Short answer: Eldar Sadikov says construction's IT spend has long been a few percent and labor productivity flat, but the data center boom's aggressive schedules are pushing contractors toward automation, physical AI, robots and prefabrication.
Watch this answer from Episode 33 (starts at 14:44) · Episode 33 notes and transcript
From Episode 33: AI Is Transforming Construction — We’re Entering a Golden Era, starting at 14:44.
Jordan Metzner [14:43]: Awesome, super cool. Just give us some maybe just as we kinda wrap up a little bit, but you know, where do you see the construction industry going and, how does how do you see AI having a larger impact on the industry overall?
Eldar Sadikov [14:53]: Yeah. I mean, construction is one of those industries that have been for the long, for a long time has been kind of lagging behind almost like. Like, when you think about technology adoption, like a lot of people like to quote this, like the IT spend of construction industry is so much lower. I think it's like a couple of percent compared to like health care or compared to retail, compared to banking where companies spend a lot more on IT to elevate the productivity of their labor. In construction, we haven't seen this. The productivity of labor did not go go up a whole lot in the past couple of decades, and technology spend was not very high as well. But we are seeing that the wheels are actually turning right now, like, literally in the past, I would say, five to seven years where more and more construction tech software companies are coming out and construction company and one of the biggest kickers almost like that happened to the industry was, one was COVID, but more more importantly is the data center boom. I think the data center boom that that we're seeing now is pushing construction industry to completely elevate its game because this companies like Google and Meta and Verizon, everybody else that's building the data centers, they come to these construction companies with these aggressive schedules and big jobs, that construction companies say, hey, we cannot be operating with the old means with you know, pen and paper methods or you know, data entry or doing those things, and they go and say we need a modern solution, we need a more automated means, the or physical AI, adding robots at the construction sites, doing a lot more prefabrication off-site.
Eldar Sadikov [16:33]: So those these massive jobs really pushing the construction companies to innovate and change, and that's why I believe we're we're sort of entering this golden era for construction technology, and AI is a big element of this component of this.
Jordan Metzner [16:49]: Oh, that's awesome. Okay. Well, honestly, it was really great to hear and just something I, know, don't really think about so much is kind of how AI implements industries that are so as maybe like, more hands on type of industry like construction. So it's really cool to hear that, these kind of more old school industries are starting to adopt AI. And obviously, huge opportunity, in the commercial space. And then as you mentioned, data centers is just all the rage right now. So super cool and really great learnings. Alright. Shall we jump into the news, Sam?
