Hello and welcome to the October 2026 edition of Constructech.

This month we’re exploring ownership. Having turned down WSP, Arcadis has now set out which parts of its own business it plans to sell. The government, meanwhile, is setting up a publicly owned company to compete with the private operators who have run the grid for more than 35 years.

Who should own a business, or a piece of national infrastructure, and what changes for the people building and relying on it when that ownership shifts?

As always, this newsletter is a two-way conversation, so we’re interested in your thoughts, opinions and takes.

Arcadis Goes It Alone

In our August edition we covered WSP’s attempts to take over Arcadis. At the time of writing, WSP Global had put in two takeover proposals, both of which were rejected. Arcadis believed that staying independent was what would create the most value for its shareholders, and that WSP’s offers undervalued the company.

On the 22nd of September, WSP announced its decision to withdraw its proposed offer. WSP did state, though, that it “[remains] convinced that a combination of WSP and Arcadis would offer a compelling strategic rationale and generate substantial benefits for all stakeholders, including shareholders, clients and employees of Arcadis and WSP.”

Arcadis responded the next day, saying the “two proposals were carefully reviewed and unanimously rejected… as fundamentally undervaluing Arcadis’ intrinsic value, strategic position and future prospects.” It also raised concerns about cultural fit and the impact on its strategic plans, and said a deal would result in “adverse consequences for Arcadis’ shareholders, employees, clients, and other stakeholders”.

Arcadis then held its Capital Markets Day on the 29th of September, where it outlined its 2027–2029 strategy. As part of that, it will be divesting “the majority of the architecture business and China operations”, as well as reducing headcount by 1,000 full-time employees as part of its “overhead rightsizing”.

In China, the proposed arrangement is that “a management team led by local leadership will acquire a majority ownership interest in the Greater China business. Arcadis will retain a meaningful minority interest and remain a long-term strategic partner.”

So, a lot has happened with Arcadis over the last few months. What do you think? What implications will spinning out the architecture business and China operations have in the long term? And should they have just sold to WSP?

Leave a comment

Sources: WSP, Arcadis – Response to WSP, Arcadis – 2027–2029 Strategy, Arcadis – Greater China, Arcadis Capital Markets Day (YouTube)

Great British Grid

On the 29th of September (a popular day for announcements, apparently), Prime Minister Andy Burnham introduced Great British Grid (GBG), a new publicly owned company set up to invest in the country’s electricity grid. The idea is that it will speed up grid connections by driving competition, with Burnham describing it as a company that will “challenge the private sector operators”. This is part of his goal to bring UK energy prices in line with the rest of Europe within the next decade.

GBG will get £4 billion of funding from Great British Energy (GBE), a fraction of the roughly £70 billion estimated to be needed for full grid upgrades. So what’s the difference between the two? GBE is a publicly owned energy company whose mission is “to accelerate clean energy and the industries that support it, to ensure workers and communities reap the benefits of clean, secure, homegrown energy.” GBG’s goal, meanwhile, is to “accelerate the delivery of the electricity network infrastructure Britain needs.” In the government’s words, “Great British Grid will bring together public and private investment to support the delivery of critical network infrastructure across the country.”

An incredibly brief history of the grid, as the whole thing is quite complex and worthy of a standalone video or newsletter deep dive.

In the early 1800s the gas industry was born, when the Gas Light and Coke Company (GLCC) started operating and supplying coal gas to Westminster’s streets. Jump forward just over a hundred years, and Lord Weir was asked to solve the problem of an inefficient and fragmented electricity supply sector (sound familiar?). Off the back of that, the Electricity (Supply) Act 1926 was passed and the Central Electricity Board (CEB) was created. A key recommendation was the implementation of a “national gridiron” supply system. In 1935, the National Grid began commercial operations, the first integrated national grid in the world.

Lots happened in between, including nationalisation in 1948, but in 1990, under Thatcher, the network was privatised. For the last 35+ years the grid has been privately funded, and companies make their money from the fees they charge on your energy bill.

Now, back to GBG. To get more green energy onto the system and fulfil the goals of GBE, we need to connect newer green energy projects to the grid. As it stands, older fossil fuel generators (mostly gas, now that the UK’s last coal plant closed in 2024) are already connected, providing power to homes and businesses. It’s the newer projects that are stuck in the queue, with some companies waiting up to 14 years for a connection. By late 2024, the queue had passed 700 gigawatts of new power projects, ten times Britain’s current power capacity. Essentially, there’s a lot of green energy we can’t yet access.

There is some debate about whether GBG is the right answer to the problem, and, as is always the case, whether further government intervention is the answer. Regardless of your leaning, from a construction perspective this does provide opportunities. Now might be a good time to start looking at your company’s energy offering, or upskilling yourself, as it looks likely the sector will see a lot more work over the next few years. This is also likely to have a knock-on effect on data centre construction, which is already booming, as well as the nuclear sector, especially with the rise of small modular reactors (SMRs).

If you work on grid or energy projects, what’s actually holding connections up on the ground, and is a publicly owned challenger likely to change that?

Leave a comment

Sources: GOV.UK, BBC, Solar Power Portal, New Civil Engineer, The Spectator, Great British Energy, National Grid – Our History, National Grid – History of UK Energy, Business Juice, Wikipedia – National Grid, The Guardian

Community Corner

Thank you to everyone who came to our last meetup. It was a lovely evening with some great conversations.

Looking Ahead

Our next meetup date is still to be confirmed whilst we work around the end of the year and Christmas parties. It will be our last one in the current format. As the community evolves, we want to grow with you all and provide as much value as we can, so from 2027 expect a change in the frequency and format of our events. We’ll go into more detail in the new year.

Wrap-Up

Thanks for reading this month’s edition of Constructech.

Our aim is to make this the go-to monthly read for anyone working at the intersection of construction, technology, innovation and policy.

If you found this valuable, please:

• Forward it to a colleague

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Join us at the next Constructech meetup

See you next month,
The Constructech Team

Hello and welcome to the September 2026 edition of Constructech.

As we move into autumn, things are slowly starting to ramp up again after summer.

This month, we’re looking at planning and the public, specifically what happens when infrastructure and housing decisions get taken out of local hands, and why the pushback against them seems to be getting louder. It’s a topic plenty of us in construction have complicated feelings about: we know why projects need to get built, but many of us also live in the places being reshaped by them.

As always, this newsletter is a two-way conversation, so we’re interested in your thoughts, opinions and takes

Approved, Not Accepted

Infrastructure and nationally significant projects always have their detractors and critics. A decent chunk of that is fair and useful feedback; some of it is not. But we don’t want to fall into the trap of acting like every complaint is NIMBY-ism, when that isn’t the case.

The Planning and Infrastructure Act became law back in December 2025, with the aim of speeding up housing and major infrastructure projects. Changes were made to the pre-application process for major projects, and provisions for legal challenges were tightened.

This removal of mandatory pre-application public consultation is meant to cut approval times by 12 months and save the industry £1 billion in this Parliament, and has resulted in the government stepping in and overriding council decisions.

Infrastructure projects often walk a tight line. Things that benefit a community as a whole in the long run can disproportionately impact a smaller group during construction and operation. What research has shown is that it is important that people feel like they are being listened to and that the process is fair.

In the last year there have been several cases of central government, as well as the Mayor of London, stepping in to override a council or local decision-making process to approve controversial projects.

At the end of July, the Truman Brewery plans were approved, as the government believed the economic and regeneration benefits outweighed the harm. Tower Hamlets Council and the Save Brick Lane campaign disagreed. The argument against is that the proposal does not have enough provisions for affordable housing and would ruin the character of the area.

When the government approved the project, they referenced an increase in footfall in the area and how that would be a benefit for local businesses. However, if you’ve ever been to Brick Lane, that argument seems a little thin.

Also key in the criticism around the Truman Brewery is the inclusion of a data centre, one which would help financial traders in the City. However, faster trades for the City don’t necessarily do much for the rest of the borough.

The sheer volume of backlash against data centres is growing globally, and in the UK there is currently a Parliament petition to “introduce urgent moratorium on AI Data Centres and BESS outside AI Growth Zones”.

Matthew Pennycook, on behalf of Housing Secretary Angela Rayner, described this data centre as a “public benefit”, and whatever your stance, a lot of the public disagree. Especially when weighed up against the potential 350 new homes in a borough where 30,000 households are waiting for accommodation.

The council was working on its own plan alongside architects, policymakers and planners, who had come up with a master plan that Tower Hamlets adopted in September 2024 that would have created those 350 homes, prioritising social and affordable housing on the site.

The decision was taken out of the council’s hands after developer Truman Estates appealed to the Planning Inspectorate in June 2025, arguing the authority had missed deadlines to determine planning applications sent in August 2024. (BBC News)

It's no secret that councils are stretched and resources are thin; ten months to determine one application isn't unusual when planning departments are underfunded and understaffed. But should that stop development? If a private business can get in first and use the system available to them, shouldn't they? Or should the government weigh the needs of the community higher? And how long do you give councils to sort themselves out?

Leave a comment

Tower Hamlets contains Canary Wharf, one of the wealthiest financial districts in the world, alongside having one of the highest rates of child poverty in the UK. The Canary Wharf redevelopment is an interesting story in and of itself. As a result, Tower Hamlets generates the third highest economic output in the UK, with financial and professional services alone contributing £11bn and supporting more than 160,000 jobs. Its engineering history is fascinating and intersects with shipbuilding and colonialism, whilst being a successful, if soulless depending on who you ask, example of regeneration. This ICE case study and video are a good short overview: Canary Wharf Redevelopment: Revitalising London’s Docklands | Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE)

London, and many cities globally, are facing a similar crisis, and it’s playing out more and more in planning decisions and backlash. This is not a new phenomenon: there was the railway panic in the 1830s and 1840s, objections against London’s sewers in the 1860s, fear over the Central line when it was being dug in the 1900s, and the motorway madness protests of the 1970s-1990s, just to name a few. But with the cost-of-living crisis and high rents seen in many major cities, coupled with wage stagnation pushing people out of the areas they love and are attached to, pushback gets stronger and louder. And whilst things can get pushed through, it doesn’t stop there being issues both during construction and afterwards in operation.

