Executive Briefing: Construction Is Spending Billions on the Wrong Problem

50 senior AEC leaders were interviewed about their AI strategies. Every one was bullish. Every one was optimising the same broken system. Not one was rethinking the operating model. That finding sat at the centre of everything that happened this week.This week on the Executive Briefing:Why "don't automate the past" is the most important phrase in construction AI right now, and why the Rule of Five might be the simplest AI policy you've never heard of.Why construction doesn't have a moonshot, why productivity isn't inspiring enough to rally the industry, and what that means for your AI strategy.The Great Split goes transatlantic. $25.2B in US data center starts in a single month. UK industrial construction up 19%. Residential still flat. The UK's largest AI data centre just got approved at £10B. Balfour Beatty hits 3.5% margin on nuclear and defence. And the government is fast-tracking data centres onto the same grid that's supposed to deliver 1.5 million homes.World models: a billion dollar bet on AI that understands physics. Who Yann LeCun is, what AMI Labs is building, and why construction should care even though you can't buy it yet.Three things to do this week. Several questions that are going to split the room. Best LinkedIn comment gets read out next week.Join the debate: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/construction-spending-billions-wrong-problem-owen-drury-02kbe