Construction Technology Podcast

Josh Whisenant of Roger joins Luigi La Corte, Mike Powers, and Andrew Zukoski the day after Procore's Groundbreak conference in Orlando. The group recaps Procore's AI announcements, including the Magpie model and agent "starter packs," debates whether agents are really different from skills, and discusses why contractors should keep benefiting from foundation models that get better and cheaper every few weeks. Josh walks through Roger's relaunch as a services provider that carries general contractors to operational outcomes, covering buyout and scope writing, submittal review, and a billing approach where Roger doesn't send an invoice if the work isn't a fit and puts its fee at risk for scope gaps. The hosts compare who actually owns scoping and buyout at GCs (precon, procurement, or project management), and Josh shares his thesis that AI can industrialize the contractor and change, rather than eliminate, operations roles. He closes with where Roger fits best: complex, fast-moving vertical projects and high-volume submittal work such as data centers.

Luigi La Corte, Mike Powers, and Andrew Zukoski dig into how far general-purpose AI models can go on construction work now that frontier labs are buying expert-labeled, proprietary data, and where project data, harnesses, and purpose-built UI still matter. They compare AI adoption across mid-market GCs, mechanical reps, and manufacturers, from enterprise ChatGPT and Claude licenses to shared skills, MCP connectors, and the low-hanging fruit in everyday document workflows, plus whether bid management goes "headless" inside the inbox. Mike breaks down LG's long-term agreement with mechanical rep group Air Controlled Concepts, which backs a new 350,000-square-foot US chiller factory and more than five gigawatts of capacity, and why aggregated rep demand helps manufacturers commit to building capacity. The episode closes with a walkthrough of a closed-loop data center cooling design using dry coolers and chillers, and what it means for the debate over data center water use.

Carl from Ramp joins Luigi La Corte, Mike Powers, and Andrew Zukoski to unpack how a horizontal financial operating system is being pulled deeper into construction. Ramp covers corporate cards and expense management, purchasing and accounts payable, treasury with JPMorgan, and a newly announced accounts receivable product—serving more than 80,000 businesses including over 15,000 construction and construction-adjacent customers. The conversation covers why construction needs a distinct experience (GC–sub coordination, retainage, change orders, lean waivers, AIA billing), Ramp Plus automation versus point-solution sprawl, project-centric job costing and dynamic PM expense approvals, the ServiceTitan embedded partnership, and how AI plus payment infrastructure could close the loop between GCs and subs on cash flow.

Wissam Akra, founder and CEO of Tough Leaf, joins Luigi La Corte, Andrew Zukoski, and Victor Muchiri (sitting in for Mike Powers) to unpack how general contractors actually find certified subcontractors and prove compliance. Tough Leaf aggregates verified certifications from federal, state, and local agencies alongside qualification data on hundreds of thousands of subs, then plugs into BuildingConnected and Procore preconstruction so primes can match RFPs without rebuilding their workflow. The conversation covers why pre-vetting is different from full prequalification, how AI agents now handle enrichment and matching while phone verification stays human, during-construction compliance tracking, and why a dedicated compliance data layer still beats rebuilding the same dataset inside every procurement tool.

Luigi, Mike, and Andrew unpack Autodesk University — keynote demos, AI assistants as tool-pickers inside systems of record, token pricing, and whether agents-on-workflows beat agent-first products. They debate fee compression in PM software, the $1 vs $99 contractor spend split, and whether you’d buy Autodesk stock after AU (or just buy Google).

Hammad Chaudhry (Pomerleau) joins Luigi, Mike, and Andrew on running innovation and digital construction at a multi-billion-dollar GC — when to slow down before you speed up, security vs adoption, BIM/VDC as table stakes, and how to justify tech spend to the C-suite.

Francesco Iorio (Augmenta) joins Luigi, Mike, and Andrew on LLMs vs spatial AI, why building-scale design breaks token-context workflows, BIM metadata and prefabrication, and what it takes to automate the guts of buildings — not just the aesthetics.