Why the Job Site Is the Next Frontier for Artificial Intelligence

Construction is the world’s largest sector, accounting for roughly 15% of global GDP. It’s also historically been one of the least digitized and least productive. That paradox is exactly what drew Puneet Raj, CEO of Fieldwire, which is a platform for managing construction jobsites on more than four million projects worldwide, into the industry.

“I was working at Amazon on the Kindle when the Hilti Group reached out and asked me whether I wanted to help digitize the world’s largest sector,” Raj recalls. “I liked the challenge and jumped right in.”

Fieldwire, founded in 2013 and acquired by the Hilti Group in 2021, sits at the intersection of that digitization challenge. According to Raj, the key to unlocking AI in construction isn’t in the back office; it’s on the field.

The Chaos and Beauty of Field Data

When asked what field data actually looks like on a typical job site, Raj spoke freely. “It’s as chaotic and beautiful as you can imagine, since 80% of construction data is created in the field.” But it is rarely captured, and it changes almost daily.”

Field data, he explains, takes many forms: forms filled out daily, WhatsApp and text messages flying between crews and supervisors, pin-ups on walls or printouts to indicate the latest status, phone conversations between field crews and office staff, and RFIs lost in long email threads. It’s large, it’s unstructured, and that’s both the opportunity and the challenge for any AI system. However, it’s missing the critical element of context.