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KP Unpacked
KP Unpacked explores the biggest ideas in AEC, AI, and innovation—unpacking the trends, technology, discussions, and strategies shaping the built environment and beyond.
KP Unpacked
How AI Is Changing Engineering Forever
In this episode of KP Unpacked, we dive into a major shift happening in engineering and construction: the rise of tech-enabled services and AI-driven tools.
Host Jeff Echols is joined by Iman Warsame, a civil engineer turned software developer, to break down one of KP Reddy’s latest LinkedIn posts on the changing landscape of AEC startups.
They discuss:
🔹 Why engineers are ditching traditional roles for coding
🔹 The shift from SaaS to AI-powered services in construction
🔹 How tech is disrupting the way infrastructure gets built
🔹 The future of engineering firms—are they the next startups?
🔹 What VCs now see in AEC that they ignored before
Plus, Iman shares his vision for a true, tech-driven construction firm and why he believes the industry is overdue for a massive shake-up.
🎉 Special Offer for KP Unpacked Listeners: Get 55% off your ticket to the 9th Annual AEC Summit on October 29th at the Diverge Innovation Center in Phoenix! Click the link below and use promo code UNPACKED55 at checkout.
Don't miss this opportunity to connect with top minds in AEC and beyond. Tickets are limited—act fast!
Okay, welcome back to KP Unpacked. This is usually my opportunity to ask KP Ready hey, what were you thinking when you posted that on LinkedIn? But today we're going to call this the Mastermind Edition because, as we add more and more guests to the podcast, one of the things that we're doing is we're inviting all of our mastermind members in so that we can talk with them, we can learn more about them, what they do, who they are, who they work for, what they're focused on, and then maybe we'll unpack one of KP's posts. We can guess. What do you think KP was thinking about when he posted that on LinkedIn? My name is Jeff Eccles, if we've never met before. I am a senior advisor at KP Ready Company, and today I am joined by a member of our early and mid-career mastermind group, iman Orsami. And so, iman, welcome. I'm glad you're here. Tell us where here is. For you, it's a different time of day where you are than it is where I am.
Speaker 2:Yes, so my name is Iman. I'm based in Copenhagen, so it is deep into the evening here.
Speaker 1:Very good. Well, thank you for joining me in the evening. I know it's after work for you, which is, I guess, is the case. It's even later usually, or maybe I guess it's about the same time right when our early and mid-career mastermind meetings are, and Iman has been participating in that group for several months now, I suppose. Iman, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, what your background is, and maybe a little bit about what your aspirations for the future are?
Speaker 2:Yes, so my name is Iman. I'm a senior engineer at Rambo, which are a Danish engineering consulting firm. So originally, as you might be able to tell from the accent, I'm from the UK. So I was born and raised in London and I did a master of Engineering degree in Civil Engineering in Southampton. That's where I joined Ramble and was working for Ramble for five years in their Southampton office and have recently transferred to the head office in Copenhagen. So I joined Ramble as a graduate bridge engineer. So civil structures is where I started. But I quite quickly moved into quite a new team at the time. So this is the digital development team where I started writing code to do some steel design of motorway gantries and things just developed from there. So I've been at ramble for almost six years and most of that time has been software development focused. But I've also spent best part of the year working on major infrastructure projects in the uk as both a project and commercial manager as well as a structural engineer. So a bit of a mixed background.
Speaker 1:Sure, and that makes sense, right? You're relatively early in your career You've got a lot of years ahead of you and it's interesting to me as I listen, you know. So my background is architecture. You know, I graduated from architecture school and got a lot of friends and colleagues that have went to engineering school. Maybe they came out as civil engineers or structural engineers, something like that. That would have a similar experience to yours, up until the point where you joined that team, that very different team, right and you're looking at your coding for software and things like that, which I don't think is all that unusual a story in our early and mid-career mastermind group. I mean, I think there are a lot of people that are living the new reality of what is architecture, what is engineering, what does construction look like in 2025 and beyond. So I think that's pretty exciting that you come out. You have this background, this training, this focus, and you're going about it maybe a different way than some of the folks that came up at the same time.
