London, UK, March 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Construction AI, the first project management platform built from the ground up with artificial intelligence at its core, has launched into production targeting the 98% of UK construction firms that have been priced out of enterprise technology.
The platform was designed and built entirely through collaboration with AI tools — by a construction professional who has never written a line of code.
Steve McKenna is a Chartered Builder (MCIOB), Director of a Chartered Building Company — and a 30-year industry veteran. His expertise spans quantity surveying, contract administration, and construction dispute resolution. His experience in software development: none.
Yet the platform he has built is not a prototype, a chatbot wrapper, or a proof of concept. It is a production-grade, multi-tenant SaaS application comprising over 700,000 lines of code, 186 database tables with row-level security, 596 API routes, and 60+ AI-powered tools spanning 22 modules — from drawings management and tender analysis to cost control, contract administration, and programme tracking.
The Problem
UK construction is a £170bn+ industry where the vast majority of firms employ fewer than 20 people. Enterprise project management platforms have transformed how major contractors operate, but at price points of £10,000–£50,000+ per year, they remain inaccessible to the specialists, subcontractors, and small main contractors who form the backbone of the industry. The result: most firms still run projects on spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups, and paper filing systems, while their larger competitors pull further ahead.
The Solution — AI at the Core, Not Bolted On
Unlike legacy construction technology that retrofits AI onto existing systems, Construction AI was architected around advanced AI capabilities from day one. This is not a traditional platform with an AI feature added — it is an AI-native application where intelligence is embedded into every workflow.
The platform delivers capabilities previously unavailable to smaller contractors:
- Semantic search woven through the platform's core — every document, every app-created record, every project item is embedded into the tenant's own isolated database, enabling AI that genuinely comprehends construction language, drawing references, and specification clauses in context. This is not keyword matching bolted onto a search bar — it is intelligence running through the entire system. Crucially, each tenant operates on a fully isolated database and storage infrastructure, meaning the AI works exclusively within that organisation's project data. No irrelevant noise, no cross-tenant contamination — just fast, precise, contextually aware search across everything that matters to that contractor.
- Structured AI workflows that generate compliant RAMS (Risk Assessment and Method Statements) and construction programmes in minutes rather than days, following industry-standard methodology.
- An industry knowledge base trained on UK construction standards, regulations, CDM requirements, and best practice — enabling genuinely agentic, sector-specific AI responses grounded in how construction actually works, not generic chatbot answers.
- OCR-powered drawing management that can read, extract, and intelligently catalogue construction drawings and specifications automatically.
Every module is underpinned by AI that has been purpose-built for construction — understanding uk contract structures, CDM regulations, building element classifications, building regulations, and the real workflows that contractors use daily.
The Method — A New Model for Software Creation
The development story is as significant as the platform itself. Every line of code, every database schema, every architectural decision was produced through a working partnership between a domain expert who knows exactly what the industry needs, and an AI capable of turning that knowledge into production-grade software.
The technical architecture reflects patterns that experienced engineers would recognise: true database and storage separation per tenant — each organisation gets its own dedicated database and file storage, not a shared environment with row-level filtering — multi-tenant isolation enforced at three independent layers, BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) API management with encryption at rest, circuit breakers for AI resilience, non-blocking embedding pipelines, and progressive rendering for large datasets. All of it emerged from natural language conversations.
This raises a genuine question about the future of software development: if a domain expert with deep industry knowledge can build enterprise-grade software through AI collaboration, what does that mean for the traditional cycle of requirements gathering, development teams, sprints, and six-figure budgets? The barrier between "knowing exactly what an industry needs" and "being able to build it" has been removed.
Pricing That Reflects the Mission
Construction AI is offering for a limited time an introductory founding member lifetime license for two seats at £2,000 — a fraction of enterprise alternatives and deliberately positioned to be accessible to the firms that need it most. That pricing is only possible because the platform was built through AI collaboration rather than a traditional development process.
First to Market
Construction AI believes it is the first full project management platform in the UK construction technology sector to be built entirely AI-native — with artificial intelligence embedded into the architecture from inception rather than added retrospectively. The combination of deep industry expertise from a practising Chartered Construction Manager with AI-first architecture represents a new category in construction technology.
About Construction AI
Construction AI is the first AI-native project management platform built specifically for UK construction SMEs. Designed from the ground up with artificial intelligence at its core, it delivers enterprise-grade project management — including semantic document search, AI-generated RAMS and programmes, intelligent tender analysis, and a construction-specific knowledge base — at a price point accessible to firms with under 20 employees. Built by a contractor, for contractors.
Press Inquiries
Stephen Mckenna
stephen [at] constructionai.io
07590044441
https://constructionai.io
49-51 Bancroft
Hitchin
Hertfordshire
SG5 1LL
