May 4-6, 2026
Hilton San Francisco Union Square
2026 FutureTech Agenda
Schedule Subject to Change
Monday, May 4, 2026
6:00 PM - 7:00
Registration Opens
6:00 PM - 7:00
Welcome Reception
Sponsored by
Grand Ballroom A
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
7:30 AM - 8:30
Networking Breakfast
Exhibit Hall Open
7:30 AM - 6:30 PM
Grand Ballroom A
8:30 - 8:40
Welcome Remarks
Scott Seltz, Publisher - Engineering News- Record (ENR)
Executive Director - BNP Media Construction Sector
Scott Blair, Editor-In-Chief, Engineering News-Record
Grand Ballroom B
8:40 - 9:30
Opening Keynote Construction Rx: Diagnose, Cure Friction, Automate
Alan Espinoza, Founder and CEO, Reconstructive AI
Grand Ballroom B
9:30 - 10:15
Panel1 The Transformative Power of Data: How Disciplined Data Capture and Analysis Can Turn Insight Into Operational Excellence
Marcela Guevara, VDC Lead, Hensel PhelpsBo Snyder, National Construction Technology Team, DPR Construction
Jon Fingland, Vice President & Category General Mananger, Trimble
Moderator: Heather Adkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Trimble
Sponsored by
Grand Ballroom B
10:15 - 10:45
Morning Networking Break in Exhibit Hall
Sponsored by
Grand Ballroom A
10:45 - 11:20
Keynote The Three Faces of ConAI
Tim Negris, Executive Vice President, MOCA Systems Inc.
Grand Ballroom B
11:20 - 11:40
Presentation A.I. and Jobsite Wearables:
Reimagining Construction Intelligence
Michael Colapietro, CEO & Co-founder, Smartapp.comⓇ
Aasawari Kakade
Vice President, Partnerships, Smartapp.comⓇ
Thai Nguyen, Head of Venture and Innovation, Diverge - a Hensel Phelps Company
Sponsored by
Grand Ballroom B
11:50 - 12:30 PM
Breakout Session 1Super Vision: A New Tool For Complex Design Review
Shawn P.C. Poore, Regional Vice President, Construction, Mill Creek Residential
Paul Zeckser, Co-founder and CEO, LightTable
Ben Waters Co-founder and Head of Growth, LightTable
Moderator: Scott Blair Editor-in-Chief, Engineering News-Record
Grand Ballroom B
Breakout Session 2Your Robotic Teammate: Getting the Most Out of Automated Reality Capture
Trevor Owen, Reality Capture Manager, Rogers O'Brien Construction
Imperial A
12:30 - 1:30
Networking Lunch
Yosemite
1:30 - 2:10
Breakout Session 3Overhead Inspectors: Tight Collaboration With Tech Developers Helps Turn Trials Into Enterprise Assets
Siddharth Kothari, Director of Digital Engineering, Suffolk Construction
Aaron Yohnke, Vice President of Corporate and Integrated Construction Services, PCL Construction
Matt Daly, Chief Marketing Officer, DroneDeploy; Former Co-founder and CEO of StructionSite
Moderator: Aileen Cho, Deputy Editor, Infrastructure, Engineering News-Record
Grand Ballroom B
Breakout Session 4Clean Data Before AI: How Builders Can Finally Trust Their Information
Tim Wensing, President, CMC Construction
Lufan Wang, Assistant Teaching Professor, Florida International University
Imperial A
2:20 - 3:00
Breakout Session 5Evolving Standard of Care: How AI Adoption Has Become a Risk Management Imperative for AEC
Tom Scarangello, Managing Principal and Senior Advisor, Thornton Tomasetti, and Founding Member, AEC Angels
Amir Ganaba, Managing Director & Partner, Boston Consulting Group, (BCG)
Richard Volack, Partner & Chair, Cybersecurity & Data Privacy Practice, Peckar & Abramson
Moderator: Denis Serkin, Partner, Peckar & Abramson
Grand Ballroom B
Breakout Session 6From Red Tape to Real Time: AI Acceleration in High-Stakes Regulatory Reviews
Stuart Lacey, Founder and CEO, Labrynth AI
Eileen London, Senior Environmental Licensing Manager, Deep Fission
Imperial A
3:00 - 3:30
Networking Break in Exhibit Hall
Sponsored by
Grand Ballroom A
3:30 - 4:10
PanelEvaluating AI Agents: Targeting the Real Pain Points of Construction
David Letteer, Director of Artificial Intelligence, Hensel Phelps
Rohan Jawali, Co-founder and CEO, Joist AI
Rico Bertucci, Vice President, Strategy & AI Program Lead, McCarthy Holdings Inc.
