Bricks And Bytes

Bricks And Bytes
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Biweekly

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.

  1. 20h ago

    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

  2. 1d ago

    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.

    AI Could Take 20% Off the Cost of a Building According to MIT. Here Is the Caveat.

  3. 3d ago

    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?

  4. Oct 3

    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.

    Accenture Just Entered Construction. Your Software Bill Is Moving to Per Token. And One 11 Billion Dollar Builder Stopped Innovating on Live Sites.

  5. Oct 2

    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?

  6. Sep 29

    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

  7. Sep 21

    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.

    Autodesk Just Closed the Loop From Design to Operation. The RFI Is Being Erased. And the Master Builder Is Coming Back.

  8. Sep 15

    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

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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.

Information

  • Creator
    Bricks And Bytes
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    366
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Bricks And Bytes
  • Show Website
    Bricks And Bytes

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