Buildings 2.0 Library
Conversations on the future of the built environment
81 episodes of the Buildings 2.0 podcast, each bound as a short book: the ideas, the numbers and the lines worth keeping.
Season 2, Episode 33 /Jul 21, 2026
AI is just another tool. Use it like one.
Luke Prescott, Bluebeam
Jul 21, 2026 /AI & Automation
AI is just another tool. Use it like one.
Luke Prescott is a senior director of product management at Bluebeam, the PDF markup and collaboration software that estimators, superintendents and engineers already have open every day. He shipped Bluebeam Max, which puts AI inside that tool. His is a builder's view of practical AI: solve the problems customers already know they have.
Luke Prescott, Senior Director of Product Management, Bluebeam
In this conversation
Luke's separation of what is real from what is a demo in construction AI.
Why PDF survived every wave from paper to CAD to BIM, and what that says about how the industry communicates.
The accuracy-versus-time trade his customers make: 90 percent of the time saved is worth checking the remainder.
Where offline and sensitive-infrastructure use cases push the product, and how usage-based pricing changes the business.
This is an incredible time to be doing what we're doing, to be either offering construction technology or building, designing.
Luke Prescott
Chapters
Practical AI at Bluebeam
Bluebeam's approach to AI that works on Monday.
2D, 3D and the PDF
The stubborn persistence of the PDF in a 3D industry.
Agents that do the clicks
Agents that do the clicking so people can do the coordinating.
Usage-based licensing
How pricing changes when software does the work.
The McKinsey chart
Whether construction deserves its reputation as the least digitized industry.
By the numbers
Annual labor-productivity growth, 1995 to 2014
Luke is asked about the chart every startup cites. This is the chart.
Source: McKinsey Global Institute, Reinventing Construction (2017) ↗Let's build an agent that will do that and get those people back communicating with their trade partners.
Luke Prescott
Takeaways
Customers with businesses hundreds of years old want AI to solve known problems, like flagging two elements at different heights before ducting has to be rerouted.
In Max, AI-generated markups appear in a draft state the person can see, undo and correct, because in construction the difference between right and wrong is real money and sometimes lives.
PDF is just another communication tool, and AI is another one. What lasts is people caring about the intent of others and being good at a craft.
I view PDF as just another tool as part of the communication and coordination ethos of design and construction, but AI will be a tool that fuels that into the future.
Luke Prescott