John Fish created New England’s largest general contractor, Suffolk, on the backs of laborers. Now he’s betting the future is filled with hardwired hard hats and AI foremen.
A 63-year-old construction industry lifer, Fish made a fortune building high-rises from Massachusetts to California. He’s worth $2.3 billion, thanks to his 100% stake in $6 billion (revenue) Suffolk, the Boston-based construction firm which in the last 20 years has built more than 150 million square feet of commercial real estate in the U.S., including much of Boston’s skyline and hotels in Los Angeles and Miami.
Now he’s looking to disrupt the $2.1 trillion industry that made him so successful. His Suffolk Technologies division is building new construction-focused software products, some of which it’s spinning off into separate ventures, while his venture investing arm has taken stakes in dozens of ambitious construction tech startups that do everything from 3D printing of walls to manufacturing emission-free portable power generators.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2024/02/20/watch-out-workers-john-fish-and-his-ai-is-coming-for-blue-collar-jobs-too/?sh=4e81a84e41df
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A 63-year-old construction industry lifer, Fish made a fortune building high-rises from Massachusetts to California. He’s worth $2.3 billion, thanks to his 100% stake in $6 billion (revenue) Suffolk, the Boston-based construction firm which in the last 20 years has built more than 150 million square feet of commercial real estate in the U.S., including much of Boston’s skyline and hotels in Los Angeles and Miami.
Now he’s looking to disrupt the $2.1 trillion industry that made him so successful. His Suffolk Technologies division is building new construction-focused software products, some of which it’s spinning off into separate ventures, while his venture investing arm has taken stakes in dozens of ambitious construction tech startups that do everything from 3D printing of walls to manufacturing emission-free portable power generators.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2024/02/20/watch-out-workers-john-fish-and-his-ai-is-coming-for-blue-collar-jobs-too/?sh=4e81a84e41df
Forbes Daily Briefing shares the best of Forbes reporting on wealth, business, entrepreneurship, leadership and more. Tune in every day, seven days a week, to hear a new story. Subscribe here: https://art19.com/shows/forbes-daily-briefing
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
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Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.
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TechTranscript
00:00 Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Thursday, February 22nd.
00:05 Today on Forbes, this new billionaire is building an army of robot construction workers.
00:13 On a freezing December morning, John Fish is outside, standing near the edge on the
00:18 33rd floor of South Station Tower, a half-finished skyscraper in downtown Boston.
00:24 He points to a bright red crane below as it carries a pallet of metal panels through the
00:29 frigid air and explains his plans to automate it.
00:33 In a distinct Boston accent, Fish says, "There's a camera on the crane itself that watches
00:39 the boom and sees it swing and registers all that information.
00:43 How can you get more pics per hour in a safe manner?
00:46 We've got to be very, very careful."
00:50 Down on the busier 14th floor, over the relentless thumping of pneumatic nail guns and the din
00:55 of grinding steel, Fish describes how the robotic revolution is changing his construction
01:00 sites.
01:01 His construction company, Suffolk, is introducing two-foot tall machines, think miniature army
01:06 tanks, that zoom around and print blueprints and layouts for workers to follow, speeding
01:12 construction and reducing errors.
01:14 Fish says, "We're going to be putting it on all our jobs."
01:20 Fish is a 63-year-old construction industry lifer.
01:23 He made a fortune building high-rises from Massachusetts to California.
01:28 He's worth $2.3 billion, thanks to his 100% stake in the $6 billion in revenue, Suffolk.
01:35 The Boston-based construction firm, in the last 20 years, has built more than 150 million
01:40 square feet of commercial real estate in the U.S., including much of Boston's skyline
01:45 and hotels in Los Angeles and Miami.
01:49 Now he's looking to disrupt the $2.1 trillion industry that made him so successful.
01:54 His Suffolk Technologies division is building new construction-focused software products,
01:59 some of which it's spinning off into separate ventures, while his venture investing arm
02:04 has taken stakes in dozens of ambitious construction tech startups that do everything from 3D printing
02:09 of walls to manufacturing emission-free portable power generators.
02:15 While taking Forbes on a tour of Suffolk's ultra-modern headquarters in Roxbury, a working-class
02:19 neighborhood in southern Boston, Fish says, "Our industry is the only industry in the
02:25 world where productivity has gone down in the last 50 years as opposed to going up.
02:30 Think about the Empire State Building.
02:32 It was built in the 1930s and took 14 months to build.
02:35 Today, it would take five years."
02:39 One reason is that many in the industry want nothing to do with robotics or AI.
02:44 According to a report from McKinsey, the general contractors, subcontractors, unions, and multi-billion-dollar
02:51 management firms that run construction sites have "entrenched analog ways of working."
02:58 Brent Thielman, an equity analyst at DA Davidson who covers engineering and construction, says,
03:04 "Technology is accepted at a very slow rate in this industry, and that's probably going
03:09 to be the same case for the foreseeable future.
03:11 At the end of the day, it is a labor market."
03:15 In fact, it's a labor market that has long struggled to attract enough laborers.
03:19 There were many more construction job openings in 2022 than any previous year in the 23 years
03:25 that the Associated Builders and Contractors, also known as ABC, has been keeping track.
03:31 Plus, costs are up.
03:33 Wages in construction rose 34 percent between 2012 and 2022, according to government statistics,
03:39 while input costs—think steel, cement, and wood—have jumped nearly 40 percent since
03:44 early 2020, per ABC.
03:47 Fish is convinced that robots will be key to solving the labor shortage and keeping
03:52 costs down.
03:53 Putting robots on job sites is no small order.
03:56 There will be regulatory scrutiny, client skepticism, financial pressures, and pushback
04:01 from human workers.
04:02 But Fish insists it's necessary regardless of the obstacles.
04:07 The other half of the equation is data.
04:09 Fish says Suffolk already has its own "special sauce" after a decade-long investment in
04:14 analytics, which the firm uses to track progress and manage costs at its 100-odd active job
04:20 sites.
04:21 To spice up that special sauce, Suffolk has been reinvesting its earnings into new technologies
04:26 and products that it's developing under Suffolk Technologies, which Fish set up in
04:31 2019.
04:32 He has spun off one product—a cost-estimating software called Edify—into its own company,
04:38 with plans for a second—Edge—a job site planning tool—this year.
04:43 If you want to learn more about John Fish, look out for our Forbes Reports video.
04:48 For full coverage, check out John Hyatt's piece on Forbes.com.
04:53 This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.
04:55 Thanks for tuning in.
04:56 [MUSIC]