The Way We’ll Build Next: AI & the End of Chain Drain

Description

More than $160 billion in venture capital has poured into “proptech” and “contech” over the past decade. Construction productivity has barely budged. Why? Chain drain.

Homebuilding is an intricate chain of players and processes, but progress rarely moves cleanly from one link to the next. At every handoff between owners, architects, engineers, contractors, and trades, decisions get revisited, plans reworked, and critical information lost in a fog of change orders, RFIs, and fragmented communication. Those small breakdowns don’t just cause friction; they compound into meaningful losses of time, money, and attention.

Enter AI. Where past innovation focused on optimizing individual steps, AI is fundamentally redefining how those steps connect and operate—collapsing handoffs, preserving intent across phases, and eliminating much of the rework you’ve always assumed is part of the job. From site selection and feasibility analysis to design, engineering, and construction, a new generation of builders is already applying it, treating homes less like one-off projects and more like products that get smarter and more efficient with every unit delivered.

In this opening keynote, Greg Lindsay—futurist, technology strategist, and leading voice on AI’s impact on the built environment—draws on deep research and firsthand interviews with leading builders, technologists, and startups to separate where AI is delivering real results from where it remains hype. Leave with a clear picture of where the chain is breaking, where AI can close the gaps, and what it takes to apply it with the discipline required to drive meaningful operational change.

Interest

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