The Astley Warehouses are an example of this. The warehouses were approved by Wigan Council despite major local opposition, and built on fields surrounding several houses. Residents have complained about the visual blight, the noise, and how it has impacted the price of their homes.

Zoë Bread, an anonymous creator, has been investigating and reporting on the issue and documenting it all on her social media platforms. This has resulted in her looking not only at the company that operates the warehouse, but also all the companies that use its services. This has resulted in reputational damage and lost business. It’s not that hard to translate this into the infrastructure space. As a contractor or consultancy, being associated with a potentially unpopular project may have far-reaching consequences outside of the project itself.

Arguably, planning takes a long time, and there is a feeling that this time is wasted and things should move faster in order to get things done. But is this fair? In Professor Bent Flyvbjerg’s book How Big Things Get Done, he talks about the planning stage as the most important stage of a project, and why you should spend the time you need there whilst also focusing on what the goal is. In these examples we have competing goals, ones for the community and ones for business, but it makes sense to spend time hashing it out to get to a suitable solution.

People are getting increasingly organised; pushing through planning permission does not mean things will get built. The A303 Stonehenge Tunnel was granted a DCO, but public pressure and community action saw a Judicial Review halt the project. HS2 has had no shortage of problems, including cost overruns, delays and public opposition, and phase 2 was ultimately cancelled as a result. Even the Garden Bridge, which received planning permission, was cancelled, with public outcry one of the reasons. As professionals that work in the industry, getting the public on board is a necessary part of what we do. Yes, you’ll never please everyone, but public pressure can and will sink a project.

Regardless of what the Act says, with social media driving and amplifying criticism that may have once stayed more local, and people getting increasingly engaged as they perceive these projects to not benefit them or their communities, it’s worth setting up real, dedicated time to talk to communities and keep them informed on what infrastructure does and how it can work for them, not just against them.

What do you think? A major issue reaching boiling point, or has infrastructure always been like this, and this is nothing new?

Leave a comment

Sources: New Civil Engineer, BCIS, BBC News, The Guardian, Trust for London, Tower Hamlets Council, ICE, Battle For Brick Lane, TikTok, UK Parliament

Community Corner

Our next meetup is on Thursday the 24th of September. Summer’s session went so well that we’re keeping this one to networking only, we’d love to see you there!

There are some changes coming to the meetup in the new year, so watch this space.

Wrap-Up

Thanks for reading this month’s edition of Constructech.

Our aim is to make this the go-to monthly read for anyone working at the intersection of construction, technology, innovation and policy.

If you found this valuable, please:

• Forward it to a colleague

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Join us at the next Constructech meetup

See you next month,
The Constructech Team

Hello and welcome to the August 2026 edition of Constructech. We hope you’ve all been enjoying your summer!

This month we’re looking at what a new Prime Minister means for infrastructure funding and governance, plus two acquisition stories that say a lot about where the industry is heading. Seems only fitting that we consolidated the whole thing down to three stories this time round.

As always, this newsletter is a two-way conversation, so we’re interested in your thoughts, opinions and takes.

A New PM, and What He Means for Infrastructure

Andy Burnham officially became Prime Minister on the 20th of July, and it’s already been an eventful few weeks.

The headline move was scrapping the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), the dedicated tech department created back in 2023. Its responsibilities have been split up: most of it’s scope moves into a newly created Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (DBIST), some functions shift to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and a new Cabinet-level AI Minister role has been created to sit jointly across the Cabinet Office and the new business department.

Industry bodies techUK and Startup Coalition had lobbied against this move before Burnham took office, arguing DSIT gave the tech sector a single government partner that understood it, and that splitting up its functions risked slowing momentum in a sector growing at 10% a year. It’s happened anyway. For construction and ConTech specifically, DSIT was one of the more direct channels into governmental thinking on data, AI adoption and digital infrastructure funding, so it’s worth keeping an eye on whether that access survives the move into a bigger, more generalist department.

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Thames Water and utilities

Thames Water is expected to run out of cash before the end of the year, and reports suggest the government is preparing to push it into a Special Administration Regime (SAR), an emergency mechanism where they appoint a manager to keep supply running whilst a longer-term fix, likely a sale, gets worked out. Burnham has been clear that this fits into a wider 10-year ambition of “more public control, more public ownership” across water, energy and transport, modelled loosely on Greater Manchester’s bus franchising, though he’s stopped short of committing to full nationalisation, calling it too complex and expensive to do in one move.

For construction, we need to consider what happens to capital investment programmes as a company goes through administration. Money to keep the taps running isn’t the same as money to fix ageing infrastructure, and the Bulb energy supplier collapse is the closest recent precedent, costing the taxpayer more than £3bn before it could be sold on. Whether Thames Water ends up on that kind of scale is still unclear.

HS2 and the North

As covered in last month's newsletter, HS2 has already been through the hands of six different Prime Ministers, several of whom reshaped it significantly. Burnham is now the seventh, and he's long called for the cancelled northern leg to be reinstated, something he pushed for repeatedly as Mayor of Greater Manchester. The estimated cost is around £36bn, and his proposed way of softening that bill for the Treasury is to capture some of the land value uplift around new stations, the idea being that a new station makes the surrounding land significantly more valuable, and rather than that gain going entirely to private landowners, some of it gets captured through mechanisms like a levy or the public sector taking a direct stake in nearby development, and reinvested into the railway itself. Whether that model can realistically fund a project of this scale remains to be seen, but it highlights his focus: more devolved control and more regional investment.

Devolution more broadly

Reports since he took office point towards Burnham wanting to shift more control of infrastructure services, water, energy, transport, down to a regional level. That could mean a move away from a small number of massive, centrally commissioned schemes towards a larger number of smaller, locally administered contracts. Good news if you’re a small enterprise that struggles to compete for the mega-projects; potentially a larger coordination and logistics issue if you’re used to one client, one set of standards and one overarching programme of works. Industry bodies have already warned that stepping away from the existing infrastructure pipeline could raise project costs and delay delivery, so the balance between “more local control” and “more predictability” needs to be properly fleshed out.

We'll find out more as the Autumn Budget approaches, expected sometime between mid-October and late November. In the meantime: is more devolved, regionally controlled infrastructure spending a good thing for the sector, or does it just trade one kind of instability for another? And is nationalising Thames Water, even temporarily, the right fix? Water was in public hands until privatisation in 1989 under Thatcher, so this wouldn't be new ground so much as reversing a nearly 40-year-old experiment. Given Burnham has said he wants to extend the same model to energy and transport too, is Thames Water the test case for whether that reversal works?

Leave a comment

Sources: Electronic Specifier, Engineering and Technology Magazine, pharmaphorum, UKTN, The Register, THINK Digital Partners, Tech Policy Press, Global Government Forum, City AM, AOL / Sunday Times, New Civil Engineer, The Guardian, Travers Smith

Buy, Don’t Build

There’s a lot of buying and offering of companies happening in the industry right now, and it’s growing. McKinsey’s research on the sector shows the average number of engineering and construction deals per year rose by roughly 60% between 2014–2019 and 2020–2024, from around 1,100 a year to about 1,800, with more than 80% of that activity concentrated in Europe and North America. Their prediction is that future mergers and acquisitions will centre on geographic expansion, capability building and entry into adjacent segments, driven by labour shortages, decarbonisation and the push into AI and automation.

Consolidation isn't unique to construction, and it isn't new here either (Laing and O'Rourke's famous £1 acquisition is an often cited example). Tech went through the exact same cycle with Amazon, Meta and Alphabet: a handful of giants absorbed or out-competed most of the interesting smaller players, and most of what survived did so by being everything the giants weren't. People still go to independent bookshops precisely because they're not Amazon. There are things big companies structurally can't or won't do, and that space is where the interesting, durable smaller businesses tend to sit.

(If you want the abridged, slightly unhinged version of that argument, this BoJack Horseman clip on consolidation sums it up better than we can.)

For professionals in construction, it changes who you end up working for, competing against, and selling into over the next decade. And if you're a ConTech founder, there's an opportunity there. You don't need to out-innovate or out-market an incumbent, you need to build one thing excellently and be a business someone like Procore or WSP wants to buy. Whether that's a healthy dynamic for the industry long-term, or just a slightly worrying one, we're honestly not sure. But it does seem to be where the market is heading, and both of this month's stories are a good illustration of what that looks like in practice.

Procore Buys DroneDeploy for $845m (Around £650m)

First up: Procore has agreed to acquire DroneDeploy, the reality-capture and robotics platform, for approximately $845 million in cash. The deal was announced on the 29th of July and is expected to close later this year, subject to regulatory approval.

DroneDeploy’s technology captures site data from drones, ground robots, and fixed and wearable cameras, and turns it into 3D documentation. It’s currently used on more than three million jobsites across 180 countries, and brought in around $78m in revenue over the past 12 months, meaning Procore paid roughly 10.8 times DroneDeploy’s trailing revenue.

The logic is about combining two very large, very different datasets. Procore brings its record of project decision-making: nearly 400 million photos, 126 million drawings and more than 10 million RFIs, submittals and inspections logged in the past year alone. DroneDeploy brings the physical record of what’s actually happening on site: around 20 trillion square feet of visual data, tens of millions of annotations and over 100,000 labelled safety issues. Put together, Procore’s stated aim is to build what CEO Ajei Gopal called “digital co-workers” that can track site conditions, interpret them, and trigger actions automatically within the platform, rather than waiting for a person to spot and log an issue manually.

This is Procore’s second major acquisition in under a year, following January’s purchase of Datagrid, an AI agent platform, taking its combined spend on the two deals to just over $1 billion. Last Week in ConTech have written a great breakdown of the acquisition as well as Procore’s four-pillar tech strategy.

Sources: DroneDeploy, Procore, AEC Magazine, Construction Dive, ENR, Last Week in ConTech

Arcadis Fends Off WSP, Twice

The other acquisition story this month didn’t go through (yet). WSP Global has now had two takeover proposals for Dutch engineering consultancy Arcadis rejected, and the two firms are still, publicly at least, at an impasse.