Moderator: Jeff Rubenstone, Deputy Editor, News, Engineering News-Record
Grand Ballroom B
4:10 - 4:30
PresentationSolving Jobsite Information Gaps with SiteMap: Your As-Builts, Dig Board, and Subsurface Augmented Reality at Your Fingertips
Dave Mulcahey, Vice Presient, Market Sales, GPRS
Dustin Snavely, Vice President National Sales, GPRS
Sponsored by
Grand Ballroom B
4:30 - 5:00
KeynoteWhat It Takes to Go Big With 3D-Printed Concrete Structures
Zachary Mannheimer, Founder & Chairman, Alquist 3D
Grand Ballroom B
5:00 - 5:30
VCs and Construction Tech
Daniel Laboe, CFA - Principal, Nymbl Ventures
Grand Ballroom B
5:30 - 6:30
Networking Reception on Exhibit Hall Floor
Sponsored by
Grand Ballroom A
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
7:30AM - 8:30
Networking Breakfast in Exhibit Hall
Grand Ballroom A
8:30 - 8:35
Wednesday Welcome Remarks
Scott Seltz, Publisher - Engineering News- Record (ENR)
Grand Ballroom B
8:35 - 9:15
Keynote Strategizing Robotics: How Contractors are Shaping the Future of Autonomous Construction
Rachael Ferrera, Manager of Investments and Ideation, Zachry Construction Corp.
Boris Sofman, CEO, Bedrock Robotics
Ryan Gibson, Partner, Eclipse
Grand Ballroom B
9:15 - 10:00
Panel Fortune Tellers: How the Data Universe Can Unveil - And Even Predict - Business Opportunities
Charles Shi, Co-founder/Business Lead, Airys Technologies, Inc.
Saurabh Mishra, Founder and CEO, Taiyō.AI
Moderator: Jeff Yoders, Senior Editor, Technology, Equipment, Products; Technology Equipment Engineering News-Record
Grand Ballroom B
10:00 - 10:30
Morning Networking Break in Exhibit Hall
Grand Ballroom A
10:30 - 11:00
Keynote The Dodge Perspective
Steve Jones, Senior Director, Industry Insights, Dodge Construction Network
Grand Ballroom B
11:00 - 11:50
Panel Scaling Up with Reality Capture Implementation: Creating the Operational Universe
Carey McIlrath, Director of VDC, The Christman Company
Igor Starkov, Founder and CEO, Teleworker AI
Jeevan Kalanithi, Co-founder and CEO, OpenSpace
Moderator: Steve Jones, Senior Director, Industry Insights Research, Dodge Construction Network
Grand Ballroom B
11:50 - 12:35 PM
Keynote AI, Safety and Risk
Tim Osborne, Senior Director Safety and Health - Corporate, CRH Americas Materials
Epan Wu, Corporate Vice President, VIA Technologies, Inc.
