Innovators

The job site is
getting smarter.

Drones mapping excavations. Autonomous dozers grading to the millimeter. AI reading soil reports and writing RFIs. This is where heavy civil is going — discuss it, share it, build it.

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What's changing

The technology reshaping heavy civil.

Drones & UAV
Aerial surveying, photogrammetry, and progress tracking
LiDAR drones cutting survey time from days to hours. Volume calculations from flight data. Real-time cut/fill vs. design models. DJI, Skydio, senseFly — what's actually working on job sites.
Discuss →
Autonomous Equipment
GPS machine control, autonomous dozers, and robotic excavation
Komatsu Smart Construction. Cat autonomous trucks. Trimble and Leica machine control retrofits. How grade control is changing what operators need to know.
Discuss →
AI on the Job Site
AI for estimating, scheduling, RFIs, and field decisions
AI reading geotech reports and flagging issues. Generating RFI responses from spec sheets. Automated schedule updates from daily reports. What works vs. what's vaporware.
Discuss →
Underground Tech
HDD, pipe bursting, CIPP lining, and trenchless innovation
HDD with real-time bore path correction. CIPP lining without dig-up. Microtunneling on urban projects. When trenchless beats open cut on cost — and when it doesn't.
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Software & Tools
Project management, takeoff, BIM, and open-source contech
Procore vs. Autodesk vs. building your own. AGTEK for earthwork. BlueBeam in the field. What the IIJA is doing to software adoption. Open source tools that actually get used.
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Techniques & Methods
Digging methods, compaction, pipe installation, and field knowledge
The tricks nobody teaches in the office. Rock breaking vs. ripping. Compaction in tight spaces. Water management in deep excavations. Share what you've figured out the hard way.
Discuss →

Worth watching

Construction tech on video.

The best way to understand what's actually happening in the field. From autonomous equipment demos to underground installation technique breakdowns.

Komatsu Smart Construction
Autonomous dozer grading — GPS machine control in action
Drone Surveying & Photogrammetry
LiDAR mapping and volume calculations from flight data
Horizontal Directional Drilling
Trenchless pipe installation — process, equipment, and applications

Open discussions

What the industry is talking about.

These live in GitHub Discussions — open to anyone. No account required to read. Sign in with GitHub to contribute.

What drone + software stack are you using for volume calculations?
DJI Terra vs. DroneDeploy vs. Pix4D — real job site comparisons from people running the numbers
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Has anyone used AI to write or review RFIs on a real project?
Share your prompt, your workflow, or your horror story — what actually saved time vs. what created more work
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GPS machine control — worth the retrofit cost on a mid-size excavator?
Trimble, Leica, or Topcon — payback period, operator learning curve, what breaks in the field
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CIPP lining vs. pipe bursting — when does each make sense?
Diameter, condition, traffic, ROW — walk through your decision process with real project examples
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What field software is actually getting used by crews (not just PMs)?
Tablets, apps, daily reports, safety checklists — what sticks and what crews ignore
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Share a technique — something that saved production or avoided a rework
Field knowledge that doesn't live in a spec book. The stuff worth passing on to the next generation of crews
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Got something worth sharing?

A drone setup that cut your survey budget in half. An AI tool that actually worked. A technique nobody's documenting anywhere. This is the place. The discussion is open source — just like the platform.

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