by Ahmed Hagras Ahmed.Hagras@uwe.ac.uk
On Friday, the 19th of June 2026, UWE Bristol will host Digital Construction and AI: Who’s in Control? The third edition of a growing annual conference series that has become an increasingly valuable platform for dialogue across the built environment. Taking place at Bristol Business School, UWE Bristol, Frenchay Campus, the event will bring together voices from industry, academia, research, and the next generation of built environment professionals for a timely conversation about the future of digital construction.
The conference is organised through the MSc Building Information Modelling (BIM) programme at UWE Bristol, with support from CABER – the Centre for Advanced Built Environment Research. CABER’s work spans interdisciplinary built environment research, with a strong commitment to sustainability, innovation, and the digital transformation of the built environment. That makes it a particularly fitting home for a conference focused on the opportunities, risks, and implications of AI in construction.
Over the last two years, this conference series has evolved into much more than a one-day event. It has provided a space for researchers, practitioners, professional bodies, students, and industry leaders to come together to challenge assumptions, share practical insights, and examine the sector’s changing direction. Last year’s conference, Digital Construction Climate Nexus 2025, focused attention on the relationship between digital construction and climate action. The CABER blog described a programme that combined research, knowledge transfer, industry contribution, and doctoral engagement, reinforcing the value of connecting academic thinking with practice-based innovation.
This year’s theme shifts the focus to a different, but equally urgent, issue: control. As AI becomes more embedded in digital workflows, design support, information management, compliance checking, and decision-making, it is beginning to reshape how choices are made across the built environment. The question is no longer only what AI can do, but also what it means for human judgment, accountability, responsibility, governance, and professional practice. The conference is designed to explore those questions critically, and to do so across both industry and academia.
The programme will include opening contributions from UWE, CABER, and key professional networks, followed by a live debate between industry and academia on the conference theme. In the afternoon, a series of breakout rooms will allow for deeper discussion around research, standards, interoperability, inclusion, innovation, and applied case studies from practice. The event is not intended as a passive listening exercise; rather, it is designed as a forum for discussion, challenge, exchange, and the development of new connections.
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