"Have we seen the productivity benefit from that? I think it's reasonable to say that no, no, we haven't."
That is Ryan Maibach, President and CEO of Barton Malow, on the software stackhis own teams are carrying.
Roughly 40 different tools for a project manager. Around 35 for a superintendent.
He is not describing a company that failed to adopt technology. He is describing one that adopted a lot of it and is now counting the cost.
His point on this week's episode was not that the tools are bad. Several of themwork. It is that digging foundations, placing concrete and erecting steel have not fundamentally changed, while the process wrapped around those activities has grown exponentially more complex. He is seeing burnout, and he is not seeing the productivity.
Then he took it somewhere harder.
If a construction manager exists partly to help a client overcome informationasymmetry, and AI hands that client the same knowledge directly, what is the service actually worth?
Full episode out now. Link below.
#bricksandbytes #bricksbytes #aec #construction #constructiontech #ai #vc
Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:45 Quickfire: builder or technologist
04:41 What Barton Malow actually builds
07:28 Where the industry goes in the next ten years
09:53 Sponsors
12:54 Labour, cost and the technology question
13:22 Why the downturn worries him more than the labour shortage
16:37 Data centers, and the pushback from inside his own team
19:09 Steering a company when nobody knows what happens next
22:10 What construction executives should prioritise right now
24:42 The AI strategy paradox
30:07 Second brains, and what happens to the general contractor
33:58 40 tools per PM and no productivity to show for it
36:50 LIFTbuild: building a tower from the top down
41:39 What they got wrong trying to change the industry
45:45 Hyperscalers as clients
48:42 How he actually runs his week
52:43 What he screens for when hiring
56:38 Bias, and the leader he learned the most from
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