WSP’s first non-binding proposal came in at €48.50 per share, mostly in WSP stock. Arcadis’s board rejected it unanimously, saying it undervalued the company and failed to address concerns around strategic fit, cultural fit, deal certainty and the interests of other stakeholders. WSP came back with a revised offer of €51.50 per share, 46% higher than what Arcadis shares were trading at before news of a takeover emerged, valuing the company at around €5.2 billion including debt. Arcadis rejected that one too, on the 30th of July, again citing undervaluation, and flagging that around half the consideration was still WSP stock rather than cash, which it said represented a materially different risk profile for its shareholders.

Our H1 2026 performance demonstrates that our growth trajectory is moving in the right direction…we are confident that our standalone strategy is the most effective path to creating value for our shareholders and stakeholders (Heather Polinsky, CEO of Arcadis)

Arcadis’s shareholder structure adds a complication here. The Lovinklaan Foundation, an employee-led body, holds an 18% stake, more than any other single shareholder, so its vote could end up deciding whether a deal actually goes through. WSP has said it would welcome the Foundation staying on board if a deal happens, but nobody yet knows which way it would vote. Arcadis, meanwhile, has been strengthening its standalone position: it recently acquired Spanish power design specialist Satel to build out its grid modernisation, renewable energy and data centre hyperscaling capabilities across Europe. Arcadis has said that staying independent is what will create the most value for its shareholders, not a deal with WSP.

WSP currently sits at No. 3 on ENR’s Top 225 Global Design Firms list with $10.5bn in 2024 revenue, against Arcadis at No. 8 with $5.5bn. A combination would be one of the largest consolidations the sector has seen. Arcadis has scheduled a Capital Markets Day for the 29th of September, where it’s expected to lay out its medium-term standalone strategy in more detail, so there’s a decent chance we hear more, one way or another, before the next issue.

Unlike the Procore deal, WSP is going after scale in its own core discipline rather than a new capability layer, and Arcadis’s board clearly thinks the price doesn’t reflect what that scale is worth to WSP. Engineering and construction is an industry anchored around people rather than products or brands. That’s why a hostile-feeling, stock-heavy offer like this one is a harder sell to a target’s board and shareholders than it might be for two software companies merging.

What do you think? Is this wave of consolidation good for the industry, concentrating capability and capital where it can be used well, or does it just mean fewer, larger players setting the terms for everyone else?

Leave a comment

Sources: WSP, Arcadis, Reuters, Reuters, Construction Enquirer, ENR, ENR – Satel acquisition, Smart Water Magazine, McKinsey

Community Corner

Our July meetup marked two years since we restarted Constructech in London, and it was wonderful having so many of you there to celebrate it and see just how much the community has grown.

Our next meetup is on Thursday the 24th of September 2026, and we’d love to see you there. If you’re interested in speaking, or want to put a colleague or friend forward, please do get in touch.

Wrap-Up

Thanks for reading this month’s edition of the Constructech.

Our aim is to make this the go-to monthly read for anyone working at the intersection of construction, technology, innovation and policy.

If you found this valuable, please:

• Forward it to a colleague

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Join us at the next Constructech meetup

See you next month,
The Constructech Team

Hello and welcome to the July 2026 edition of Constructech.

One thing kept coming up as we were putting this month’s newsletter together: accountability.

Construction is an industry built around managing risk. We have contracts, regulations, guidelines and processes to manage it. But every project still relies on someone taking responsibility when things don’t go to plan. As technology evolves, governments change direction and increasingly complex organisations deliver our infrastructure, that responsibility can sometimes become less clear.

This month’s stories all touch on that question from different angles. What happens when major infrastructure projects outlast multiple governments? Where does responsibility sit once an asset has been handed over? If AI helps produce an answer, who is accountable when it’s wrong? And when large technology companies begin investing in critical infrastructure, who ultimately benefits?

There are no simple answers. But, as always, we’re interested in your thoughts, opinions and takes.

Seven Prime Ministers, One Railway

Keir Starmer’s resignation on the 22nd of June means the UK is about to get its seventh Prime Minister in a decade. Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, and now, in all likelihood, Andy Burnham. Only a handful of countries have seen more turnover at the top of government in that time than we have.

For those of us in construction, that’s a difficult environment to plan in. We build things over decades, not electoral cycles. Major infrastructure needs consistent funding commitments, stable policies, and enough political patience to see a project through delays and cost overruns without pulling the plug, or, just as damaging, quietly starving it of cash. Six changes of Prime Minister in ten years does not give you that.

HS2 is the case study we all know well. Announced in 2010 with a planned 2026 opening and a Y-shaped network reaching Manchester and Leeds, it has been redrawn by pretty much every government since. The eastern leg to Leeds was scrapped in 2021. The Manchester leg went in 2023, when everything north of Birmingham was cancelled, citing cost overruns and changing travel patterns after the pandemic. When Labour took office in 2024, it confirmed neither line was coming back.

Costs are now estimated at £87.7bn-£102.7bn, with the opening for the London-Birmingham stretch pushed back to somewhere between 2036 and 2039. To save money, the top speed was cut from 360km/h to 320km/h, and automatic train operation was dropped altogether. A project first promised for 2026 now won’t be finished, in any meaningful sense, until the 2040s.

And the government’s changes keep coming. On the 30th of June, the government announced a new £15bn Defence Investment Plan. Part of the funding comes from “mothballing” road and energy capital projects, with the Department for Transport and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero both told to find savings. Industry bodies warned that delaying transport and energy upgrades will cost more in the long run through lost productivity.

There’s a broader pattern here. Every one of these decisions was made by a government that knew it might not be the one dealing with the consequences. HS2 has been reshaped by five different Prime Ministers, none of whom were still in office by the time their changes played out. Burnham inherits all of this. Does a seventh leadership change in a decade finally break that cycle, or does HS2, and everything else in the pipeline, just keep getting redrawn?

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For construction, the impact isn’t really about any one project. It’s about how hard it is to plan around a government that changes its mind roughly every eighteen months. Contracts, at least, can be renegotiated. Political direction can’t.

Sources: BBC, Al Jazeera, Wikipedia – Labour leadership crisis, Wikipedia – HS2, Railway News, New Civil Engineer

Bedford, and What Safety Covers

On the 19th of June, two East Midlands Railway trains collided near Elstow, just south of Bedford. More than 80 people were treated in hospital. The train driver Shaun Burton, 60, was killed. Our thoughts are with his family, friends, and colleagues.

The recovery operation that followed was itself a significant piece of engineering: removing damaged overhead line equipment, building a temporary access road and concrete foundation to support crane operations, then using two 110-tonne rail-mounted cranes to lift the trains clear of the site. Passenger services resumed on the 29th of June. The investigation into what caused the collision is ongoing, and it would be wrong to speculate on the cause before that’s complete.

What we do want to flag is that this kind of accident is incredibly rare. Before the Carmont derailment in 2020, Britain’s railways had gone thirteen years without a passenger or workforce fatality from a train accident. The chance of a fatal injury on a UK rail journey is currently estimated at lower than 1 in 300 million. That level of safety exists because of a hard-learnt history.

After privatisation in the 1990s, splitting the infrastructure owner from the companies doing maintenance and renewal directly contributed to a string of fatal crashes: Southall in 1997, Ladbroke Grove in 1999, and Hatfield in 2000. At Hatfield, a rail defect that should have been fixed wasn't, partly because responsibility for track condition had been split across contractors in ways nobody fully owned. Railtrack collapsed under the weight of it. Network Rail was created in 2002 to bring that responsibility back together.

That history is a reminder that safety in the built environment doesn’t stop at handover. The people who design and build infrastructure and the people who operate and maintain it afterwards are often different organisations, sometimes with different incentives, and the seams between them are exactly where things can go wrong.

Engineers went out within hours to make the site safe and get the line running again, and did it well. But Bedford is also a prompt to ask, honestly: are the handoffs on our own projects, between design, construction, and the operator who inherits the asset, as joined-up as we’d like to believe?

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Sources: Bedford Independent, Rail Business Daily, New Civil Engineer – Recovery Operation, New Civil Engineer – Services Resume, RSSB, Wikipedia – Network Rail, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

Humans Are, For Now, Still Cheaper

For the past year or so, the dominant story about AI at work has been how fast adoption was spreading. Recently, that story has changed. Uber’s CTO said the company burnt through its entire 2026 AI coding budget in four months. Microsoft told engineers in one division to stop using an AI coding tool because the bills had become unsustainable. Amazon shut down an internal leaderboard that ranked staff by how many tokens they’d used, after people started running pointless prompts just to climb the rankings. Anthropic and OpenAI’s shift to token-based pricing this year is a big part of why. Flat subscriptions made AI feel free at the point of use, and metered billing has made every prompt a line item a CFO can see.

None of this means AI doesn’t work. Uber’s own data shows the tools are being used, 70% of its committed code is now AI-generated. The issue is that usage and value aren’t the same thing. Right now, for a lot of tasks, a person is simply the more economical option. One MIT study put the proportion of jobs where AI automation is currently economically viable at around 23%. For the other three-quarters, humans still win on cost, judgement, and accountability.

Something we discussed at our joint meetup with Tech Is... is that no AI model is on the hook if it gets something wrong. The human in the loop is a necessity. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, none of them can be held liable, disciplined, or fired. A person has to check the output, take responsibility for it, and answer for it if it’s wrong. In construction, where liability is a defined, contractual thing and mistakes can be life or death, that changes the equation entirely.

There’s a version of this playing out in workplaces already: people being held to targets an AI tool has set that were never realistic to begin with, and senior leadership pushing decisions onto these tools regardless of whether they’re actually achievable. It’s not the model that’s accountable when that goes wrong, it’s whoever signed off on trusting it. In a safety-critical industry like ours, that’s worth taking seriously before it becomes normal.

Adoption in this sector reflects that caution, whether by design or default. RICS’ AI in Construction report found 45% of organisations have no AI implementation at all, and only around 1% have it scaled across multiple projects. Given the money going into AI tools relative to what they’re delivering, and given this is an industry where getting something wrong can mean a collapsed structure rather than a bad chatbot reply, that caution looks less like the industry being slow and more like it correctly pricing in a risk other sectors are only just discovering the cost of. So is construction’s low adoption actually a lag, or is it the one sector correctly reading the risk before jumping in?

