Why Has Contech Not Delivered on Its Promises?
Date Posted: October 7, 2025
Posted In: Discussion, Ideas, What we are thinking about,
Editor’s Note: KP Reddy is the founder and managing partner of Shadow Ventures, a seed-stage venture firm focused on transforming the built environment through innovation. He is the author of books on thriving through the AI-driven future, startups and entrepreneurship, and BIM for owners and developers. Reddy has been launching and advising startups since the earliest days of the Internet.
From KP Reddy’s Substack: I am very fortunate to have many of the ENR 500 CEO’s as investors, clients and friends. They continue to seek counsel on their technology investments.They continue to spend more and more every year, including hiring more and more innovation team members. In general, why do most of them say that the return on these investments have been nominal?
First off, they don’t say this in public. It would be detrimental to their marketing image for recruiting, attracting clients, etc. Now there is a scramble to evaluate deploying AI (Artificial Intelligence). As a venture capitalist, I see all the latest technology in Construction including AI, robotics, prefab, etc and provide my insights via this newsletter, podcasts, books, etc. We also are a voice for leading building owners/developers through our IOF organization. Learn more about me here. Let’s dig in.
System of Record Software
Many firms have heavily invested in Autodesk, Procore, Builder Trend, CMIC, etc. to manage their projects and company. The reality is that these software packages are not used as a “single source of truth” to manage projects. They have become archival systems for the people that run projects to input data (because corporations make them) after the fact.
In reality, projects are mostly managed via spreadsheets, email and text messaging. Then this data is given to a project assistant to be input into the System of Record Software. Tell your teams that they can no longer use email or spreadsheets and see what happens.