Not quite the riddle of the Sphinx, but how do you build a career in digital construction?
How do you get into it in the first place? How do you make your mark when you’ve arrived? Should you embrace the squiggly career?

These questions and more will be tackled by three would-be Thebans: Asad Vatchha, a recently graduated apprentice at BAM UK & Ireland; Emine Taylor-Unlu, assistant information manager at Balfour Beatty VINCI and Digital Rising Star of the Year 2026; and a seasoned digital construction professional (TBA).

What do leading economists and management consultants say about the impact of AI on labour and capital substitution? How will this impact those of us working in built environment professions such as construction or asset management? How should we prepare personally, and within our organisations, to adapt to new ways of working in the AI age?

Industrialised construction is gaining attention, but its widespread adoption is still evolving. When does it move from an innovative practice to the norm? This session, backed by fresh global research from top construction markets, delves into how prefabrication, productisation, and DfMA are shifting from tactical tools to strategic solutions. We’ll explore the key indicators of systemic adoption, including early design choices, procurement alignment, digital enablement, and supply chain collaboration. Moving beyond isolated technologies, we’ll present industrialised construction as a comprehensive organisational and market transformation. Attendees will gain a maturity framework to assess their current position and discover what needs to change to scale effectively.

Join a fireside chat with Nick Leach, Director of Digital Construction at Sir Robert McAlpine, and Tommy Cooke, Regional Director, UK, Ireland and Nordics at Buildots, as they uncover the results from Sir Robert McAlpine’s leading use of AI on their construction projects.

Through their use of performance-driven construction management and automated AI insights, SRM is able to foresee risk, streamline workflows and deliver with better clarity, transparency and confidence. Listeners will have the opportunity to learn from SRM’s successes in combining efficient construction practices with data-driven insights, and how it’s positively impacted project delivery.

Listeners will also have the opportunity to ask questions during the dedicated Q&A portion at the end of the session.

What if your biggest cyber risk isn’t a hacker…
but your most helpful team member?

In today’s digital construction projects, we collaborate at speed, share information freely, and trust our partners to keep work moving. And that’s exactly the problem.

This Inspire Stage session flips the cyber conversation on its head. Instead of firewalls, threats and technical jargon, it explores cyber risk as a human challenge, shaped by trust, urgency, good intentions and everyday behaviour on fast-moving projects.

You’ll discover why most cyber incidents don’t begin with technology failing, but with people doing what they’re paid to do: responding quickly, reusing information, sharing access and solving problems under pressure.

Drawing on behavioural economics, nudge theory and lessons from high-trust industries like aviation, healthcare and finance, this talk reveals what really drives decision-making and why awareness alone rarely changes behaviour.

Delivered with clarity, real-world stories and a dash of Yorkshire humour, Gary Hibberd makes cyber risk relatable, relevant and surprisingly empowering.

You’ll leave with a fresh mindset, practical insights you can apply immediately, and a new way to influence behaviour and reduce risk without slowing collaboration or adding complexity.

Cyber risk is no longer an IT issue.
It’s a leadership one.

Brent has suffered a number of episodes of anxiety and depression in his 54-year life but is dedicated to sharing his experience to help others and is a passionate advocate for suicide prevention.

In this interactive session, Michael Neidow challenges common assumptions through live audience voting and executive insight. Focused on margin, leadership accountability and operational readiness, this session helps senior decision-makers separate commercial advantage from industry noise.

Most ERP projects in construction start with optimism. Many end with compromise.

In this bold summit keynote, we reveal 10 hard truths about finance transformation drawn from hundreds of real-world implementations. Discover why over-customisation destroys ROI, why timing matters more than features, and why technology alone never fixes broken processes.

If you are planning finance system change, this session could save you time, money, and credibility.

Based on the hit TV show “Would I Lie to You”, Vicki and Dan will present each other with AI-related scenarios to attempt to sort fact from fiction!

This light-hearted session covers the risks associated with the misuse of AI, drawing on news stories from the built environment and beyond.

Most construction companies are being told they need an AI strategy. Most do not. They need a starting point and a step-by-step approach.