Adoption in construction reflects that caution, whether by design or default. RICS’ AI in Construction report found that 45% of organisations have no AI implementation at all, while only around 1% have deployed it across multiple projects. That raises an interesting question. Is construction behind the curve, or is it one of the few industries asking the harder questions before scaling AI? Given the commercial realities, the contractual liabilities and the consequences of getting things wrong, perhaps the sector’s caution is less surprising than it appears.

Leave a comment

For now, keep using the tools. Just remember that you’re the one signing off the answer, not the model.

Sources: Fortune, Forbes, CNBC, Cybernews, Construction Dive, RICS, Reddit

Google.org’s £1m Water Bet

Google.org has awarded £1m to the FloodAction Coalition, a group of more than 80 organisations, insurers, utilities, investors, and infrastructure operators, chaired by Aviva, to build a UK Water Resilience Intelligence Platform. The idea is to give organisations the data and decision-support tools to see where flood and drought risk threatens their assets, and where nature-based interventions, restoring wetlands, floodplains, and the like, would do the most good. This sounds like a useful gap to fill. The UK’s water sector really needs better shared data.

One obvious question is why Google is funding it in the first place. Google has other, much larger water interests in the UK right now. Its AI data centres are heavy water users, and recent reporting found that 84% of proposed UK data centres are set to be built in areas already under water stress. Google Cloud has also just signed an agreement with the UK government to help reduce reliance on legacy tech, a deal that’s drawn criticism from UK tech groups over vendor lock-in and the fact that data hosted on Google’s platform can still, under US law, be accessed by American authorities regardless of where the servers physically sit. That’s part of a wider pattern of UK public and civic data increasingly running on US infrastructure, the same conversation that’s followed deals like Palantir’s NHS contract.

None of that makes this particular £1m grant inherently a bad thing. Better flood and drought data helps the built environment plan and invest more sensibly. But two things can be true at once. A company whose core business is also placing heavy demands on UK water and UK data infrastructure has an obvious interest in being seen as part of the solution. Once the platform exists, who ends up controlling the data, and whose interests does it ultimately serve?

Leave a comment

Sources: New Civil Engineer, Water Magazine, Data Center Dynamics

Community Corner

Disease Surveillance and the Future of Smart Buildings

One of the talks we’ve recently shared came from Edward Marks, Head of Commercial at Untap Health, who explored how disease monitoring has shaped the built environment and where it could go next.

Public health has influenced building design for centuries. From John Snow’s investigation of the 1854 cholera outbreak in Soho to the development of tuberculosis sanatoriums and, more recently, renewed attention on ventilation following Covid-19, disease has repeatedly changed the way we think about our buildings and cities.

Edward’s talk explored a different approach to disease surveillance. Rather than waiting for people to become ill and then testing individuals, wastewater monitoring can detect rising disease levels within a building before symptoms begin to appear. The aim isn’t to identify who is sick, but to understand what is happening across a building or site and provide an earlier opportunity to respond.

If buildings can monitor energy use, occupancy and air quality, should they also monitor health?

Untap Health have shown that it is possible at building level, but what happens when you scale it up? Could aggregated data help identify outbreaks across neighbourhoods or cities before they become widespread? Could it support hospitals, transport networks or other critical infrastructure? Or does that begin to edge into territory where the benefits need to be carefully balanced against privacy, ethics and public trust?

Leave a comment

Like many conversations in construction technology, the technology itself is only part of the story. The more interesting discussion may be about where we draw the line, and what we want the buildings and cities of the future to know about us.

Looking Ahead

A quick reminder that our next meetup is this Wednesday.

We’re embracing the summer with a more relaxed evening of networking, drinks, pizza and conversation.

If you’ve been thinking about coming along, there are still a few spaces left and we’d love to see you there.

Wrap-Up

Thanks for reading this month’s edition of Constructech.

Our aim is to make this the go-to monthly read for anyone working at the intersection of construction, technology, innovation and policy.

If you found this valuable, please:

• Forward it to a colleague

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Join us at the next Constructech meetup

See you next month,
The Constructech Team

Hello and welcome to the June 2026 edition of Constructech.

Has the heat been getting to you?

It’s certainly been getting to us and whilst we’re enjoying it on a social level, the implications for the sector and the world are definitely on our minds.

In this edition we’re also sharing some of the recent talks we’ve uploaded to YouTube, so if you need something to watch inside as you shield yourself from the sun, we’ve got you covered (pun intended!).

As always, this newsletter is a two-way conversation, so we’re interested in your thoughts, opinions and takes.

It’s Hotting Up!

Across Western Europe, temperature records are being smashed. In the UK, one day last week saw the highest recorded May temperature, more than 2°C higher than the previous record. According to the BBC, the immediate cause was a “heat dome”, where an area of high pressure became trapped over Europe, locking warm air beneath it.

Scientists have long warned about the impacts of human-caused climate change. The UK Parliament declared a climate emergency back in 2019 and the UN Secretary-General called on all countries to do the same in 2020.

The temperatures we’ve been experiencing this spring are exactly the sort of conditions climate scientists have been warning about for years. For a long time, climate change was discussed as a future challenge. However, we are now entering the phase where those consequences are becoming visible in our buildings, infrastructure and daily lives.

For those of us working in the built environment, the question isn’t whether climate change will affect us. It already is. The question and the focus needs to be on what we do next.

Take housing. New-build homes are excellent at retaining heat, something that has historically been necessary in the UK climate. Better insulation means lower heating bills and warmer homes during winter. However, as temperatures rise, the opposite effect can occur during summer, making homes increasingly difficult to cool and, at times, unbearable to live in.

As urban density increases and more people live in flats, the challenge becomes even more pronounced. According to the London Assembly, around one fifth of UK homes already experience overheating during summer periods. Central London boroughs, with higher concentrations of flats, face some of the greatest risks. Without further adaptation, the Climate Change Committee projects that heat-related deaths could treble by 2050.

The London Assembly is trying to answer “Are London’s homes ready for a heatwave?”. The call for evidence ended on the 1st of May, but we will be keeping an eye out for the release of their findings. Hopefully, the results will see real change in planning and building regulations.

From an infrastructure perspective, the BBC recently reported that England could face public water supply shortfalls exceeding five billion litres per day as a result of hotter, drier summers and population growth.

Rail infrastructure faces its own challenges. Extreme temperatures can cause overhead lines to sag, increase the risk of line-side fires and even cause rails to buckle. When this happens, it can lead to speed restrictions on the network or, in some cases, lines needing to close altogether for repairs, something many of us have experienced first-hand.

The built environment was largely designed around historical climate assumptions and today those assumptions are increasingly being tested.

The Other Side of the Challenge

We are in a very unique position as the buildings and construction sector is by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases accounting for around 37% of global carbon emissions. Every week, the world builds a new area roughly the size of Paris.

This creates a difficult tension for our industry. We are both one of the sectors most exposed to climate change and one of the sectors most capable of influencing it.

The UN Environment Programme’s report, Building Materials and the Climate: Constructing a New Future outlines how the conversation around decarbonising buildings has largely focused on operational energy over the last decade. Better insulation, more efficient systems and lower energy use have all been important.

But the report argues that embodied carbon is becoming an increasingly important part of the challenge. As buildings become more efficient in operation, emissions associated with extracting, manufacturing and transporting materials such as concrete, steel and aluminium make up a growing proportion of their total carbon footprint.

The report centres around three principles: Avoid, Shift and Improve.

Avoid means reducing demand for new materials through better design, refurbishment, reuse and circularity. The report notes that renovation can generate 50-75% fewer emissions than new construction, whilst buildings should increasingly be viewed as future material banks rather than future demolition waste.

Shift focuses on increasing the use of responsibly sourced bio-based materials such as timber, bamboo and agricultural by-products where appropriate. The report describes bio-based materials as potentially “our best hope for radical decarbonisation”, whilst recognising the need to avoid unintended impacts on biodiversity, land use and labour practices.

Improve acknowledges that concrete, steel and aluminium are not disappearing any time soon. Instead, the focus should be on improving how they are produced through electrification, recycling, renewable energy and carbon capture technologies.

Perhaps the most interesting conclusion is that this is not simply a materials challenge. The report repeatedly highlights issues that anyone working in construction will recognise: fragmented supply chains, poor data, misaligned incentives and limited collaboration between stakeholders. Decarbonisation is as much about coordination and decision-making as it is about technology.

In other words, many of the barriers are organisational rather than technical. Which feels like a familiar theme. Whether we’re discussing decarbonisation, productivity, AI adoption or digital transformation, we often find ourselves returning to the same underlying issues.

What can we as an industry do?

One of the strengths of the report is that it moves beyond simply describing the problem.

Several themes stand out:

• Prioritise refurbishment and retrofit where practical before defaulting to demolition and rebuild.

• Consider embodied carbon alongside operational carbon during project decision-making.

• Design for future reuse and disassembly rather than assuming materials will eventually become waste.

• Increase the use of recycled, reused and low-carbon materials where project requirements allow.

• Improve transparency around sourcing, environmental performance and material data.

• Encourage earlier collaboration between designers, contractors, manufacturers and asset owners.

None of these are particularly revolutionary ideas. However, the challenge is that they require coordination across multiple stakeholders, often operating under different commercial incentives. As anyone in construction knows, this is a persistent challenge and where things generally get difficult.

Where are the opportunities for ConTech businesses?

One of the more interesting conclusions from the report is that many of the barriers to decarbonisation are not technology problems in the traditional sense. They are coordination, visibility and data problems.

The industry often lacks visibility of what materials exist, where they are located, what condition they are in, what carbon they contain and whether they can be reused. For ConTech businesses, that creates opportunities to solve practical industry challenges rather than invent entirely new ones.

• Material traceability and digital passports – Tools that track materials and components throughout a building’s lifecycle, improving transparency, supporting circularity and enabling future reuse.

• Embodied carbon and lifecycle assessment platforms – Software that helps project teams understand the carbon impact of design and procurement decisions earlier and more consistently across projects.

• Circular economy marketplaces and recovery platforms – Technology that supports deconstruction, material recovery and the buying, selling and certification of reused construction products.

