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Tracks = AI, Tech & Innovation
Tuesday, July 28, 10:45 AM - 11:05 AM
- Room: Innovation Stage | PCBC Exhibit Floor
The push toward high‑performance and Zero Energy Ready Homes is accelerating, but builders often struggle with practical integration, from design and trade coordination to quality assurance and customer education.
In this session, Megan Cordes from Beazer Homes will share a builder’s perspective on how to plan, construct, market, and support Zero Energy Ready Homes at scale. Steve Easley, an internationally recognized building science consultant, will draw on his experience performing thousands of jobsite quality surveys to highlight the construction defects he sees most often and the practical root causes behind them.
Together, they'll share proven, cost‑effective strategies to help builders increase...
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- Open to Registered Attendees
Tuesday, July 28, 11:15 AM - 11:45 AM
- Room: Innovation Stage | PCBC Exhibit Floor
Product innovation isn’t just about what’s new—it’s about what actually solves the problems builders are facing right now. From expectations around energy efficiency and resilience to rising costs and the rapid expansion of AI, the purchasing choices builders need to make are more critical than ever.
Curated from PCBC exhibitor insights and deep industry research, this session highlights the most relevant emerging products and technologies and organizes them around real builder decision points: how to build more efficiently, reduce costs, deliver energy performance and resilience, and better align with evolving buyer segments. From AI-driven tools to next-generation building systems, you’ll...
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- Open to Registered Attendees
Tuesday, July 28, 12:30 PM - 12:50 PM
- Room: Innovation Stage | PCBC Exhibit Floor
Every home gets built on a land decision: the market, timing, zoning, seller, and yield assumptions. Get those right and everything downstream has a chance. Get them wrong, and no amount of operational excellence recovers what was left on the table.
In today’s market defined by limited supply, increased competition, and fewer obvious opportunities, most builders face the same challenge. Yet some are consistently finding and winning deals their competitors see too late. The difference isn’t access, but how they evaluate opportunities and how quickly they move from signal to decision—and AI is now playing a critical role in that...
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- Open to Registered Attendees
Tuesday, July 28, 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
- Room: Innovation Stage | PCBC Exhibit Floor
Home technology is expanding across every part of the home, but most builders struggle to deliver it consistently, profitably, and at scale. The issue isn’t awareness of the products. It’s how they’re packaged, sold, and executed across trades and price points.
This session breaks down where home tech is gaining traction across outdoor living, security, AV, kitchens and more, and how top builders are structuring those offerings. Equally important, we'll focus on the innovative partnership models behind it: how to define scopes, separate design from installation, and align trades to deliver a more consistent, higher-quality result.
From standard and option...
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- Open to Registered Attendees
Tuesday, July 28, 1:45 PM - 2:05 PM
- Room: Innovation Stage | PCBC Exhibit Floor
In February 2025, BTF (in partnership with Leading Builders of America and Weyerhaeuser) released the “Blueprint for Upskilling the Homebuilding Workforce”—the first industry-wide study to map high-value technical skills across every major trade category and identify the emerging skills needed for new building technologies.
This session shares the study’s key data and practical recommendations: The specific technical skills that deliver the highest ROI for builders today, Emerging competencies required for modular, high-performance, and tech-enabled construction, Proven strategies for upskilling existing crews and integrating new hires faster, and How to expand the talent pipeline to underrepresented groups....
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- Open to Registered Attendees
Tuesday, July 28, 2:00 PM - 2:45 PM
Every builder makes the same series of decisions: Where do I build? What do I build? How do I price it? How do I sell it? Artificial Intelligence can now assist with every one, and in this session, you'll watch those decisions get made live on-stage using AI — a complete case study, market to move-in.
Starting with a real local market, we'll show how AI identified the target buyer, defined the right product and shaped the pricing strategy. Then, using AI design tools, we’ll modernize a dated plan to match today's buyer expectations from repositioning space to updating the elevation....
