BridgeAI podcast closes with construction episode on AI and messy asset data

Innovate UK Business Connect has published a five-part podcast series on Innovate UK BridgeAI, the £100m programme launched in 2023 to help UK businesses adopt artificial intelligence (AI), with its final episode devoted to construction and the built environment.

The series, posted on 29 October 2026, is hosted by Peter Schmidt, who speaks to the people who designed and delivered the programme and to the businesses that used it. The episodes are available on all popular platforms, including Innovate UK's Spotify channel, Innovate UK Business Connect said.

According to the announcement, BridgeAI engaged more than 12,000 people and supported 5,000 organisations across four sectors over three years. It funded over 820 projects and delivered more than 1,700 training courses through a partnership of Innovate UK, the Alan Turing Institute, Digital Catapult, the STFC Hartree Centre and BSI.

Sara El-Hanfy, Director, AI and Digital at Innovate UK, said in Innovate UK Business Connect's introduction to the year-three report: "BridgeAI has become one of the UK's most important vehicles for translating ambition into impact."

The construction episode

Episode 5 turns to construction and the built environment, which the announcement describes as a sector sitting on decades of valuable but messy data, from hand-drawn plans in records rooms to digital building models.

Tom Goldsmith, chief technology officer and co-founder of Hoppa, explains in the episode how AI helps construction teams make sense of unstructured data such as engineering reports, drawings and maintenance records. With assets built to last 50 or even 100 years, he argues, better information management is essential to extending the life of infrastructure and cutting carbon.

Hoppa's own website says its product, which it calls Data Refinery, connects to clients' systems to read, classify and enrich more than 110 file types. The company claims a 100x efficiency gain on design handover for a nuclear decommissioning facility and 250,000 hours of manual work avoided classifying cost line items. Hoppa says it featured in the BridgeAI year-three annual report and said it would exhibit at the BridgeAI Annual Showcase 2026.

The second guest is Max Smith, director of Eluxevo, described in the announcement as on a mission to decarbonise buildings. A BridgeAI case study published by Innovate UK Business Connect names him as Maximillian Smith, founder and managing director.

According to that case study, Eluxevo claims its heating system starts at less than a tenth of the cost of a heat pump per room, and the company aims to offer its own modular system for domestic users and then for commercial buildings. Smith said of the support he received from BSI: "It opened my eyes and got me thinking about how we incrementally build our processes and methodologies."

The final episode closes with reflections on the whole series, including what 12,000 conversations about AI taught the programme.

The rest of the series

Episode 1 features Nicolas Guernion, Director of Partnerships at the Alan Turing Institute, which provided businesses with free independent scientific advice from over 250 expert engagements. Richard Cooper of Innovate UK Business Connect discusses why the programme targeted agrifood, construction, creative and transport, described as sectors rich in data but slower to benefit from AI.

In episode 3, Rebecca Duke, Principal Data Scientist at the STFC Hartree Centre, says innovation vouchers gave over 100 businesses access to researchers and supercomputing, and that poor data management is the biggest blocker she sees in small companies. Digital Catapult's Jimmy Jarvis says 93% of accelerated startups are still trading and have raised over £3m in follow-on investment.

Episode 4 covers why ISO 27001 and the AI management standard ISO 42001 matter to small businesses, and says BSI's BridgeAI training sold out within 48 hours. It also features Liam McGee, Chief Scientist at Kaiasm, on preparing decades of rail, road and utilities data for AI.

Background

Innovate UK unveiled the £100m programme in April 2023, according to a press release published by Digital Catapult on 27 April 2023, with the investment coming partly from Innovate UK and the Technology Missions Fund. The four sectors were chosen because they showed high potential for transformation but had low AI adoption rates at the time, Digital Catapult said.

The year-three annual report, posted on 9 March 2026, states that BridgeAI has allocated £74.6m of grant funding, supported more than 5,000 organisations, funded 820 AI projects and completed more than 1,700 AI skills courses.

At the November 2025 Budget, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said BridgeAI had by then supported over 3,000 businesses from the agriculture, creative industries, transport and construction sectors, and that the programme would be expanded to reach more sectors across the industrial strategy.