• Supply chain transparency and verification tools – Solutions that improve confidence in environmental claims, certification, sourcing and material performance data across fragmented supply chains.

• District and portfolio-scale decision support – Platforms that help developers, asset owners and local authorities assess carbon impacts across multiple buildings and infrastructure assets rather than one project at a time.

The challenge, as always in construction, is less about proving the technology works and more about fitting solutions into existing procurement routes, contracts, regulations and project delivery processes.

Community Corner

One of the strengths of the Constructech community is the range of conversations it creates.

Over the last month we’ve uploaded two more talks from previous meetups, whilst continuing to explore new questions through our in-person events. Looking back at some of those discussions, a common theme emerges: how do we make construction work better in practice, not just in theory?

Housing, Robotics and the Challenge of Change

Back in September 2025, Mollie Claypool from AUAR joined us to discuss automated construction and the company’s approach to sustainable housing delivery.

What stood out wasn’t simply the robotics. It was the way the problem was framed.

Housing demand remains high, yet builders face structural constraints around labour, materials, margins and risk. The challenge is not just building faster, it’s about creating a system that allows builders to adopt new approaches without taking on unsustainable levels of risk.

AUAR’s response combines software and robotic microfactories that manufacture timber-frame housing components. The technology itself is fascinating, but one of the most interesting parts of the discussion centred around incentives.

Rather than targeting the largest housebuilders, AUAR has deliberately focused on mid-sized firms that are often closer to their communities, supply chains and decision-makers. Those organisations can sometimes move more quickly because there are fewer layers between identifying a problem and deciding to do something about it.

It was a useful reminder that technology adoption rarely comes down to whether a solution works technically. Much like the decarbonisation challenge discussed earlier in this newsletter, success often depends on incentives, coordination and how well a solution fits into existing ways of working.

Construction has never been short of new ideas but creating the conditions where good ideas can be implemented continues to be one of the biggest struggles.

AI, Project Controls and the Reality of Fragmented Data

In November 2025, João Dias and Sergio Cavalaro joined us to explore how AI could help tackle one of construction’s most persistent challenges: fragmented information.

Their core argument was that construction does not primarily suffer from a lack of data, but from data being scattered across countless disconnected systems, documents and stakeholders. Site diaries, meeting minutes, emails, programmes, cost reports and BIM models often contain references to the same issue, yet there is no easy way to connect them into a single source of truth. This fragmentation creates inefficiencies, delays, disputes and ultimately erodes trust between project teams.

The same issue might appear in a site diary, a meeting minute, an email thread, a programme update and eventually a compensation event. Individually, each document makes sense. Together, they create a web of information that is incredibly difficult to track and analyse.

João and Sergio argued that the real opportunity for AI is not replacing people, but helping teams make sense of vast amounts of project information in real time. The vision presented by Constructer was one where systems can automatically connect those dots, identifying risks as they emerge and linking them to programme activities, costs and physical assets.

During a pilot on a major infrastructure project, the team discovered that poor-quality project data remained one of the biggest barriers to success. In several cases, programme activities simply were not described clearly enough for the system to understand what was being impacted.

For all the excitement around AI, it was a reminder that many of construction’s challenges still come back to fundamentals: good information, clear processes and effective communication between teams. Once again, the technology itself was only part of the story. The harder challenge was improving the quality and consistency of the information flowing through the project.

Will AI Deepen Construction’s Disconnection?

That question became the centrepiece of our most recent meetup, where we joined forces with the ConTech Is... community featuring a really insightful talk by Allister Lewis.

The question posed to the room was deliberately broad:

Importantly, we never defined either term.

What do we mean by AI? Large language models? Automation? Machine learning? Robotics?

And what exactly is disconnected? People? Teams? Processes? Data? Software?

That ambiguity resulted in some really passionate discussions from a variety of perspectives.

Some argued that AI could make existing problems worse. Construction has historically struggled with data quality and information management. If AI systems depend on good data, are we simply amplifying existing weaknesses?

Others took the opposite view. Better tools could make information easier to capture, organise and access, reducing some of the friction that exists today.

Risk, as always, was a key factor. Construction is an industry where mistakes have real consequences. When things go wrong, it can be catastrophic. Which some of the community felt creates natural limits on AI adoption.

Others argued the opposite because construction already relies on review processes, approvals and multiple layers of checking, it may actually be better positioned than many industries to adopt AI responsibly. The phrase “human in the loop” came up as a necessary risk mitigation.

When we asked the room to vote on the question, the result was pretty close:

40% said yes.

60% said no.

What became clear is that AI is far bigger than the current conversation around LLMs. There is a whole ecosystem of technologies emerging, each likely to affect different parts of the industry in different ways.

It also feels like a topic worth exploring in much greater depth over the coming months.

What do you think:

Will the push for AI deepen construction’s foundational issues that led to disconnection? Why or why not?

Leave a comment

Looking Ahead

Our next meetup takes place on Wednesday the 8th of July.

With summer approaching and many people heading off on holiday, we’re keeping things simple this time. No formal presentations, just networking, drinks, pizza and a few discussion prompts to get conversations started.

It also marks two years since Constructech was restarted in London. The community has grown considerably since then, and we’re excited to see where the next chapter takes us!

Hopefully we’ll see some of you there.

Register

Wrap-Up

Thanks for reading this month’s edition of Constructech.

Our aim is to make this the go-to monthly read for anyone working at the intersection of construction, technology, innovation and policy.

If you found this valuable, please:

• Forward it to a colleague

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Join us at the next Constructech meetup

Sources & Further Reading

• Why temperature records are being not only broken but smashed - BBC News

• UK Parliament declares climate change emergency - BBC News

• UN secretary general urges all countries to declare climate emergencies | Climate crisis | The Guardian

• Climate Change | Construction Industry Council

• Building Materials And The Climate: Constructing A New Future | UNEP - UN Environment Programme

• Are London’s homes ready for a heatwave? | London City Hall

• Incident: Hot weather | National Rail

• Buckled rail - Network Rail

See you next month,
The Constructech Team

Hello and welcome to the May 2026 edition of Constructech. Hope you all had a good bank holiday.

It’s been a little while since the last issue, so in this one, we’re focusing more on what’s been happening within the community and some of the insights we’ve picked up over the past few months.

As always, this newsletter is a two-way conversation, so we’re keen to hear your thoughts, questions and perspectives.

Construction Tech Funding, Trends and What’s Next

In March, we sat down with Bhragan Paramanantham, who writes Last Week in ConTech and works closely with early-stage startups through Formwork Labs, as well as being part of the team at AEC Tech Jobs.

We ended up covering a lot of ground, from funding and regional differences through to what actually makes a construction tech company work in practice.

1) Construction tech funding is growing, but it’s uneven

Construction tech is growing as a share of venture funding, but it looks very different depending on where you sit.

The US is still the most mature market, with the highest number of rounds and the most capital flowing through. Europe is active, but smaller on average, which makes it feel a bit earlier in its development.

That difference shows up in how people think about technology. In the US, the focus tends to be on margins and cost structure. In Europe, it leans more towards growth and market share. The result is that some solutions do well in one region and struggle in another.

India and Latin America are also starting to stand out. India in particular is seeing rapid growth in funding rounds, often building teams locally but selling into the US. In Latin America, the combination of labour shortages and housing demand is pushing more interest into prefab and industrialised approaches.

2) AI is moving quickly, but no one really knows what lasts

AI came up a lot, as you would expect.

There are startups going from zero to meaningful revenue surprisingly quickly, often by focusing on very specific workflow problems.

What’s less clear is what actually lasts. As Bhragan put it, no one really knows what is defensible yet, or what will still be here in a few years.

You can see that uncertainty in how companies are operating. Some are rebuilding their tech stacks multiple times in short periods, which raises a bigger question around what a “good” startup even looks like right now.

3) Robotics is quietly becoming one of the stronger areas

Whilst most of the attention is on AI, robotics feels like it has more substance behind it at the moment.

Hardware is becoming easier to access, and software is lowering the barrier to building something usable. That combination is pulling more interest into the space, especially as physical AI starts to become more real.

It is also one of the few areas where the connection between the technology and on-site impact is more immediate.

4) A lot of startups struggle with how they sell, not what they build

One of the more practical points was around go-to-market.

A common mistake is going after large enterprise clients too early. On paper it makes sense, but in reality those deals can take six to eight months, involve layers of compliance, and drain a lot of time.

In the early stages, it is often more useful to focus on customers who are ready to move and generate revenue, even if they are smaller.

More broadly, the team matters more than the initial idea. Things change quickly, so the ability to adapt tends to matter more than getting everything right from day one.

5) The bigger opportunity might be rethinking the company, not the tool

One idea that resonated was the concept of a more vertically integrated construction company.

Instead of building another tool, the opportunity might be in rethinking how construction businesses are structured in the first place, using the technology that is currently available.

That would look like companies that are more process-driven, more deliberate in how they use data, and designed around how work genuinely happens today rather than legacy systems.

It is a bigger shift, and not a simple one, but probably where a lot of the long-term value sits.

There is a lot happening across contech right now. More capital, more attention, and more experimentation.

At the same time, many of the underlying challenges have not gone away. Long sales cycles, fragmented supply chains, and the complexity of projects are still very real.

There is clearly still lots of opportunities out there, even if they aren’t straightforward.

Curious to hear your thoughts. What are you seeing in the market right now? Where would you focus attention?

Leave a comment

Community Corner

Over the past few weeks, we’ve shared recordings from previous meetups.

Nick Martinis’ session on 4D was a good reminder that, in practice, it is less about the animation and more about understanding how a project unfolds. Linking the programme with the 3D model gives teams a way to test decisions before they are made, whether that is sequencing, logistics or simply rehearsing whether something will physically work on site.

It does not replace traditional planning tools, but it adds a layer that helps reveal issues earlier. A lot of the value is in spotting the things that look fine in a programme but fall apart when you try to build them.

On the life sciences side, both Fabian Lange and Tim Fry approached the topic from different angles, but with overlaps.

From an investment perspective, Fabian highlighted how the UK continues to look strong, particularly around Oxford, Cambridge and London. The fundamentals are there, but it is still a younger market compared to the US, and that gap shows up in both funding and delivery.