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- Max Pass Registration Required
Tuesday, July 28, 2:15 PM - 2:45 PM
- Room: Innovation Stage | PCBC Exhibit Floor
Labor shortages, housing affordability, climate risk, and regulatory pressures are forcing builders to rethink how homes get built. Technologies like 3D-printed concrete and on-site robotic manufacturing promise faster production, reduced labor dependence, and greater control. The question is not what’s possible, but what’s actually viable today.
This session combines a real-world case study of California’s first permitted 3D-printed housing community with emerging models for deployable robotic micro-factories producing timber panels on demand. You’ll not only learn about the technologies but also see how these approaches perform against real constraints including code, coordination, labor, insurance, and cost.
From execution challenges to production...
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- Open to Registered Attendees
Tuesday, July 28, 3:00 PM - 3:30 PM
- Room: Innovation Stage | PCBC Exhibit Floor
Design centers and model homes are no longer standalone experiences—they are critical drivers of buyer decisions, option revenue, and overall performance. Leading builders are rethinking both as integrated digital and physical environments that improve flow, clarify pricing, and build confidence throughout the selection process.
Join us to see what top design centers do differently, from team structure and roles to tools, training, and buyer journey design. You’ll also discover how model homes can better demonstrate options, compare base versus upgraded value, and drive attachment revenue.
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- Open to Registered Attendees
Wednesday, July 29, 11:15 AM - 11:45 AM
- Room: Innovation Stage | PCBC Exhibit Floor
In a market defined by uncertainty, rising costs, and shifting buyer demand, better decisions require better data—and faster access to it. Leading builders are moving beyond static reports, expensive consultants and outdated data to combine new tools for extracting external market and buyer intelligence with their own operational data to guide product, pricing, and investment decisions in real time.
This session explores how AI is changing how builders gather and validate buyer demand insights—from demographics and search behavior to channel performance—while also showing how to better leverage internal data across cost, market responsiveness, and operational efficiency.
Through real-world examples, including...
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- Open to Registered Attendees
Wednesday, July 29, 12:30 PM - 12:50 PM
- Room: Innovation Stage | PCBC Exhibit Floor
Where are digital tools actually improving performance across design, estimating, purchasing, and production, and where are they falling short? Builders are experimenting with new workflows, but results vary widely depending on how those tools are implemented and scaled.
In this roundtable, hear from digital solutions experts and fellow builders about how they are connecting design to estimating and purchasing, improving bidding and scheduling, and reducing rework across trade coordination....
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- Open to Registered Attendees
Wednesday, July 29, 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
- Room: Innovation Stage | PCBC Exhibit Floor
Artificial intelligence is flooding into residential construction, but many builders struggle to move from curiosity to real implementation—especially in pre-construction, where accuracy and trust are critical.
This session provides a practical, builder-focused playbook for implementing AI into pre-construction workflows without disrupting existing teams or processes. Drawing from real-world experience, the presentation breaks down which tasks benefit most from AI today, where human judgment must remain in control, and how builders can adopt AI incrementally to improve speed, consistency, and confidence.
Leave with a clear framework for evaluating AI tools, redesigning workflows, and avoiding common pitfalls that cause most AI initiatives to...
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- Open to Registered Attendees
Wednesday, July 29, 2:30 PM - 3:00 PM
- Room: Innovation Stage | PCBC Exhibit Floor
This session explores six practical ways builders can use AI right now (beyond just ChatGPT) to make marketing and sales smarter, faster, and more effective. From creating custom brochures to automating website updates and answering common community questions, see real no-code workflows you can implement without a tech team.
Learn how to train AI using your own content—floorplans, community details, and FAQs—so it reflects your business and supports consistent, accurate communication. We’ll also show how AI can enhance, not replace, the human element by handling repetitive parts of the sales process, freeing sales teams to do what they do best:...
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Educational Track:
- Open to Registered Attendees