Description

Puneet Raj, CEO of Fieldwire (a Hilti company), joins Robert to unpack Field Intelligence — the AI platform Fieldwire launched at ENR FutureTech — and why AI in construction only pays off when it's actionable for the person standing on the jobsite at 6 a.m. They dig into a survey of 170 companies showing 72% already use AI, almost entirely for emails and meeting notes, and what crews actually want instead. Puneet argues AI won't change who makes the call — it just arms the field with the data to push back. The conversation gets into thornier ground too: who owns construction data when a job closes out, why the same data carries different valid perspectives for owners, GCs, and subs, and why the clean as-built handoff remains unsolved. Plus, the unlikely story of how Puneet went from Unilever and Amazon to digging a foundation by hand in Bosnia.

Three takeaways:

• Generic AI gets ~60–65% of the way on a construction task; the last mile is construction- and company-specific.
• Capturing senior field workers' "method to the madness" isn't about replacing them — it's about giving the next generation the why.
• "There is only one owner of the data, and that's the customer."

Puneet Raj is the CEO of Fieldwire, the field-first construction management platform now part of the Hilti Group.

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