The bottleneck is not strategy; it is execution. Across construction projects and AI deployments in heavy industry, AI rarely fails because the technology is not good enough. It fails because no one captured the business logic, defined the workflow it had to fit into, or prepared the people who had to use it, through education and trust-building.

This session is a working view of what is actually being deployed in industrial AI today, the construction-relevant places to start (progress tracking, admin automation, defect spotting, risk reduction), and the operational conditions that make it work inside real construction workflows.

The opportunity for AI to transform construction is real: More resilient businesses, more efficient delivery. This session is about where to start, and why.

Most AI sessions focus on efficiency. This one focuses on survival.

As AI-enabled coordination platforms evolve, connecting subcontractors, managing documentation, predicting risk and optimising workflows, the fundamental question for main contractors isn’t ‘How do we use AI?’

It’s: Why will clients still need us?

This session explores how platform disintermediation could reshape procurement, margins and market power. Drawing on recent strategic acquisitions in the sector, it challenges leaders to think beyond automating existing processes and instead examine where value is moving in the construction ecosystem.

Attendees will learn:

Why efficiency without strategic repositioning accelerates commoditisation.
How to distinguish optimisation from long-term competitive positioning.
What practical leadership decisions preserve optionality in a rapidly shifting market.

This is a board-level discussion about business models, risk, and value capture in 2030, not a technical walkthrough of AI tools.

If coordination becomes automated and transparent, what exactly are clients paying you for?

Learn how the WorldSkills “BIM Olympics” is shaping the next generation of digital construction talent.

In this session, you’ll hear first-hand how competition drives skill development, confidence, and collaboration. Join us for an inside look at what it takes to train for – and compete in – the global stage of digital construction.

In this session, Sam Stacey introduces the central ideas behind Brunel’s Bees, a systems-level exploration of why progress in the built environment fails to compound.

Moving beyond familiar explanations such as skills shortages or lack of innovation, the session focuses on learning, memory and stewardship – and why these become decisive once technology and capital are no longer scarce. The session offers attendees a clearer diagnosis of systemic failure, a new language for discussing responsibility and value, and fresh insight into what it would take for improvement to endure.

AI is no longer optional for construction, but delivering real value is harder than it looks.

Hosted by 4PS by Hilti, this fast-paced fireside chat brings together leaders from VolkerWessels, Microsoft, and Grant Thornton, offering industry, technology, and advisory perspectives. This session cuts through the noise to explore what is actually working with AI in construction, what is holding organisations back, and how leaders can move from experimentation to real, scalable impact.

You are paying millions to design and construct a building, so why don’t you want to own the project data? This is the ultimate digital paradox.

Why do building owners leave their Common Data Environment (CDE) exclusively in the hands of the supply chain? Is it because hosting it is technically too hard, restricted by contractual complexities, or simply because they don’t see the value in data?

Whether you are in the early design phase, midway through construction, or navigating final handover, you might suddenly find yourself with no access to your project’s information. This can happen due to contractual disputes or insolvencies. When this scenario happens, do you know who controls your drawings, compliance evidence, and financial reports?

“The digital paradox” explores the nightmare scenario of losing access to your project’s critical information because it is locked away in a CDE you have no right to access.
We will unpack the true financial cost for clients and explore how forward-thinking, major portfolio owners like The Crown Estate and NHS Scotland mandate client-owned (or shared ownership) CDEs from day one. Attendees will learn actionable strategies to take direct ownership of their digital assets and solve the digital paradox for good.

Discover how the Canary Wharf Group digital construction team transformed the Wood Wharf and 1 North Quay developments using cutting-edge digital tools and AI-driven workflows. Learn practical strategies to boost efficiency, collaboration, and safety on complex projects, and gain actionable insights to embed technology into everyday workflows for lasting results. Walk away ready to transform how you plan, manage, and deliver projects.

We talk about transforming the built environment, but who gets to shape that future, and who is still on the outside looking in?

In this Inspire Stage session, the founder of We Build Too shares an experience-driven perspective on digital transformation, culture change and inclusion in construction. You’ll hear about women who find their way into the industry, love the work, but often remain invisible in data, strategy and day-to-day decision-making. Often leading to them leaving, disengaging and disguising opportunities from the next generation.

