A keynote on artificial intelligence for the building, civil engineering and infrastructure sectors. Romain Rissoan shows how AI accelerates design, makes sites safer, sharpens estimates and relieves overstretched support functions.
Tight margins, labour shortages, stricter environmental and safety requirements, regulatory complexity: the construction sector is seeking productivity gains wherever it can find them. After years of lagging behind on digitalisation, the industry is now accelerating — and artificial intelligence, combined with BIM and the exploitation of site data, is opening up new levers all the way from design to handover, without overlooking the support functions that are so often neglected.
This AI keynote dedicated to construction illustrates proven use cases with real examples: plan and BIM model analysis, cost estimation and tendering, site monitoring and safety, plant maintenance. Romain Rissoan also demystifies generative AI for design, procurement and administrative functions — responding to tenders, drafting technical statements, managing documentation — where the gains are immediate and require no specialist equipment whatsoever.
The talk is pitched at senior leaders and site directors as well as quantity surveyors, design offices and support teams. The aim is to offer a realistic and accessible perspective: what is mature today, what requires BIM or better-structured data, and how companies of every size — from a sole trader to a mid-sized contractor — can benefit from AI without overhauling their organisation overnight.
Use cases spanning design to on-site delivery.
AI accelerates design studies and automatically flags inconsistencies, conflicts and deviations in plans and BIM models. Design offices save time, improve the reliability of their deliverables and catch problems upstream that would cost far more to resolve once work is under way — a gain in quality as much as productivity. The technology handles the checks; engineers focus on engineering.
Drawing on take-off data, price libraries and historical records, AI speeds up and sharpens cost estimates and tender responses. Firms can bid for more contracts, protect their margins and reduce the risk of omissions or under-pricing — in an exercise where accuracy directly determines whether a project is profitable. More bids submitted with greater confidence, at a fraction of the effort.
By analysing site imagery, photographs and operational data, AI helps track progress, compare actual versus planned and detect risk situations — missing PPE, hazardous zones, unsafe conditions. Safety improves, project control becomes more precise, and site managers have an objective, regular picture of every site they oversee.
Generative AI handles documents, contracts, meeting minutes and technical statements: drafting, summarising, searching through contract documents, composing tender responses. These use cases — accessible without BIM or any specialist kit — deliver rapid gains for design, procurement and administrative teams that are routinely overwhelmed by documentary workloads.
By exploiting operational data from plant and machinery, AI anticipates breakdowns and servicing needs before a failure brings a site to a halt. Fleet availability improves, maintenance costs become more predictable, and sites avoid the costly delays that come from a critical machine being out of action at the worst possible moment.
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