Moderator: Aileen Cho, Deputy Editor, Infrastructure, Engineering News-Record
Sponsored by
Grand Ballroom B
12:35 - 12:45
Closing Remarks
Grand Ballroom B
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Construction Rx: Diagnose, Cure Friction, Automate
Construction has fumbled technology adoption for decades, and, with the integration of artificial intelligence, it's on track to do it again. As found in a recently published report from MIT, 95% of AI implementations are failing to deliver long-term value. To our speaker, though, that begs the question: is AI failing, or is implementation? Alan Espinoza believes the problem is the latter, and that implementation needs to be approached differently to achieve better results. Throughout his career Alan Espinoza has been deeply involved in all sides of the tech adoption process, and now he will offer a strategy to help the construction industry seize the great potential that AI, and other properly applied new technologies, represent, and finally break away from the calcified practices holding it back.
Speaker
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The Three Faces of ConAI
The term "Artificial Intelligence" was coined in 1956 by John McCarthy, an assistant professor at Dartmouth College, in a proposal for a summer workshop. He gathered three other scientists and mathematicians for a two-month brainstorming session that laid the foundations for AI as an academic field and launched the computing revolution that continues gathering momentum today. In the years since, as computing power has increased one trillion-fold and processing costs have dropped from millions, to pennies, each wave of improved price-performance and coding has enabled an ever-widening array of applications across all industries, including AEC. But while ChatGPT and other “generative AI” algorithms now dominate the discussion and show great promise, they significantly lag other, more mature AI technologies in their potential to deliver sustained, substantial ROI for construction. This presentation will examine three of them -- Action Prescription, Event Prediction, and Information Translation -- focusing on what they do, how they can be used, and the benefits and risks they can bring, along with examples of all three in practice and a few words of advice to implementers.
Speaker
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Strategizing Robotics: How Contractors are Shaping the Future of Autonomous Construction
Rachael Ferrera, Manager of Investments and Ideation at Zachry Construction, will share how Zachry evaluates, tests, and invests in emerging technologies through hands-on field deployments. She'll be joined by Bedrock Robotics CEO Boris Sofman, whose team is applying proven autonomy approaches from Waymo to construction equipment currently being tested on Zachry's Texas projects, and Ryan Gibson, a partner at Eclipse Ventures, who is the investor and connector who brought Zachry and Bedrock together after recognizing the alignment between contractor needs and Bedrock's technical capabilities. Together, they’ll discuss how new technology can unfold and flow into construction, while unpacking, in this case, the collaboration between contractor, tech innovators, and investors that is accelerating the development of autonomous heavy equipment and turning early prototypes into practical, scalable solutions.
Speakers
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The Dodge Perspective
The construction industry is rapidly evolving, driven by new technologies, workforce issues, market dynamics and advances in project delivery processes. Dodge's Industry Insights team studies these trends, and Steve Jones will share an economic forecast and highlights from their recent research projects.
Speaker
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AI, Safety and Risk
As senior director of safety and health at CRH Americas Materials, Inc., one of North America’s largest suppliers of aggregates, cement, concrete and paving materials, as well as of plants and trucks for hot mix asphalt and Ready-mix, Tim Osborne has been dismayed at his company’s failure to prevent fatal or life-altering accidents at the interface between workers and moving vehicles, either involving CRH’s own vast fleet, or the even larger armadas of contract operators. Osborne says the company has piloted and tested many “solutions,” but has concluded that it would be better to build its own system of danger sensors and warning devices. So CRH collaborated with VIA Technologies to refine a scalable, AI-assisted, hardware-agnostic safety package that can be retrofitted to any existing equipment. It can distinguish workers from objects in the danger zone, sounds distinctive alarms, and is currently testing active intervention via auto-braking. “I believe their product saves lives,” Osborne says. Join Osborne and Epan Wu, Corporate Vice President at VIA Technologies Inc., for a discussion on building a collaborative technology partnership, the change-management of rolling out AI-empowered safety tools, and capturing near-miss data to fundamentally shift corporate safety culture.