Connecting construction’s challenges to wider debates about AI, bias and psychological safety, the session asks what happens when we design systems and tools around an unspoken “default” worker and what we could gain by changing that. It will introduce We Build Too’s early-stage work to create clearer pathways, community and evidence for women in construction, and invite delegates to see inclusion as a core part of innovation, not a side project.

You’ll leave with fresh questions, practical ideas and a renewed sense of what’s possible when we rethink who we build for, and with. As well as the impact that could have on efficiency, profitability and innovation.

SmartEye, developed by the Development Bureau of the Government of Hong Kong SAR, offers the first-of-its-kind digital co-supervision platform for managing a broad variety of construction works. Empowered by its patented innovation including the groundbreaking 4D LiDAR technology with an AI-driven dashboard, this innovative system provides a tailor-made solution for all-weather, real-time, round-the-clock, remote supervision of construction projects. It redefines the basics of site supervision by transforming traditional practices into a fully digital process.

SmartEye is designed for joint use by clients, consultants and contractors, allowing co-supervision of construction projects by these parties and facilitating “early detection, early follow-up and early resolution” of on-site issues. It helps augment the effectiveness and efficiency of site supervision by assisting users in identifying and prioritising areas for detailed site inspection. The concept of co-supervision aligns well with the collaborative approach to managing construction contracts. The system is well suited for supervising construction works including site formation, deep excavation, foundation construction and building works.

Every infrastructure project starts with land, and land always comes with people. Yet as projects become more digitised, it’s easier than ever for the people most affected by infrastructure decisions to slip out of view. Digital transformation doesn’t reduce human responsibility, it increases it.

This session brings together industry experience from Mott MacDonald alongside digital delivery expertise from Mettle Studio to explore a simple but critical principle: if potential impact on land is in the system, potential impact on people must be too.

Through real project examples, we’ll consider paradoxes of increased digital tooling, including balancing improved engagement with efficient decision making and compliance. If digital and AI can optimise only what it can “see”, where does it quietly turn real human impact into edge cases? When reputation, compliance and project momentum are on the line, these blind spots matter.

We’ll explore a practical lens to identify who is overlooked by digital processes, the risks this creates, and de-risking next steps. We’ll consider how projects that actively consider human impact early achieve smoother delivery, better stakeholder outcomes, and stronger returns on digital investment. Digital tools don’t make decisions for us – they make some decisions easier, and others harder to see.

AI tools are often promoted as assistants for everyday admin tasks – but their real value extends far beyond that.

In this session, I’ll share how I moved from relying solely on software applications to using Python and AI to directly manipulate and extract data from IFC models. While exploring how IFC files are structured, I realised that because they’re text-based, they can be reshaped and interrogated with code – often more flexibly and efficiently than traditional software allows.

Coming from a non-developer background, coding once felt daunting. But AI changed that. By using AI not just to draft emails or summarise documents, but to help me understand, write, and refine Python scripts, I found an accessible path into data-driven automation. I began with simple, testable scripts: restructuring IFC data to match internal standards, extracting model information, and exporting it into Excel. These were tasks I used to perform through multiple software tools – now automated, repeatable, and tailored to my workflow.

This session will explore that journey and show how AI can empower anyone, regardless of coding experience, to build custom data-manipulation processes. Attendees will learn how combining AI assistance with Python automation can unlock new levels of efficiency, accuracy, and control in model-based workflows.

BIM is often discussed as a single tool or a standalone process, but in reality, it works more like a sum of different parts that only function properly when working together. And given that the person who owns the parts knows how to put them together!

This Women in BIM panel discussion will explore how digital tools, data inputs, people and workflows come together throughout the design process, and where BIM sits within that ecosystem.

Using the idea of “HEY BIM” as a digital assistant, the discussion asks whether BIM could (or should) act like Siri, Google, or Alexa – a central point of access for information, coordination and decision-making. Panellists will unpack how BIM supports design thinking, collaboration and information flow, where expectations currently exceed reality and what needs to evolve for BIM to become more intuitive, responsive and user-friendly.