The Architect Who Says We Build Slower Than Our Grandparents

What if everything you thought you knew about progress in the building industry was wrong? What if, despite all our digital tools, sophisticated software, and talk of a high-tech revolution, we actually build slower than we did in the 1930s? It’s a startling thought, and one that lies at the heart of a fascinating conversation with Dale Sinclair, a man who describes himself as a “pragmatic futurist.”

For 35 years, Dale has worked as an architect, but his journey has taken him from the muddy boots of a building site to the cutting edge of digital innovation at global engineering firm WSP. He has witnessed the industry’s evolution firsthand, and he’s not afraid to challenge its most deeply held beliefs. In a recent episode of the Project Flux podcast, Dale shared a series of contrarian viewpoints that will make you question everything you thought you knew about construction, AI, and the future of our built world.

From Drawing Board to Digital Disruption

Dale’s story isn’t one of a tech evangelist who parachuted into the construction world. It’s the story of a seasoned architect who spent two decades with his feet firmly on the ground, designing and delivering complex projects like corporate headquarters, shopping centres, and hospitals. “It was a brilliant learning curve,” he recalls, “being on site all of the time, you know, just really seeing how construction works.” He laments that this hands-on experience is something many younger professionals miss out on today, a casualty of modern procurement models that separate the designer from the builder.

This deep-rooted understanding of the physical realities of construction gives his later embrace of digital technology a unique weight. After running his own practice, he moved back into the world of large-scale firms, first at AECOM and now as the Head of Digital Innovation at WSP. It’s a career path that has mirrored the industry’s own slow, and sometimes reluctant, dance with technology. He remembers, with a touch of humour, staging a competition 30 years ago between a human on a drawing board and a CAD operator, just to convince his colleagues that the future was digital. It’s a reminder that the cultural battles have always been fiercer than the technological ones.

The Counter-Intuitive Truths We Ignore

Listening to Dale is like taking a bracing walk through the assumptions that prop up the construction industry. He doesn’t just offer opinions; he presents paradigm-shifting insights that, once heard, are hard to ignore. One of the most powerful is his assertion that the industry is terrible at making decisions. “A staircase takes 150 decisions,” he points out, and most of these are made from memory, leading to the endless stream of RFIs (Requests for Information) that plague construction sites. We record what was decided, he argues, but almost never why. This single failure, he believes, is a massive barrier to progress and a crucial area where AI can help.

Another sacred cow he takes aim at is the idea that “every building is a prototype.” It’s a common refrain used to explain why construction can’t be more like manufacturing. Dale disagrees. “The whole point about construction is you take thousands of small things to site and you put them together the same way,” he explains. The problem isn’t that every building is unique, but that we design with tiny components instead of a “catalogue of much bigger things.” This is the core of his “kit of parts” philosophy: designing the minimum number of easily transportable components to make on-site assembly faster and more efficient. It’s a shift from designing for construction to designing for manufacturing, a seemingly subtle but profound change in mindset.

Learning from the Renaissance and the Empire State

To illustrate his points, Dale draws on a rich tapestry of historical examples. He argues that the last true paradigm shift in our industry wasn’t the arrival of computers, but the invention of the Bessemer process for steel, the lift, and electric lighting in the late 19th century. These system-level innovations, he says, are what enabled the construction of modern cities. He points to the Empire State Building, which we still can’t build faster than, as a testament to the power of repetition and on-site learning – a lesson we’ve somehow forgotten.

He also uses the example of the Florentine architects of the Renaissance to show how powerful old paradigms can be. The invention of the scale drawing was so revolutionary that it became ingrained in the profession’s psyche. Even today, with the ability to create full-size 3D models, the industry defaults to producing 2D scale drawings. “We were forced ultimately to do scale drawings,” he says of the early days of CAD, highlighting the immense cultural inertia that holds back technological progress. It’s a powerful metaphor for the challenges we face today with AI: the tools are here, but our minds are still stuck in old patterns.

The AI Paradox and the Future of Work

In an era where AI is both hyped and feared, Dale offers a refreshingly nuanced perspective. He sees AI not as a tool for simple optimisation, but as the engine for a fundamental paradigm shift. The real challenge, he argues, is not the technology itself, but our willingness to change our processes. He also raises a fascinating question about the future of work. If AI takes away the “drudgery” and the “grunt work,” what is left? “Only the hard, hard stuff is left,” he muses. “Can we actually work seven and a half hours a day of really hard stuff?” It’s a thought-provoking question that pushes the conversation beyond the usual narratives of job displacement.

This is where his concept of moving from projects to programmes of work becomes critical. A single, unique project is a difficult environment in which to learn and apply new technologies like AI. But a programme of multiple, similar projects creates the economy of scale needed to introduce new science, new materials, and new processes. It allows for the rigorous recording of decisions that can then feed the AI agents of the future. This, he believes, is the path to a future where we can deliver better buildings, with less carbon, more quickly and effectively.

Hear the Full Story

This article only scratches the surface of a conversation that is brimming with insight, historical context, and predictions for the future. In the full podcast episode, you’ll hear Dale talk in more detail about his “kit of parts” approach, the specific challenges of implementing change programmes on live projects, and how a chance book purchase in an airport departure lounge reshaped his entire approach to his profession. He also answers the question he wishes he’d been asked: “Where do you see things being in ten years’ time?”

If you are interested in the future of architecture, engineering, and construction, or if you are simply fascinated by the process of innovation and the challenge of changing established systems, this is a conversation you cannot afford to miss. Prepare to have your assumptions challenged and your perspective shifted. Listen to the full episode with Dale Sinclair on the Project Flux podcast to hear more.