Speaker
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What It Takes to Go Big With 3D-Printed Concrete Structures
3D-printed concrete technology has advanced by leaps and bounds in the last decade, taking a niche building method into wider adoption and large-scale commercial and residential projects. Zachary Mannheimer, founder of 3D-printed concrete pioneering firm Alquist 3D, will show how this technology went from impressive bench tests to his company’s recent work 3D printing entire commercial buildings for Walmart. 3D printed concrete has come has come a long way, and we’ll take a look at where it is going, from new technology innovations to workforce development and regulations.
Speaker
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VCs and Construction Tech
This presentation offers a data-driven view of how venture capital, corporate innovation, and emerging technology for construction are converging, often in uneven and counterintuitive ways. Drawing on years of experience analyzing real-time market intelligence across thousands of startups and investment transactions, this speaker will explore where capital is flowing, which technologies are translating into operational value, and why many well-funded innovations struggle to gain traction. The session unpacks the forces shaping construction’s technology uptake and lagging digital transformation – as well as the advantages that playing digital catch-up may bring. It will discuss the disconnect between technological capability and organizational readiness, and the critical roles incentives and risk allocation play in determining whether innovation stalls or succeeds.
Speaker
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Fortune Tellers: How the Data Universe Can Unveil - And Even Predict - Business Opportunities
The creation of information has always been a byproduct of human activity, but now the information is being captured and connected on an enormous scale enabling it to be analyzed for insights not only into what we are doing now, but significantly, what we are likely to do in the future. This panel features two business plays on that. One Introduces Airys, an AI system launched from Stanford research that turns scattered government data — from city council packets to grant awards — into a predictive view of upcoming infrastructure work, before the RFPs go out. The other will showcase Taiyō.AI, which is a platform for digging into what its founder calls "Cognitive Infrastructure." Rather than being a predictive tool, Taiyō.AI ferrets out the world’s infrastructure construction opportunities on offer now. It constantly scans thousands of data resources around the globe to deliver, on request, deep market intelligence, along with location- and project-specific risk advisories to consider when surveying the world's project pipeline. Its results are smart, detailed, and well-sourced, and they receive high marks for reliability from users.
Speakers
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Your Robotic Teammate: Getting the Most Out of Automated Reality Capture
What if project documentation could simply take care of itself? It’s a direct question, and the reality capture team at Rogers-O’Brien Construction think they’re getting close to answering it. The contractor has invested directly in its own autonomous quadruped site documentation robot, called Mac, which is transforming how it performs reality capture on its jobsites. Outfitted with a 360° camera, LiDAR scanner, and an onboard NVIDIA Jetson computer, Mac is capable of navigating complex environments and delivering reliable, consistent streams of data without constant human supervision. What once required manual labor by field staff can now be performed autonomously, day after day, with repeatable precision. But the answer to automated site documentation is more than just a robot (or two), and R-O reality capture manager Trevor Owen will explore the full technology stack that is able to to take this consistent, comprehensive data stream and turn it into actionable intelligence even the most tech-averse field employee can use. See up close how a successful reality capture program works to improve operations, and what it takes to get the most out of site documentation.
Speakers
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From Red Tape to Real Time: AI Acceleration in High-Stakes Regulatory Reviews
Construction’s next productivity breakthrough may come from regulatory modernization. Permitting delays that grow while examiners pick through plans and cycle questions back and forth inevitably drag down projects and construction efficiency. But now a fast-growing AI Services Platform, Labyrnth AI, is stepping up with an AI-empowered, agentic code compliance assistant to help designers and contractors submit “Ready to Approve 1st Time” plans and applications that are tested and validated until they check all the boxes of applicable regulations and codes. We will hear from permitting officials of a California city who like the efficiency that the system helps code officials achieve, as well as the luster it gives municipality as a place where it's easier to get business done. And we will also hear from Deep Fission Energy, which has broken ground in Kansas on its first pilot installation of a modular nuclear reactor generator a mile underground. Deep Fission is using Labyrnth to help it navigate code and environmental reviews as well as site, environmental and construction permitting. Lacey's enterprise has already demonstrated in Los Angeles County that an AI-enabled collaboration between construction tech and regulators which leverages agentic AI, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and human-in-the-loop expertise, can turn months-long permitting delays into approvals within days, all while maintaining the transparency and traceability that code compliance requires.