At the same time, there are questions around supply, viability and how quickly new space can be absorbed.

From a delivery point of view, Tim focused on what it takes to make these projects work.

Lab buildings are technically demanding, often running 24/7, with high M&E requirements and strict regulatory constraints. Converting existing buildings is possible, but not simple and only works in certain cases.

A lot of it comes back to early decisions. Understanding what end users need, designing to those requirements, and being realistic about constraints from the start.

Across all three talks, a common thread was that the detail matters. Whether it is planning a programme, delivering a lab, or adapting an existing building, the gaps between assumption and reality are where most of the risk sits.

Looking ahead, our next meetup is on the 28th of May, where we’re teaming up with ConTech Is…

Construction and architecture have more tools than ever, but they rarely connect in a meaningful way. Teams end up working around software rather than with it, managing gaps, duplication and data that does not quite line up.

We’ll be digging into that with Allister Lewis, who focuses on helping practices make more deliberate technology decisions. His work looks at how tools really fit into workflows, where dependencies sit, and how to reduce risk rather than just adding more software into the mix.

If that sounds familiar, it should be a good conversation.

As always, if you’re interested in speaking at a future session, feel free to reach out.

Wrap-Up

Thanks for reading this month’s edition of Constructech.

Our aim is to make this the go-to monthly read for anyone working at the intersection of construction, technology, innovation and policy.

If you found this valuable, please:

• Forward it to a colleague

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Join us at the next Constructech meetup

See you next month,
The Constructech Team

Hello and welcome to the February 2026 edition of Constructech.

This month is a short one as, by the time this lands in your inbox, I will hopefully be lying on a beach.

As a result, instead of our usual breakdowns, we’re highlighting five articles from around the web that caught our attention. We’ll be back next month with our usual, more in-depth takes.

ConTech Monthly Roundup

• TfL publishes draft 2026 Business Plan

  • Transport for London has released the draft version of its 2026 Business Plan, which will be considered by the TfL Board on 4 February 2026.

• Architecture Is Dying

  • A provocative LinkedIn essay from Thomas Chapman that has sparked a lot of discussion about the current state and future of the profession.

• Infrastructure tender costs set to climb 5%

  • Tender prices for infrastructure projects are expected to rise again, adding further pressure to already stretched budgets.

• Saudi Arabia scales back plans for 100-mile desert megacity

  • NEOM plans appear to be under review following concerns over escalating costs and delivery challenges.

• Samara installs its first factory-built home in Los Angeles rebuild effort

  • An interesting example of offsite construction being used at pace in post-disaster rebuilding.

Community Corner

Edward from Untap Health gave a great talk on Thursday, leaving us with a lot to think about around the data hidden in our wastewater and how the built environment can be used to monitor health across communities.

Our next meetup is on Wednesday the 25th of March, and we hope to see many of you there. If you’re interested in speaking, please get in touch.

Wrap-Up

Thanks for reading this month’s edition of the Constructech.

Our aim is to make this the go-to monthly read for anyone working at the intersection of construction, technology, innovation and policy.

If you found this valuable, please:

• Forward it to a colleague

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Join us at the next Constructech meetup

See you next month,
The Constructech Team

Happy New Year, and welcome to the January edition of Constructech.

The year has started with plenty to pay attention to across construction, technology and the wider global context. Whilst December was relatively quiet on the surface, it has already become clear how closely the built environment remains tied to wider economic, political and technological shifts.

Rather than a full monthly roundup, this issue takes a short deep dive into how construction, technology and global trade intersect, and why those connections matter more than ever for how, where and what we build.

As always, this newsletter is a two-way conversation, so we’re keen to hear your thoughts, questions and perspectives.

Deep Dive: Construction, Technology and the World

Construction is a sector that is deeply linked to geopolitics. Conflict, regime change, sanctions and trade tensions all have a direct impact on what gets built globally. They affect which materials can be used, how they are supplied, where they are manufactured and even the movement of labour. Construction does not exist in isolation, and world events inevitably feed through into the built environment.

We’re only just into the new year, but there have already been some notable developments, alongside ongoing situations from the past year that continue to shape the landscape.

Oil intersects with construction in more ways than we often acknowledge. It underpins materials such as asphalt, plastics, paints, sealants and adhesives, and most construction plant still runs on diesel. Whilst there are serious efforts to decarbonise, we are not there yet.

Construction’s exposure to oil prices stems from several factors, including the production, distribution and utilisation of materials. According to Turner & Townsend’s calculations, 80% of fluctuations in construction input costs can be attributed to the volatility of oil and fuel prices. (Construction Management)

Rises or instability in oil markets can quickly make road and infrastructure projects more expensive, sometimes causing schemes to be delayed or even cancelled.

But the effects are not universal. In oil-producing and exporting countries, higher prices can trigger a boom, translating into increased public spending and infrastructure investment. In oil-importing countries, the impact is often the opposite: higher inflation, higher interest rates and a slowdown in construction activity. The same global event can therefore create very different local realities.

Sanctions add another layer of complexity. For construction professionals, this means supply chains need to be monitored more closely than ever. Conflict in one region can affect projects far beyond its borders. Insurance premiums in neighbouring countries can become cost-prohibitive, and the reputational or commercial fallout from working with firms tied to certain regimes can be significant.

Construction is often a leading indicator of economic health. If activity starts to slow, the rest of the economy is rarely far behind.

A report by QBE Insurance Group, Trade Tensions and the Construction Sector, looks at how rising economic nationalism is affecting the industry:

In the construction sector, a surge in economic nationalism - characterised by trade barriers, protectionist policies and, particularly, new tariffs - presents the most immediate and significant challenge to businesses.

The report highlights how tariffs trigger retaliation, push up import costs and encourage stockpiling ahead of policy changes. This behaviour can overwhelm ports and logistics infrastructure, creating bottlenecks well before projects even reach site.

Whilst it’s unlikely we’ll return to building purely with local natural resources, supply chains are clearly becoming a more central consideration in construction planning. We may see a stronger shift towards materials that can be produced domestically or regionally, or an increased reliance on prefabrication, with components manufactured elsewhere and assembled on site. Either way, supply resilience is moving from an operational concern to a strategic one.

This all raises questions. Should projects now be designed around geopolitical risk as much as cost and programme? How much global exposure is too much? And what does resilience really mean in a construction context?

Leave a comment

Recent history gives us some clues. The Russia-Ukraine war has had a profound impact on global steel markets.

In 2022, output fell by an astonishing 70.7%, reaching only 6.3 million tons. The downward trend persisted into 2023, with production [totalling] 6 million tons. (Steel Radar)

Whilst there was a modest recovery in early 2025, further disruption is expected following the suspension of operations at Ukraine’s only supplier of coking coal. If this persists, steel production could fall far below earlier projections.

While Ukraine’s steel sector has suffered due to direct war-related destruction, Russia’s industry has been severely impacted by economic sanctions, export restrictions, and shifting trade dynamics. (Steel Radar)

Technology is no different. The construction sector increasingly depends on global tech supply chains, from sensors and servers to chips and memory. Recent increases in RAM prices are a reminder that digital infrastructure is just as exposed to geopolitical shocks as physical materials.

The lines between construction, technology and global trade are only getting tighter. And whilst it’s too early to see the full consequences of the latest geopolitical shifts, it’s clear that the ripple effects will reach projects, budgets and delivery models sooner rather than later.

What should the industry be paying closer attention to this year? And how do we build systems, digital or physical, that can cope with a world that feels increasingly unstable?

Leave a comment

Sources: Construction Management, Trade Tensions and the Construction Sector, Steel Radar, BBC, PCB Today, Evans Engineering and Construction, Recent Geopolitics of Construction - origins and consequences

Resources & Further Reading

• NISTA has published a new Programme and Project Data Standard, setting a common approach for how government project data is defined and managed. The aim is better data, smarter decisions and improved public-sector project delivery.

• A really interesting LinkedIn post on the Old London Bridge, once the longest inhabited bridge in Europe. Should we bring bridge living back?

• Another LinkedIn post, looks beyond AI and asks what else data centres are being used for, especially as streaming demand grows and the potential Netflix–Warner Bros deal.

Community Corner

Last year we hosted five meetups, exploring everything from designing for societal change to 4D, automation and robotics, and AI-driven project controls.

Alongside the talks, there were great conversations and connections made, which is really what this community is about.

Thank you for being part of it. We’re looking forward to the year ahead and continuing to build on this momentum.

We’re always looking for speakers, so if you’d like to get involved, or want to put a colleague or friend forward, please do. Our next meetup is on Thursday the 29th of January 2026, and we’re excited to kick off another year of thoughtful discussion and continue pushing the industry forward.

Wrap-Up

Thanks for reading this month’s edition of the Constructech.

Our aim is to make this the go-to monthly read for anyone working at the intersection of construction, technology, innovation and policy.

If you found this valuable, please:

• Forward it to a colleague

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Join us at the next Constructech meetup

See you next month,
The Constructech Team

Hello and welcome to the December 2025 edition of Constructech.

It has been an extremely busy month for anyone following the built environment. The Autumn Budget finally landed and, whilst much of it had already been announced, it does confirm the near-term direction for planning reform, major infrastructure, housing delivery and the UK’s long-term energy strategy.

When you add in all the bubble talk and the surreal flows of money circling between the major AI players, there is quite a lot to digest.

This newsletter is a two-way conversation, so as always, we are interested in your thoughts, opinions and takes.

Let’s get into it.

ConTech Monthly Roundup

1. AECOM buys Consigli: the consulting wars begin

AECOM has reportedly acquired Norwegian AI startup Consigli for around £297 million, integrating its “Autonomous Engineer” platform into its business.

Consigli’s tools automate early-stage design analysis, MEP load calculations, plant room layouts, tender documentation and large volumes of reporting. The company claims up to 90% reductions in engineering time.

AECOM and Consigli have already collaborated on several projects, but this acquisition represents a significant shift in the AEC tech landscape. Engineering companies traditionally licence software from vendors rather than buying the tech companies themselves.

This transition has the potential to truly change the game for both companies and bring us closer to vertical integration in the engineering consultancy space.

This move by AECOM is the start of the “consulting wars” and the first shot has been fired.

