{"id":32192,"date":"2025-09-07T08:39:54","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T15:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/balfour-beatty-plans-stateside-ai-hackathon\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T08:39:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T15:39:54","slug":"balfour-beatty-plans-stateside-ai-hackathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/balfour-beatty-plans-stateside-ai-hackathon\/","title":{"rendered":"Balfour Beatty plans stateside AI hackathon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> [ad_1]<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"text-to-speech\">\n    <button class=\"text-to-speech__button button\"><br \/>\n        <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"text-to-speech__button__icon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.constructiondive.com\/static\/img\/play.svg?500116090725\" alt=\"-\"><br \/>\n        Listen to the article<br \/>\n        <span class=\"text-to-speech__button__audio-length\">3 min<\/span><br \/>\n    <\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"text-to-speech__controls\">\n        <audio controls=\"\" class=\"js-text-to-speech\" preload=\"none\"><source src=\"https:\/\/res.cloudinary.com\/dmgi9movl\/video\/upload\/q_1\/v1756907176\/news\/text_to_speech\/balfour-beatty-plans-stateside-ai-hackathon_rlqnho.wav\" type=\"audio\/mp3\"><\/source><\/audio><\/p>\n<div class=\"text-to-speech__controls__text\">\n            This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.constructiondive.com\/contact\/\" target=\"_blank\">feedback<\/a>.\n        <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h3 class=\"standard-heading\"><span><span><span><span><span>Dive Brief:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span><span><span><span><span><span>Balfour Beatty hopes to get employees&#8217; creative juices flowing with an artificial intelligence hackathon, designed to create AI prototypes for solving common construction problems, the company told Construction Dive via email.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span><span><span><span><span><span>The first-ever event of its kind for Balfour Beatty US, known as My Contribution AI Hackathon, will take place from Sept. 8-9 at software giant Microsoft\u2019s campus near Dallas. It will feature 70 employees tackling issues in six key business areas: preconstruction planning, safety\/zero harm, quality, business development, internal efficiencies and standard operating procedures.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span><span><span><span><span><span>Six ideas \u2014 one for each business area \u2014 were selected by the builder\u2019s IT and executive leadership team, Microsoft and a third-party AI specialist. During the event, Balfour Beatty personnel will work to prototype the AI solutions in conjunction with experts from Microsoft, Answer Rocket and AsBuilt.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3 class=\"standard-heading\"><span><span><span><span><span>Dive Insight:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>The event seeks to build on Balfour Beatty\u2019s recent momentum in the AI space and its relationship with Microsoft \u2014 earlier this month, the company <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.constructiondive.com\/news\/balfour-beatty-invests-microsoft-ai\/757497\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>invested $9.6 million into Microsoft 365 Copilot,<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><span><span><span><span><span><span> the tech giant\u2019s AI offering. The contractor also plans to develop AI agents that will aid its quality, health and safety and assurance processes.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>\u201cBalfour Beatty&#8217;s MyC AI Hackathon is a catalyst for innovation,\u201d said Kasey Bevans, Balfour Beatty US chief information officer, told Construction Dive. \u201cWe\u2019re bringing together frontline and administrative expertise and technologies to reimagine how construction gets done.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>These pushes didn\u2019t crop up overnight. In March 2024, Balfour Beatty CEO Leo Quinn announced that the company was <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.constructiondive.com\/news\/balfour-beatty-ai-safety-microsoft-apps\/710868\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>working on AI-based tools for its teams<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><span><span><span><span><span><span>, which included StoaOne AI, a tool for searching internal documents.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>Another was an unnamed project, which would mine billions of data points from health and safety observations and past incidents to predict, prevent and mitigate risks.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>For these tools, Quinn said that Balfour Beatty and Microsoft, alongside other tech firms, were working together to develop solutions in-house.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>The contractor has put together similar innovation initiatives, most notably the <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.balfourbeatty.com\/media-centre\/latest\/the-power-of-collaboration-balfour-beatty-joins-forces-with-microsoft-to-hack-the-biggest-business-opportunities\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Big AI Challenge in the U.K. in 2024<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><span><span><span><span><span><span>. Two winning ideas came out of that competition and made it to further development, per Bevans \u2014 highway repair clustering and auto-generation of inspection and test plans.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>\u201cThis UK event laid the groundwork for the current U.S. initiative and demonstrated the company\u2019s commitment to leveraging AI and data analytics to drive productivity and solve business problems,\u201d Bevans said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>[ad_2]<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.constructiondive.com\/news\/balfour-beatty-ai-hackathon-us\/759107\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">This article was originally posted at Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ad_1] Listen to the article 3 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. Dive &#8230; <a title=\"Balfour Beatty plans stateside AI hackathon\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/balfour-beatty-plans-stateside-ai-hackathon\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Balfour Beatty plans stateside AI hackathon\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[457],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-construction-dive","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}