54 Robot Demos, One Purchase, and a Cardiff Contractor Who Bought Two With His Own Money. This Is What We Learned at Groundworks.
22 min
54 Robot Demos, One Purchase, and a Cardiff Contractor Who Bought Two With His Own Money. This Is What We Learned at Groundworks. This week's briefing is a recap of Groundworks, Bricks and Bytes' first construction robotics summit, held in east London on 11 November. Two years ago a search for construction robotics on Spotify returned almost nothing. This week we put the builders, the robot makers, the investors and the clients in one room for a day and asked one question. How many of these machines are actually out on sites doing real work. This week's episode is sponsored by Buildots, the construction intelligence platform turning site data into actionable insights for over 100 of the largest owners and contractors including Turner, Multiplex and Vinci Construction. Find out how to join them at https://buildots.com Phil Reed, head of innovation at Vinci Construction UK, gave the most honest numbers of the day. Since January 2024 Vinci has had 54 robot demonstrations, 24 went to trial, two of the companies went bankrupt, and Vinci bought one robot. Goldbeck, the German builder, has piloted seven robots and deploys roughly half of one. The half is because the robot belongs to a subcontractor who uses it on their sites. On the other side, Monumental has built more than 100 bricklaying robots and on an average day about 50 are out laying bricks. Kewazo has about 120 scaffold material hoists in the field. Field AI says it is on hundreds of sites across three continents. Those are the companies' own figures. Almost nobody on stage wanted to sell a robot. Monumental turns up as your bricklaying subcontractor and pays for human bricklayers if its machines cannot finish the job. CSC Robotic Engineering hires its ceiling drilling robot at 2,500 pounds a week. Hilti has done more than a hundred times as many rentals as sales. An audience survey at the end found 82% agreed robots as a service and hire companies should own the machines, not main contractors. Mark Reynolds, cha...