Speaker 1:I did, which is, I guess, to be expected to, because that was a long time ago where we started to come up as we were talking, and we were talking about some of KP Reddy's LinkedIn posts. So, by the way, if you're listening to this and you're not following KP Reddy on LinkedIn, you should. He's maxed out on connections there and so he always goes through this process of opening up new connections when he can, et cetera. But for now, follow KP on LinkedIn and it's just KP the letters K-N-P and then ready R-E-D-D-Y. He posts usually about three times a day, and his posts come from a variety of places, a variety of resources when he's on the road speaking, when he's doing advisory work with AEC firms, when he's working with investors or startups, thoughts that he has as he travels. Right, they come from a variety of places, but they are all posts where he's looking at the future of the built environment how we design, how we construct the materials that we use, how we invest, how we operate, how we own these types of assets in the built environment. So if you're not following him, you should, and then I would also encourage you to reach out to Iman on LinkedIn as well and connect with him there, because I think you're going to get some good insights from a very different point of view here. That's the whole purpose for these conversations, for these interviews.
Speaker 1:So, as Iman and I were talking, we settled on this post, which I'll read, and then Iman and I will start to unpack it. So, if you're following along at home as we're recording this and I'm looking at LinkedIn, kp posted this on about February 3rd 2025. So if it's the year 2030 or something like that for you, you've got to go back five years and find February 3rd. It goes like this Seeing a real shift in construction tech startups moving from pure play SaaS to more tech-enabled service models used to be a no-no in VC or venture capital. With AI, these tech-enabled businesses are able to deliver venture metrics of growth and gross margins. It's pretty exciting. Margins it's pretty exciting. So, iman, when you read that post, what was the first thing that popped into your mind as you were reading what KPU was thinking there?
Speaker 2:So while I'm involved in the tech side of construction, I'm not in the startup space. So essentially what our team do at ramble, we create lots of little startups. Essentially throughout the year we're always working on multiple different projects to try and build and deploy for the the transport sector, and we've seen how difficult adoption is even when we are inside the organization and people you know trust us and they'll pick up our phone calls, etc. So that was the first thing that resonated with me. So it's much, much easier to say yes to a service than it is to accept all of the overhead that comes with adopting a new tool on top of purchasing a new tool, on top of going through the internal processes in order to get a tool approved by IT and the higher-ups.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a really great point. I mean, another hat that I wear within our organization is directing our startup incubator and so many times not all the times we do have corporate startups. So we might one day have one of the startups from Ramble that joins the incubator and we walk through some of the early stages. We do that sometimes. That's what we would call a corporate startup. We, we do that sometimes with that's. That's what we would call a corporate startup. But, um, the majority of the startups that go through our program are what most people would think of as startups. So those traditional startups with founders have have maybe exited an engineering firm or something like that and they're out on their own, um, with an idea, you know, a problem, a problem to solve, and what? What you're saying is something that we've heard before from corporate startups. Hey, we're, we're building this in house, right? These are our people, and adoption is still slow or difficult or you know it's. It's hard to get people to help us. You know, dial this in in in various different forms. So it does not surprise me at all that that's your reaction.
Speaker 1:I do find it interesting in the post, as KP stated. He said construction tech is moving from a pure SaaS play to more tech-enabled service models, and this is a drum that he's beating, and we're hearing this across the industry. I think we're hearing more and more about this. It's okay, there's software, sure, but this is still service industry. Engineering is professional services, architecture is professional services, construction management is professional services. So maybe we're talking about the intersection of a Venn diagram or something like that.
Speaker 1:Right, where does where does the software overlap? And, you know, help us become more efficient, or or you know, whatever the goal is in some way in in our um, in the services that we provide. And so I think this, that idea with the um, with the idea that in the past, vcs were not going to be investing in services firms, but now, with some of the things that you're working on, perhaps that changes the mind of who knows if your firm has any interest in taking on investment. But now we're moving into the realm of the potential for investment with some of the things that you're working on. Have you ever I don't know how wide your view is or how wide your scope is when you're looking beyond? You know the projects that you're working on at the time, but have you looked at the larger impact of those types of projects on the firm. You know, beyond the coding and the software project itself.
Speaker 2:In terms of the business impact and the value.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say yeah, I mean maybe not necessarily the value of the business impacts and the value yeah, I would say yeah, I mean maybe not necessarily the value of the firm. I mean, if you have insight on that, sure, absolutely, but maybe just the way that people work and definitely the way it impacts the business model. You know things that you're providing for clients, maybe.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's a very good question. So some examples of solutions that we've our team have made in the past, especially around product-wise designs, have had quite a large impact both on clients and the wider market in general. So we designed systems where we became so cost effective to produce designs. We for that particular type of design and type of structure. We were designing 90 plus of that type of structures in the entirety of the uk for a time period. So that had quite a big impact because it was a new way of working. That meant our competitors were struggling a lot to compete with us if they continue to do things the traditional way. So in cases like that is quite a good example of where adoption is blown away, because once your product or your, your service gets so much better than everybody else, they either have to improve a lot to keep up or they won't be able to compete at all I think that's a really great point.