My prediction is that we’re going to see two battles: democratisation and differentiation. In short, does everyone get access to new tech, or does one company use new tech to create a monopoly? Only time will tell. (Greg Lawton)

Is this the future of engineering or the start of a consolidation wave?

Leave a comment

For a good deep dive, read “Why AECOM bought Consigli”.

Sources: Proptech Connect, AEC Mag, Greg Lawton, Last Week in ConTech

2. Are we in an AI bubble? And does it matter?

This month saw a lot of conversation around whether the AI sector is now firmly in bubble territory.

Sundar Pichai said while the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) investment had been an “extraordinary moment”, there was some “irrationality” in the current AI boom. (BBC)

The financial flows around the major AI players are not helping. In fact, the movement of money is starting to look increasingly circular.

Bloomberg reported one arrangement where Nvidia agreed to invest £76 billion into OpenAI to fund a massive data centre buildout. OpenAI then committed to filling those data centres with Nvidia chips. A day later OpenAI announced a separate £227 billion deal with Oracle to build more data centres, which will again be filled with Nvidia chips.

Never before has so much money been spent so rapidly on a technology that remains largely unproven as a source of profit. (Bloomberg)

Despite this, there is a strong argument that even if this is a bubble, it could be a productive one. The internet bubble burst, but the modern internet was the result. Google, Amazon and Microsoft all emerged from the chaos stronger. AI could follow the same pattern: short-term mess, long-term transformation.

The World Economic Forum has described this as part of a “triple bubble” across AI, crypto and global debt. Governments across the world now hold more than £76 trillion in public debt, with private debt even higher, and a significant amount of this is being funnelled into AI infrastructure.

The question is whether this creates real value or whether we are inflating balance sheets with very expensive GPU-powered optimism.

For construction and infrastructure, the implications are substantial. The data centre boom is creating pressure on land use, power availability, planning policy and grid capacity.

Are we building on solid ground, or are we replaying the early 2000s all over again?

Sources: BBC, World Economic Forum, Bloomberg, Bloomberg (Archive)

Video Explainers:

• How Money Works: If Not Bubble... Why Bubble Shaped?

• The Plain Bagel: Let’s Talk About the AI Bubble

Autumn 2025 Budget

The Budget was officially released on the 26th of November, although with a few hiccups. From an infrastructure perspective, very little was genuinely new. Most of it had already been announced in recent weeks, and the document largely serves to confirm and clarify the direction of travel for now. As with most government announcements, some people were pleased, most were not. The core problem remains the same:

The UK faces longstanding economic challenges. Productivity growth has been persistently weak, caused by historic under-investment and a series of economic shocks.

And as much as social media and the papers like to suggest otherwise, there is no easy solution here. There is a huge amount to balance and, inevitably, some things will have to get dropped. Policies are landing as compromises rather than perfect solutions.

Below are the big themes:

1. Planning reform and housing

The government is positioning planning reform as one of the main levers for growth. The Budget confirmed a package of measures intended to speed up decisions, reduce uncertainty and finally give developers something closer to predictable timelines.

The government is committed to delivering the most ambitious planning reforms in a generation...which set the foundations to unlock new housing and critical infrastructure delivery.

There will be clearer national guidance, updated frameworks for major schemes and additional support for under-resourced planning authorities. Faster decisions could genuinely help stabilise pipelines. However, as always, delivery depends on resourcing. The Budget tries to address this.

The government is investing £48 million of additional funding to boost capacity in the planning system. This includes recruiting an extra 350 planners...and creating a Planning Careers Hub.

In theory this brings total planned recruitment across the planning system to 1,400 by the end of the Parliament. Whether this is enough is an open question.

Housing policy sits alongside this. The government reaffirmed its focus on new towns, expanded devolved powers and greater flexibility for local authorities to approve grey belt schemes where land is of low environmental quality.

But concerns around affordability persist. The Home Builders Federation has already warned that:

Unless the government does something to boost affordability for first time buyers and cut taxes the target will be missed. (BBC)

There is no easy solution here. The UK faces decades-old structural issues around planning capacity, high land prices, weak productivity, underinvestment and political cycles that make long-term decisions difficult.

What do you think? The right first steps or heading down the wrong path?

Leave a comment

2. Infrastructure: the DLR extension and the Lower Thames Crossing

The DLR extension to Thamesmead and Beckton Riverside

The DLR extension to Thamesmead has finally been confirmed. It has been a very long time coming. Thamesmead currently has no rail station, with its nearest option being Abbey Wood, and it has arguably been one of the most poorly connected parts of London for half a century.

Thamesmead was first developed in the 1960s with the promise of major transport links that never materialised. Over the decades, proposals have come and gone: the Overground from Barking Riverside, various river crossings, different DLR routings, and successive mayoral visions. None made it across the line.

The approved route will:

[branch] off after Gallions Reach and before Beckton to a new station at Beckton Riverside before heading beneath the Thames to a station in North Thamesmead. (From The Murkey Depths)

Critics argue that a single-station extension is short-sighted because any future expansion will require expensive grade separation. Others argue that, after decades of broken promises, this is finally a meaningful step for one of London’s most underserved communities.

There is also legitimate frustration about slow development in the area:

The omens from Peabody in south Thamesmead are not good. They’ve been extremely sluggish and after 12 years in charge of various sites within close proximity to the Elizabeth line, completed just one plot of seven. Typifying the problem, one vacant plot just 200 metres from Abbey Wood station is not set to be developed until the late 2030s. (From The Murkey Depths)

Another question: is the DLR even the right choice? Some transport commentators favour the West London Orbital or the Bakerloo Line extension. But given the near-total lack of connectivity in Thamesmead compared to relatively better connected West London, the DLR case is compelling.

However, it has been reported that approving the DLR extension likely means:

The government will not be approving the Bakerloo line extension or West London Orbital railway any time soon. (IanVisits)

What do you think? If there can only be one, is the DLR extension the right call, or should the Bakerloo Line or West London Orbital have been prioritised?

Leave a comment

Sources: New Civil Engineer, From The Murky Depths, IanVisits Article 1, IanVisits Article 2, CityAM Commentary, TFL Map 1

Video Explainers:

• Jago Hazzard: Thamesmead: A Town for the Twenty-First Century

• Jago Hazzard: The Frustrating History of the Thamesmead Rail Link

The Lower Thames Crossing

The Budget also reconfirmed support for the Lower Thames Crossing, with an additional £900m for public works to move it forward.

This remains one of the most expensive road schemes in UK history, and the political narrative around it has shifted. It is now framed less as a congestion fix and more as a strategic, long-term piece of national resilience infrastructure.

The multi-billion pound project, a new road and tunnel linking Kent and Essex designed to increase capacity across the Thames, is intended to ease congestion at the existing Dartford Crossing and create a more direct freight route between the South East, the Midlands and the North. National Highways says the crossing will double road capacity across the river and support economic growth in the regions it serves. (New Civil Engineer)

The scheme will be delivered through the Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model, meaning:

The majority of its construction [will be] funded by the private sector…which will be repaid through tolls. (New Civil Engineer)

In the Budget announcement, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves said:

The Lower Thames Crossing would be the largest road building project for a generation, and a “key driver of growth”. (BBC)

Construction is expected to begin in 2026, with public funding now confirmed, on top of the £590m allocated in June.

For the sector, the interesting angles sit in digital construction, tunnelling logistics, carbon modelling and the broader question of whether mega-road projects align with the UK’s climate commitments.

Leave a comment

Sources: New Civil Engineer, BBC, Construction Enquirer, National Highways, National Highways Map

3. Clean energy and nuclear

The government is doubling down on nuclear as a central part of its long-term energy strategy. This includes commitments to large new plants, small modular reactors and new financing models that classify nuclear as “green” for the purposes of public investment.

This reinforces the government’s firm conviction that nuclear energy is green and a crucial part of making Britain a green energy superpower.

Is nuclear really “green” energy?

Leave a comment

There is now confirmed backing for:

• Wylfa as the site for the UK’s first small modular reactor, supporting around 3,000 jobs

• Significant funding commitments to support full-scale construction of Sizewell C

• Additional sites being assessed for future large-scale nuclear

This is a huge pipeline of technically demanding work and will require specialised engineering capability, strong supply chains and new skills pathways.

A future deep dive may be needed to properly explore the scale of what is happening in nuclear right now, because there is a significant shift.

4. AI, data centres and digital infrastructure

The Budget confirmed three new AI Growth Zones in the North East, North Wales and South Wales. These zones sit alongside wider measures to accelerate grid connections, support AI infrastructure and ease planning constraints.

The UK AI sector alone has grown to more than 5,800 companies, an 85% increase over the past 2 years.

The government will invest up to £2 billion in the public compute ecosystem, including £1 billion to scale the AI Research Resource and £750 million for a new national supercomputer in Edinburgh.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is also producing a strategic plan for data centres, which is overdue given the real land and power pressures emerging across the country.

The October AWS outage has not faded from memory, and concerns about reliance on a small number of overseas providers continue to shape the debate on resilience and digital sovereignty.

5. R&D and innovation

The Budget reconfirmed long-term funding for R&D, especially in:

• life sciences

• advanced manufacturing

• low-carbon technologies

These sectors will need lab-enabled facilities, high-spec retrofits and fast delivery models, which presents real opportunities for ConTech, robotics and Modern Methods of Construction (MMC).

Key announcements included:

• UKRI’s £500 million Missions Accelerator, including a mission to cut public-sector construction costs by 10%

• £130 million Innovate UK Growth Catalyst for scaling frontier companies

• New procurement innovation measures, including one to accelerate investment in clean concrete backed by Scottish Water, Ramboll, Derwent London, Atkins Realis UK, and Heathrow

6. Skills and investment

Skills remain a major constraint. Funding has been allocated for engineering apprenticeships, retrofit skills and digital capability, but demand continues to outpace supply.

Key measures:

• £725 million for the Growth and Skills Levy

• Full funding of SME apprenticeships for under-25s

• £182 million for engineering skills

• £187 million for digital skills

• New Technical Excellence Colleges in clean energy, digital, defence and advanced manufacturing

There were also several measures aimed at startups and investment:

• Expanded Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI) share option eligibility

• Increased Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trust (VCT) investment limits

• A new Call for Evidence on tax incentives for founders, closing February 2026

Useful to watch closely as these could shape early-stage funding for ConTech founders over the next decade.