Speakers
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Overhead Inspectors: Tight Collaboration With Tech Developers Helps Turn Trials Into Enterprise Assets
Tech leaders at both Suffolk and PCL have highly disciplined processes for investigating, evaluating and selecting only the most appropriate new technologies for deployment. But both insist that the most important factor, as exemplified by their experiences integrating drones into operations, transcends hardware and software: They both say the real key to successful tech development and integration is the relationship they develop with their tech vendors. And now, as both firms shift from remote-capture of raw data to AI-empowered, continuous, autonomous project knowledge development, the spread between the benefits of successful tech integration, versus the costs of missteps and errors, is growing ever greater. In this session tech leaders from both firms, along with a vendor PCL works closely with, will discuss how they have learned when to say yes, and when to say no, and how they navigate mazes of options to integrate the best emerging technologies, without losing operational clarity. Attendees will leave with a practical roadmap for establishing, scaling, and sustaining the kind of collaborative relationship between builders and technology innovators that is required to transform visions into value, and ideas into winning outcomes.
Speakers
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Clean Data Before AI: How Builders Can Finally Trust Their Information
This session is about how focusing on scrupulously cleaned, well-structured data when developing construction documents can unlock and de-risk enormous AI horsepower for every construction team — without introducing any new software to the workflow. Using a luxury high-rise project now under construction in Miami as the testbed, our speakers will walk us through a practical, AI-enhanced MEP coordination workflow they are using to accurately and reliably trace and connect equipment across drawings, schedules, risers, and power plans. The secret to the reliability is that by constraining AI to deliver only evidence-grounded responses that are firmly tied to the original project documents in the clean project database, and to not hallucinate about data it cannot see but flag instances of inadequate or missing data, instead, CMC’s estimating and construction team — and increasingly its design partners — are able to use AI to verify MEP coordination in fine detail with confidence and certainty. This is reducing RFIs and resolving coordination issues long before they reach the field. This session offers a replicable case study for general contractors seeking to move past AI hype and adopt AI tools responsibly, with full traceability and professional accountability.
Speakers
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Evolving Standard of Care: How AI Adoption Has Become a Risk Management Imperative for AEC
Generative AI, digital twins, robotic inspection, and predictive analytics are no longer pilots—they’re changing expectations for how projects are estimated, managed, documented, monitored, analyzed, and delivered. They are creating a new baseline of professional performance and client expectations that blurs the line between innovation and obligation. For example, Generative-design algorithms now out-perform manual iterations in analyzing structural efficiency and cost; Predictive safety models flag risk conditions in real time, redefining due diligence and possibly creating liability exposure for firms that don’t adopt them; Autonomous drone inspections provide evidence standards that are hard to match, if the same tasks are performed manually. This conversation grounds FutureTech attendees in the realities of implementation, bridging technical innovation, legal concerns and cautions, industry research, practical leadership, and real-world applications.
Speakers
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Super Vision: New Tool For Complex Design Review
As a vice president for construction at Mill Creek Residential, which develops and constructs multi-family residential buildings nationwide, Shawn Poore has been frustrated by the sluggish pace and expense of design peer review. Peer review is of irreplaceable value, he says, but getting the guidance in a timely fashion is out of his control.
That changed in early 2025, when LightTable co-founders Ben Waters and Paul Zeckser introduced a platform that uses AEC-trained AI to review plans and specifications, flagging omissions, discrepancies, code issues, and coordination gaps. LightTable centralizes those issues and shares them across the full consultant team, creating a single, aligned review process. The first deployment launched in June 2025 on a Mill Creek project, and Shawn says the results strengthened the QA/QC process enough that three additional projects are already underway this spring.
Human reviews remain central, but now they begin with AI-reviewed, prioritized documents. The result: issues get caught earlier, decisions get made faster, and expensive rework gets addressed before it slows the job down.
