing in construction tech31:00 One piece of advice for every founder

Architecture firms forget every project the day it finishes.The detail that caused an RFI goes back into the library unfixed, and turns up on the next job with the same problem attached.In today’s episode of Bricks & Bytes, Ross Wagner from Pirros joined us to unpack why it keeps happening, and what an AI project hub actually changes.What we learnt:* Why firms forget every project the day it finishes, and how a bad detail carries its RFI onto the next job* What Pirros does as an AI project hub, and how its AI agent Mira works alongside designers inside Revit* Why quality review belongs in the model as well as the drawing set* The shift in construction tech upstream into design, and the move from point tools towards connected platforms* Lessons from PlanGrid on hiring, building an AEC sales team and go to market through communityFull episode live on Youtube and Spotify. Link in the comments!#aec #construction #constructiontech #ai #bricksandbytesOur Sponsors:This episode is brought to you by our friends at Miter. If you haven’t heard of Miter, you’re missing out. Today, 2 of every 100 construction workers in the U.S. are paid through their AI-powered platform that connects payroll, HR, field operations, and job costing. And that number is growing fast. Miter is on a mission to defeat what they call “the Frankenstack”, the tangle of 1980s software, spreadsheets, and paper that every construction back office is familiar with. Learn why thousands of contractors are running everything from prevailing wage payroll to time tracking to per diems on Miter at miter.com (M I T E R .com)https://www.miter.com/?utm_source=bricks-and-bytes&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=bb-sponsorship-q4-2026&utm_content=bb-podcastAphex 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.com Chapters0:00 Teaser0:38 Intro: Ross Wagner, Head of Strategy at Pirros1:05 Quickfire: are contractors taking control of design?2:53 Why Ross joined Pirros after PlanGrid and Autodesk4:06 How to stop knowledge leaving your firm4:40 What is Pirros? The AI project hub for architects5:30 Why AEC firms forget every project the day it finishes7:38 Sponsors10:43 The biggest problems inside architecture firms12:20 Startup vs Autodesk: the “say no with pleasure” advice14:46 Builders vs optimisers: architect and engineer co-founders16:17 How to measure the ROI of AI in design18:31 Why AI shouldn’t design construction details20:15 Mira: an AI agent that works inside Revit21:55 What a Head of Strategy actually does22:51 How to know if your strategy is working25:00 Competitive moat in the age of AI: why context beats code27:12 How to hire great people (the “no jerks” rule)28:44 Growing 5x and lessons from PlanGrid29:56 What’s the end game: acquisition or IPO?31:02 Construction tech trends: the shift upstream to design31:57 Platforms vs point solutions32:46 The three eras of AI: chat, copilot and coworker33:46 Is AI drawing review enough? Drawings vs BIM models36:53 How to build a construction tech sales team37:50 Hiring your first salesperson38:34 Advice for founders: start with the boring workflow41:11 Doug Leone’s startup orchestra lesson41:37 Go-to-market that works in AEC: community42:43 Software fatigue and change management44:06 Lessons from Autodesk vs startups45:49 What’s next for Pirros: quality review and MCP 

This week's briefing covers three things that matter more than the headlines suggest.First, America. The Architecture Billings Index came in at 44.7 in September, down from 47.2 in August and the largest share of firms reporting falling billings since May. Signed design contracts fell to 43.7. Enquiries are still positive at 53.2, which means clients are asking but not committing. AIA describes the index as a leading indicator for non-residential construction nine to twelve months out. What architects are not signing now is work you will not be bidding next autumn. On the other side, JLL puts 317 million square feet of industrial space under construction in the US, up 28.7% on a year ago and the most since early 2024. Same country, same week, two completely different economies.Then the knowledge problem. There is a chief estimator somewhere who is 63 years old, 30 years in the job, and retires in 18 months. None of what he knows is written down. This week Owen sat down with Zaid Khan and Bogdan Arsintescu, who helped build the Google Knowledge Graph in 2011, to answer one question. What actually is a knowledge graph and why does construction need one. The answer starts with a three-hundred-page spec, an addendum in a different folder, and a door schedule that was never updated. A chatbot finds the spec and answers with confidence. A knowledge graph finds the conflict between all three and cites the clause. The pitch stripped of the buzzwords is this. Become the project historian. Keep the context when the people leave.Then the Bricks and Bytes Council. Last Tuesday Owen sat in a room with leaders from some of the largest design, engineering and contracting businesses in the UK and the US. Everything is confidential but five themes came through. Design teams are materially smaller than a decade ago for the same work. Contractors are now running AI across drawing sets before they go out, so designers are building the same checks into their own process to catch problems first. Door hardware schedules and lighting schedules, handed to the most junior person in the office, are driving more RFIs than structure on some jobs. Architecture may be going the way of book publishing, more buildings, more architects, a profession hollowing out in the middle. The line that came up more than once from more than one person in the room: we did not even need a tool to solve that. We just had to change the way we think.This week's episode is sponsored by Buildots, the construction intelligence platform turning site data into actionable insights for over 100 of the largest owners and contractors. Find out how to join them at https://buildots.com/.Drop your answers to this week's questions in the comments of this week's LinkedIn post.

Twelve months ago, Zaid Kahn said the words "knowledge graph" to us in a Boston office.We nodded. We had no idea what he meant.So we brought him back, with Bogdan Arsintescu, who sat on the original Google Knowledge Graph team and later ran graph systems at LinkedIn and Microsoft.The ask was simple. Explain it like we're five. A knowledge graph is a set of facts. Subject, predicate, object. "Door 105 has a 45 minute fire rating." An ontology is the rulebook. Everyone agreeing what every symbol on a drawing sheet means before anyone reads it. A chatbot context window is a drawing table. If the addendum is in the filing cabinet, it doesn't exist.Bogdan's line of the episode: "Knowledge Graph is just the bullet points."We still don't fully know what ontology means. But we're closer.#constructiontech #ai #aec #preconstruction #bricksandbytesOur Sponsors:Aphex 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 Teaser01:07 What Is a Knowledge Graph? (Explained Like You're Five)04:10 Knowledge Graph vs Ontology: The Difference Explained07:56 Sponsor10:57 Why Construction Needs Knowledge Graphs (Spec vs Drawing vs Addendum)14:58 Why ChatGPT Can't Do This: Context Windows Explained19:11 Knowledge Graphs vs LLMs: Why You Need a Vertical AI26:43 Preconstruction Risk: Why Bids Go Wrong29:53 The Future of AI in Construction32:10 How Neuron Factory Works With Suffolk and GCs