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Construction Has an Appetite for AI: Laing O’Rourke’s Rowan Braham
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Strategic Business Initiatives Community Interviews

Construction Has an Appetite for AI: Laing O’Rourke’s Rowan Braham

Oct 21, 2025 | 6 mins

When Laing O’Rourke’s principal AI engineer, Rowan Braham, joined the construction giant in 2012, he discovered an organisation reliant on legacy tech and operating within a highly risk-averse industry.

Having completed a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Braham was eager to “shake things up” by introducing innovative technologies. However, he realised that there was an inherent conservatism in the way construction projects were managed. And for very good reasons.

“The cost of failure in construction is very, very high. If something goes wrong with a construction process, it can go wrong to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. But even more severely than that, people can get seriously hurt on construction [sites]”, he says.

While the industry is much safer than it was in the 1980s, it remains inherently risky.

“The other challenge is that the cadence of change in construction is quite slow. Major construction projects…

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