The High Growth AI Accelerator for Innovate UK’s BridgeAI programme is delivered by Digital Catapult. It is supporting startups to refine and develop scalable solutions for the construction sector
The UK construction sector is at a crossroads. Pressure to decarbonise, meet ambitious targets and improve operational efficiency is prompting industry leaders to rethink their approach to deep tech innovation.
With the sector set to be worth £362bn by 2030, businesses recognise the need to embrace new solutions, and this is where collaboration between construction leaders and startups will be key.
Digital Catapult enables deep tech startups to scale successfully and we recognise how small businesses across the country are developing pioneering new solutions that could help solve some of the construction sector’s greatest challenges. But to do this, collaboration between startups and industry leaders will be critical.
A vital sector at breaking point?
As it stands the UK construction sector is experiencing several pain points, including a national skills shortage. It’s estimated that the sector will need 251,500 additional construction workers by 2028 to keep up with demand, a problem bated by an ageing workforce and insufficient training programmes.
The sector is also facing ambitious targets to meet housing goals and improve national infrastructure. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), in 2024 184,390 homes were completed, falling significantly short of the previous government’s target of 1.5m homes by the end of the parliamentary term. These challenges are compounded by operational bottlenecks in the sector including health and safety concerns.
The increasing number of workplace injuries is another reason why many construction companies are looking to integrate deep tech solutions into their operations.
The Labour Survey found that in the 2023-24 financial year, construction industry workers lost more than 400,000 days of work due to workplace injuries, costing the UK economy over £21bn.
The skills shortage, ambitious building targets and health and safety concerns are prompting many businesses to reconsider their relationship with deep tech, driving them to explore startups’ solutions in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
AI solutions: A game-changer for construction
Digital Catapult has collaborated with businesses across the UK to accelerate the practical application of deep tech in industry for over a decade, supporting companies to understand how deep tech innovation is critical to unlocking opportunity.
Our work includes helping to tackle some of the construction sector’s most pressing challenges by considering how technologies, including AI and ML, could be applied to improve health and safety on construction sites, improve resource utilisation, project planning and upskill workforces nationwide.
In fact, an increasing number of analysts and experts also recognise the value of embracing AI innovation in the construction sector, with a study by McKinsey & Co estimating that AI could boost construction productivity by up to 20% by enabling better project planning and resource management.
Digital Catapult has partnered with organisations across several sectors to support adoption of AI-driven solutions and we recognise how these solutions could support the construction sector too.
Despite the value of deep tech innovation for the sector, barriers to collaboration between industry leaders and pioneering startups are inhibiting the successful integration and adoption of AI-driven solutions in the sector. Resource and capacity constraints mean that many startups lack the networks, capability and opportunity to trial their solutions in a real-world, independent environment with valid feedback from industry experts.
Among industry leaders, there is a reluctance to innovate, as well as internal cultural resistance to innovative solutions developed by startups, which can also hinder both parties’ success.
It is because of these barriers to innovation that Digital Catapult is delivering an intervention to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing that could overcome these challenges and unlock opportunity in the construction industry.
Digital Catapult and BridgeAI: Convening the ecosystem
The Innovate UK BridgeAI Programme is delivered by Innovate UK, Digital Catapult, The Alan Turing Institute, the Hartree Centre (STFC) the British Standards Institution (BSI) to drive adoption of AI in high-growth sectors of the UK economy including construction.
As part of this work, we recently launched an accelerator for the construction sector with partners Buro Happold, Versarien and Foster + Partners, enabling ten deep tech companies to scale by providing them with innovation and technological consultancy, access to workshops, industry expertise and the opportunity to collaborate with these three industry leaders.
Our construction accelerator enables participating startups to refine and develop scalable solutions for the construction sector, including a new solution to support 3D printing by AIConstruct, an AI assistant for residential planning applications by Planninghub and a solution that will combine sensor data with computer vision to assess material durability with DONAA. The programme ensures that the cohort of startup companies can collaborate with the industry leaders to facilitate the type of cooperation essential for the construction sector to succeed in the years to come.
In addition to our support for startups, Digital Catapult works with enterprises to help them set effective data strategies and identify potential high-impact AI/ML use cases. With productivity in the construction sector continuing to decline, this support is more critical than ever.
We help organisations unlock the value of their data, explore transformative AI solutions and strengthen operational resilience.
Not only will this collaboration drive industrial decarbonisation through more efficient solutions, it will also enable these deep tech companies to scale their solutions successfully, following the achievements of previous BridgeAI participants.
Since 2023, the BridgeAI programme has supported 24 startups, with 22 proof-of-concepts enabled and over £1.7m in private funding secured for startups within one year of graduating from one of our accelerator programmes.
This success speaks to the importance of our convening capabilities and shows why encouraging collaboration between industry leaders and startups to solve pressing challenges in the UK’s key economic sectors. I have no doubt that similar success will be replicated for the construction industry where successful collaboration will play a defining role in to the sector’s long-term success, especially with renewed targets to deliver 1.5m new homes by 2029.
Any reader interested in learning more about the latest accelerator programme can register their interest here.
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