Speakers
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The Transformative Power of Data: How Disciplined Data Capture and Analysis Can Turn Insight Into Operational Excellence
This session will break down just what it takes for construction firms of all sizes to become truly data-driven. By connecting their information tools across the field and office, building repeatable processes for collecting, sharing, and analyzing information, as well as establishing governance to make data reliable, firms will find new efficiencies and get themselves ready to get the most out of AI. And don't forget the people side of technology integration: we'll take a look at how to earn employee buy-in and reduce friction for frontline teams. Better data capture and sharing doesn’t just improve performance—it helps employees do their jobs faster and with less rework, leading to stronger collaboration and better retention and recruiting outcomes. Whether you’re building a connected ecosystem from scratch or scaling early wins into enterprise-wide transformation, we'll explore where to find the real benefits in connected data.
Speakers
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Evaluating AI Agents: Targeting the Real Pain Points of Construction
With artificial intelligence-driven “agents” showing up in all areas of business, professionals in construction want to see real results before handing off elements of their critical paths to a machine. Hensel Phelps has been working with AI agents from Joist AI that are targeting the real pain points in their work, and finding out how agent-to-agent communication can create automated workflows that have allowed the contractor to rethink its processes. Return on investment, identifying real value and building trust among users are the real proof of AI’s usefulness, and this panel will examine how to better identify and quantify the success or failure of AI agents in construction.
Speakers
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Scaling Up with Reality Capture Implementation: Creating the Operational Universe
Carey McIlrath is Director of VDC at the Christman Company, a 130-year-old, Michigan-based construction firm offering a full range of services in the midwest, southeast and southwest. He has 35 years in the industry, starting in the masonry trades, and he has become dedicated to discovering and applying the best available technologies on Christman's sites. But he has no time for tech that doesn't work, and the tech he adopts had better work well. His current path of discovery includes building a relationship with Teleworker AI, which has taken over the wrangling of a pack of robots and dogs performing reality capture on Christman's sites, and he meets regularly with technologists from another RC tech-house, OpenSpace AI, to make sure he is getting everything he can out of its technology and to gain insights into where its going next. On this panel, we will hear from McIlrath, as well as Igor Starkov, founder and CEO of Teleworker, as well as [one of] the co-founders of OpenSpace AI, about the interactive relationship between The Christman Company and its technology vendors, and their plans for the future.
Speakers
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Solving Jobsite Information Gaps with SiteMap: Your As-Builts, Dig Board, and Subsurface Augmented Reality at Your Fingertips
When project information does not match fi eld conditions, teams can lose time, trust, and confidence in the decisions they need to make. When digital platforms, designed to deliver jobsite data from anywhere, do not reflect what is actually in place, those issues are magnified and multiplied among stakeholders and teams.
Join GPRS’ Dustin Snavely & Dave Mulcahey as they share how technology helped
stakeholders, vendors, and teams close the data gap between project information and field
reality to avoid clashes and rework on a recent medical center project. They will
demonstrate how better digital access to accurate and up-to-date information supports
coordination, improves handoffs, and helps leaders make better decisions.
Attendees will leave with practical, applicable examples of how SiteMap’s connected
jobsite information via features like mobile augmented reality, My Dig Board, digital utility maps, in-app sewer conditions and structural CADD/BIM access can solve real
construction problems.
Speakers
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A.I. and Jobsite Wearables:
Reimagining Construction Intelligence
Construction stands at a pivotal intersection of physical labor and digital intelligence. In this session, Smartapp and Diverge Hensel Phelps share how their co-innovation partnership is redefining what's possible on the modern jobsite. Discover how the convergence of software, hardware, AI and wearable technology is transforming jobsites and unlocking new levels of productivity and operational efficiency. The panel will share their innovation journey; with crucial learnings and a forward-looking perspective on how AI-powered wearables are reshaping the future of construction intelligence.
Speakers
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