But what do you think?

Is this Budget a game-changer, or just business as usual?

Is it broadly positive for construction and the built environment, or does it fall short?

And where do you see the biggest opportunities, or risks, as we move into 2026?

Leave a comment

Resources & Further Reading

• Why the design and construction industry needs an Uberfication moment

• TechFest 2025 - Check out the winners, some interesting companies doing cool thing, perfect for inspiration or a new job search?

Community Corner

Joao and Sergio gave a wonderful talk on Thursday (27/11/2025) on AI-Driven Project Controls in Construction. There were great questions and some excellent conversations afterwards. To get involved, come along to our next meetup on Thursday the 29th of January 2026. Speakers are still to be confirmed (and if you’re interested, drop us a line), but expect another great evening of fun, food and fantastic discussion.

Camilla Siggaard Andersen’s brilliant talk, Designing for Digital Disruption & Societal Change, is now live! Camilla explores how technology, data and human-centred design are reshaping our cities and shifting how we think about the built environment. It’s a thoughtful, future-focused look at digital transformation. Packed with insights for anyone interested in urban innovation, social value, or the changing role of design in society. Well worth a watch if you want to understand where our industry is headed.

Got an event you want to share? Drop us a message and if it fits we will include it in the next issue.

Wrap-Up

Thank you for reading this month’s edition of the Constructech newsletter.

Our aim is to make this the go-to monthly read for anyone working at the intersection of construction, technology, innovation and policy.

If you found this valuable, please:

• Forward it to a colleague

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Join us at the next Constructech meetup

See you in the new year,
The Constructech Team

Hello and welcome to the November 2025 edition of Constructech, and the first official issue!

It feels like so much has happened in just a few weeks: from government announcements and policy changes to a major outage that reminds us just how fragile our digital infrastructure can be.

We’re making this newsletter for the community, so we always want your thoughts, feedback and even your suggestions. This isn’t meant to be us talking at you, but a space to share ideas, stories and insights from across the built environment.

In future editions, you can expect occasional deep dives exploring key technologies or themes, but for this first one, we’re taking a broader look at what’s happening in construction and technology right now.

ConTech Monthly Roundup

1. Construction firms under pressure

There’s been a significant rise in the number of construction companies in “critical” financial distress. Begbies Traynor, an insolvency and business recovery consultancy, reported a 70% increase in the number of construction firms in its worst financial category over the past 12 months, with construction being the second-worst affected sector behind support services.

Data supplied to Construction News by Creditsafe shows that there were 223 construction company administrations in the first nine months of 2025, compared with 208 in the same period in 2024. (Construction News)

With the challenging economic climate, rising costs and skills gaps, the pressure is really starting to show.

Sources: Construction News, Construction Index.

2. Extraordinary emergency measures in London housing

The government is putting in special measures to boost housebuilding in London.

A new Homes for London policy note temporarily cuts affordable housing requirements from 35% to 20%, offers relief from the Community Infrastructure Levy, introduces a faster planning route, and gives the Mayor new powers to determine the outcome of applications over local boroughs for applications of more than 50 homes.

There’s also £322 million for a new City Hall Developer Investment Fund to accelerate delivery.

The Chartered Institute of Housing chief executive Gavin Smart said:

We know that London is currently experiencing acute and specific challenges with new developments and understand why the secretary of state has brought in these changes to support London. However, this must be a temporary measure and cannot set a precedent for affordable home targets more widely. (CIH)

Separately, the government announced £84 million to tackle homelessness over winter.

What do you think? Is this a necessary short-term fix or will it have long-lasting consequences for affordability in the capital? Do the two aims even work together? And if less money is coming through the Community Infrastructure Levy, does that mean fewer local infrastructure projects get built or just that they’ll take longer to happen?

Leave a comment

Sources: Construction Index, CIH response, Government Business, Property Industry Eye.

3. Life sciences investments and regional innovation funding

Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and Glasgow each received £50 million in funding for science and tech development. There’s also new funding flowing into MedTech and advanced manufacturing, both key crossover points with construction technology.

The life sciences boom is reshaping what and where we build. Demand for lab-enabled spaces is soaring, driven by breakthroughs in AI-led research, an ageing population and the growth of personalised medicine. However, most cities simply don’t have enough purpose-built facilities, meaning retrofits and office-to-lab conversions are becoming increasingly common.

This is where innovation within the construction sector comes in: from modular MEP systems and advanced materials that support heavier loads to higher ventilation requirements, helping meet stricter regulatory standards.

Retrofit projects also highlight the need for collaboration between designers, scientists and contractors, creating spaces where data-led coordination, digital twins and integrated project delivery can truly prove their value.

We explored many of these themes at our March meetup, looking at how clusters like Whitechapel and Canary Wharf are scaling up and what lessons they offer for those building the next generation of low-carbon, technically advanced spaces.

Source: GOV.UK, Government Business.

4. Stonehenge tunnel DCO revoked

The Transport Secretary has revoked the Development Consent Order (DCO) for the A303 Amesbury to Berwick Down scheme, the long-debated Stonehenge Tunnel.

This is now the second major DCO to be pulled this year (after the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham project). It’s another sign of just how fragile large infrastructure projects are under current economic and political pressures.

Sources: New Civil Engineer, The Planner.

5. AWS outage: how reliant are we really?

On the 20th of October, AWS went down, impacting more than 1,000 sites and services with it.

Amazon later said it stemmed from internal network errors that stopped systems connecting IP addresses but the bigger question is: how reliant have we become on just a handful of providers?

If in the future we move towards fully connected sites, IoT devices and real-time digital twins, what happens when those systems go dark? Will we have to down tools because of a similar outage? And depending on where you are in the world, should an event in Virginia, USA, have such a big effect on, say, cities like Newcastle, UK, or Addis Ababa, Ethiopia? Should we be looking for more local solutions and keeping our data within our borders? Or do the benefits outweigh the costs?

Leave a comment

Maybe this is the moment to think harder about redundancy, local data storage and more regionally distributed infrastructure.

At the same time, Amazon announced 14,000 job cuts, around 10% of its corporate workforce, as it shifts spending towards AI and chip development.

Sources: BBC, Reuters, Futurism.

6. OpenAI restructures into a for-profit

OpenAI has officially converted into a for-profit corporation, after a lot of legal back and forth, giving Microsoft around a 27% stake and the right to pursue AGI independently.

This is a notable development, but after all the internal upheaval and competing interests, it will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

Sources: The Guardian, BBC, OpenAI, Time.

7. ABB’s robotics division sold to SoftBank

ABB has sold its global robotics arm to SoftBank, as it looks to double down on its industrial automation and AI strategy.

In a press statement ABB CEO Morten Wierod said:

SoftBank will be an excellent new home for the business and its employees. ABB and SoftBank share the same perspective that the world is entering a new era of AI-based robotics and believe that the division and SoftBank’s robotics offering can best shape this era together. (ABB)

If you’re not familiar with SoftBank, they’re a Japanese investment giant behind many of the world’s biggest tech plays, worth knowing if you want to understand where funding flows next.

Podcast tip: the Good Bad Billionaire episode on Masayoshi Son (SoftBank’s founder) is a great listen.

Sources: ABB, AI Magazine, BBC Podcast.

Resources & Further Reading

• Tech firms bet on electrifying rail – BBC

• Time Risk Allowance vs QSRA — Clearing the Fog in NEC4 by Emre Gökyiğit (former Constructech speaker) – Read on LinkedIn

Community Insight

This LinkedIn post caught our attention:

Construction companies and software companies need to be partners, not a vendor relationship…

It’s a perspective that feels increasingly relevant as more tools enter the market.

Are we building real partnerships between tech and construction or just buying shiny point solutions?

Leave a comment

Community Corner

Constructech London Meetup - 27th of November

We’re back later this month with:

• João Dias – Co-Founder & CEO, Constructer

• Sergio Cavalaro – Strategic Advisor at Constructer & Professor at Loughborough University

Their talk, “From Fragmentation to Trust: AI-Driven Project Controls in Construction,” will explore how AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), can transform project management by connecting fragmented documentation and disconnected systems.

​Joao and Sergio will share how AI-driven integration across time, cost, and scope can help project teams detect risks earlier, make faster decisions, and build a single source of truth and trust in construction delivery.

It’s shaping up to be a really good session, don’t miss it!
Register for the event

Got an event you want to share? Drop us a message and if it fits we’ll include it in the next issue.

Wrap-Up

Thanks for reading the very first edition of the Constructech newsletter.

Our aim is to make this the go-to monthly read for anyone working at the intersection of construction, technology, innovation and policy.

If you found this valuable, please:

• Forward it to a colleague

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Join us at the next Constructech meetup

See you next month,
The Constructech Team

Expect:

• Deep dives into technologies and trends shaping construction.

• A curated news roundup of the most interesting stories.

• Insights and resources to help you connect the dots.

• Community updates, including highlights from our London meetup and YouTube channel.

The first newsletter will land in your inbox on Monday the 3rd of November, and then on the first Monday of each month after that.

Join the Community

If you’re in London, our in-person meetups are a great opportunity to meet professionals from construction, architecture, engineering, startups and tech.

📅 Next meetup: 27th of November
🔗 Register here

You can also catch up on past meetups on YouTube:

• AI in Healthcare and Construction - Niki breaks down artificial intelligence, how it’s transforming healthcare, and what it means for construction. Watch here

• Improving Site Productivity with Shape - Emre shares a case study of how he used the Shape app on a railway station project in London. Watch here

• Computational Design & Architecture - Gareth explores his journey through environmental science, robotics and digital fabrication, and how computational tools are revolutionising architecture. Watch here

• Better Decisions with Power BI - Hal gives an engaging dive into Power BI, with best practices for building reports that drive smarter decision-making. Watch here

There are several more recordings in the vault that will be released soon, so keep an eye out.

This newsletter is for anyone shaping the built environment. From AEC professionals adopting new technologies to tech/startup people looking to make an impact in construction.

Thanks for joining the community, see you in November 😊