Bricks And Bytes Global CTO: “AI Met Construction Where It Already Was - And Everything Changed” | Alain Waha, Buro Happold
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Mar 10, 2026 Alain Waha, CTO at Buro Happold — an engineering leader driving AI transformation and design technology. He talks about AI arriving at a tipping point for construction. Conversations cover solving the Tower of Babel of AEC data, how AI augments engineers’ time and work, the business choice between cost competition or value, and the gap of foundational physical AI models.
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LLMs Finally Meet Construction Where It Lives
- Large language models solve the AEC Tower of Babel by reading drawings, contracts and PDFs where firms already operate without forcing a single ontology.
- Alain notes agents can now find mismatched specs and drawings across distributed temporary project coalitions, saving hours of manual reconciliation.
Train People To Be Augmented Not Replaced
- Cultivate a culture of experimentation and teach staff to be augmented by technology rather than replaced by it.
- Alain recommends investing in training so humans can validate probabilistic AI outputs and use saved time to improve decision quality.
Saved Time Should Buy Deeper Thinking
- AI primarily gives engineers back time to deeply understand problems, shifting effort from production to higher-quality design.
- Alain cites Einstein's 59/1 hour idea: with more time engineers should produce more considered, better answers.