Speaker 1:I, you know, I I think that we are really well. I know that we're really on this precipice. I've been talking about this for for a couple of decades now and the the change, the commoditization of the industry and things like that, and it just seems to be accelerating more and more. And of course it's. It's that acceleration is enabled by tech, and so, you know, the conversations that I've had for so long are around. You've got to change the business model, you've got to start doing things differently.
Speaker 1:What if an engineering firm, what if civil instructional engineers start using, you know, developing their own software and using tech to enable their services? What are you going to do then? And what you just described is exactly that scenario playing out, and I think, for more and more firms. Of course, this won't touch everybody, I don't think. I mean, I think there are very small firms that are always going to compete in their very small firm way, but I think at some point, there's a threshold where what you're talking about is definitely a threat to those that are not keeping up the way that you are when you look forward to the future in terms of your own job and the things that you work on. What is it that excites you about the future of engineering, either either traditionally, you know, or on a project front, or with the direction that your career is heading so I think this might sound a little bit backwards.
Speaker 2:I think what excites me the most is there's so much room to improve in the industry and projects in the UK, for instance, have to be cancelled or made a lot smaller, and the construction industry in general hasn't had a major, major shake-up for, let's say, 40 years, 100 years, however many years but we're building more and more. We're going to need to build more and more and there's an opportunity for somebody to take advantage of the inefficiencies that are around. And I think that's what really, really excites me, because there is a potential to have a world changing impact or historical impact in this industry. So if you're somebody who comes up with a new material that's cheaper than concrete but is 1% of the carbon emitted and you manage to get it scaled and used from Indonesia to South America, everywhere, you will have changed the history of humanity. So that's what excites me when I look forward All right, I love that.
Speaker 1:So are you working on a material like that?
Speaker 2:I wish, but no, not at the moment.
Speaker 1:So in your wildest dreams, you look at everything. Maybe you look at it through the lens of infrastructure projects, which is huge, that's a huge lens. I mean all over the world. Certainly here in the United States, where I am, it's one of the major topics of discussion and has been for quite a number of years now is infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. For quite a number of years now is infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure.
Speaker 1:So in your wildest dreams, I mean, what's the craziest thing you can think of, what's the craziest idea you have of something that somebody might come up with and maybe you've heard rumblings, or maybe it's just something that came to you in a dream, it doesn't matter to me, but what's something that you could see, that, uh, I mean the example of that material I think is fantastic, right, Not since the Romans, but, um, but what's? What's something that that is you think is crazy? Maybe it's science fiction, Um, but you know, maybe it actually comes true and maybe maybe what I'm doing in 10 years or 20 years or five years, whatever it is, is completely different because of this crazy idea.
Speaker 2:So I probably have um scales of crazy, so I'll start with the craziest and then go down.
Speaker 1:I like that crazy, so I'll start at the craziest and then go down.
Speaker 2:I like that. In terms of interplanetary construction, which I'm starting to hear more rumblings about, people talking about building structures on the moon and eventually Mars. So I find the idea of truly autonomous construction quite exciting. So we send some robots and some raw materials, or maybe even not sending any raw materials, just send some robots and they do the mining, they do the processing, they build the structures and we don't have to do anything. And then using that technology on earth as well would be quite a change and probably quite a challenge for the construction industry, but that's something that I'd definitely be interested in seeing how that develops in terms of less crazy stuff on earth.
Speaker 2:I always like the idea of a, a true construction company. So rather than the architects, engineers, contractors all being split up, but having a consolidated building company and one that's digitally enabled and just gets better and better every single project, where a client can go to them and say I want a bridge, I want a tunnel, I want a port and A to Z all done. So I think commercially that's quite interesting on Earth, which I'd like to see more of. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I think, both of those ideas, I love both of them, and so, you know, some people are aware that one of the the portfolio companies of the KP shadow ventures is icon, and they've been talking about building on the moon, building on the Mars, on on Mars, yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't know how far away that really is. I don't know how far out there, figuratively speaking, that is. It's super exciting. You know, icon is one that's talking about it, as I said, and they may be, I don't know what time horizon they're realistically looking at, but they're working with NASA right now on some of those ideas and I do think it's like it's like I'm I'm a formula one fan and you know, when you watch racing at that level and you watch these, basically these very exotic race cars, you go well, that's, that's cool and they're super expensive and they're really fast and you know it's, it's all fun.
Speaker 1:But a lot of that technology eventually trickles down. You know and know brakes and suspension and things like that eventually trickle down to something that's closer to what you or I might actually drive one day. But I think we're probably going to see similar things happening with these. You know these wild ideas of the moon and Mars. You know how can we then turn around and, as you said, bring it back, and I think your idea of a true construction firm, as you called it, I think that is that's really intriguing and my feeling is that, as we've moved from you said earlier 40 years or a hundred years.
Speaker 1:It depends on how old the person is. That's talking about it. Did they remember a hundred years? Do they remember 40 years? So I typically say 100 years, but the point is it's been a long time, right, we've spent 40 or 100 years, I think, getting more and more siloed, and your description of that true construction firm is essentially breaking those silos down right and coming back to something, and the way that I think about that is coming back to something that serves our clients better. That's my opinion, that's the way that I think about is. That is, when you think about that, that true construction firm, as you call it is. Is that what you're thinking about? As the client comes and you know, you kind of describe hey, I want a bridge, I want a tunnel, I want a port. Is that the point? Is it to serve clients better, or is there some other angle that you're seeing there?
Speaker 2:Both to serve clients better in terms of cutting out any competing or conflicting interests.
Speaker 2:I know that's the role of contracts to incentivize people to act that way, but then it cuts that complexity out as well from having multiple parties, but also in the interest of getting better as a collective. So the lessons from the architecture, the engineering, the actual construction they all feed into, they all continuously feed in together. So learning is something which I well. Institutional learning is something that I care a lot about in terms of making sure when we do something, we learn from it. We don't make the same mistakes again.
Speaker 2:So, having all of the disciplines in one place and at the end of the day, the goal is to build something or some people might disagree in terms of the nature of whether you're consulting or not, and I think at the end of the day, it is to build something, and we've made these disciplines in order to help us do that. But help us do that. But, um, hopefully that will see a blurring between the lines of different disciplines as well. Like you said, it's got a lot more specialized. Um, architects and engineers, their courses aren't so similar these days as they maybe once used to be, and it'd be nice to have people with a broader skill set across across different yeah, different aspects of the construction industry.
Speaker 1:I like that. I like that point of view. It is exciting, as KP said at the end of his post there, which I'll reread here in a minute. But so I'm going to have you back on here in a few years, once, once we start to see some true construction firms, as as you have have described them, I'm going to have you back and we're going to, we're going to break it down, I'm going to, I'm going to let you grade it. How's it going? How are they doing? How are they getting better? Because I like that idea. It's sort of it's shortening the feedback loop, right, it's it's shortening that loop. It's it's shortening that loop and it's it's allowing us to learn faster and, I think, learn better lessons, which is which is, I think, the point that you're trying to make. So I think that's a fantastic idea. I love it. So let me, let me read KP's post one more time and then, and then we'll wrap this up.
Speaker 1:I'm joined today on this mastermind edition of KP, unpacked by Iman Warsami, and today we're talking about a post on LinkedIn that KP Reddy wrote, and it goes like this Seeing a real shift in construction tech startups moving from pure play SaaS to more tech-enabled service models. It used to be a no-no in the VC world. With AI, these tech-enabled businesses are able to deliver venture metrics of growth and gross margins and it's pretty exciting. I agree it's pretty exciting and, Iman, I really appreciate your insights into this post and also getting to know you better and what you're working on and how you're working, because that's pretty exciting too.
Speaker 1:It's KP graduated as a civil engineer. He just had a birthday recently, so he makes fun of me all the time. He says I'm the old guy in the room right now. For a period of about a month and a half, he and I are the same age, so he graduated from civil engineering school a long time ago, as did I from architecture school. So there's that.
Speaker 1:But it's great to have you on here, iman, and I appreciate you digging into this post and being part of our mastermind program and showing up and showing up and and for those of you that are out there that that aren't aware of what we do in the early and mid career mastermind groups, we we bring in guest mentors for every session to give insights on industry insights on background insights on technology things that are going on and um, all of these members like Iman to the person, show up for these conversations and they hold it up. They have great questions, they really dig into it with these mentors and hopefully they're getting a lot out of it. So, iman, thank you for being a member of the Mastermind Group and thanks you for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you very much, Jeff, for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:Absolutely All right. Everybody. Thanks for joining us today. We'll be back again next week with another edition. I'm continually recording with our Mastermind members, with some of our guest mentors as well, and with KP Ready, so we'll be back with another episode of KP Unpacked next week. Thanks everybody.