- Bricks & Bytes Bulletin
- Posts
- Kane Group's 10-Year Digital Transformation: Why Culture Beats Tools
Kane Group's 10-Year Digital Transformation: Why Culture Beats Tools
Owen Drury
October 22, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 16 minutes
Want to get your message in front of 2,083 highly engaged innovation leaders? Check out our sponsorship offers.
UPCOMING
Bricks & Bytes LIVE at SpeckleCon 2025 - 07th November 2025, London.
It’s impossible not to get sucked into the AI hype. BUT based on thousands of hours of conversations we’ve had with industry leaders, we know 80-90% of these companies are nowhere AI-ready due to messy data.
Cue Speckle.
Global teams are using Speckle to transform their data into a state that makes it actually usable and ready for the AI hype. No more “Garbage In Garbage Out”.
Join us at Speckle’s flagship conference - SpeckleCon 2025 - to see our very special live-stream and hear from AI leaders at Gensler, Haskoning, Suffolk Construction and more.
Read more here.
And use our discount code “BRICKSBYTES” for 10% off your ticket.
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
Kane Group's 10-Year Digital Transformation: Why Culture Beats Tools
Most construction and AEC firms treat digital transformation as a checkbox. They invest in software, implement new platforms, and expect operational change to follow. But after a decade of watching this play out across the industry, the pattern is clear: technology adoption alone rarely drives meaningful business results.
The real winners aren't the ones with the fanciest tools. They're the ones who fundamentally rebuilt how their organizations make decisions, manage information, and execute projects. One MEP contractor's 10-year journey reveals exactly what that actually looks like.
Gary Cowan, Head of Digital Construction at Kane Group, has spent over a decade watching his 200-person MEP contractor evolve from treating BIM as a checkbox exercise to running 10 to 12 simultaneous projects across multiple cities.
The transformation wasn't driven by flashier software or more features. It was driven by something far more fundamental: a cultural shift in how the organization thinks about technology adoption.
His journey offers a masterclass in what real digital transformation requires. And spoiler: it has nothing to do with the tools themselves.
Kane Group – Banbridge Head Office, Scarva Road, Northern Ireland. Credit: Kane Group
TL;DR
Most AEC firms think “digital transformation” means buying software. Kane Group’s decade-long journey proves otherwise.
Key takeaways:
Culture > Tools: Real transformation comes from changing how teams think, not what software they use.
Discipline wins: Digital control must be maintained from start to finish, not just at project kickoff.
People drive change: Success depends on training and multiple adoption pathways, not forcing uniformity.
Alignment is everything: The enemy isn’t bad tech. It’s disconnected data and misaligned teams.
Next frontier: Kane is now moving into AI, XR, and real-time decision systems, turning 10 years of learning into intelligent operations.
Bottom line: Digital transformation in construction isn’t a sprint. It’s a decade-long culture shift and the only real differentiator left.
The Adoption Paradox
Most AEC firms make the same mistake: they treat technology adoption as a one-time event rather than an operating shift.
What this looks like in practice:
Purchase software
Roll it out across the organization
Declare victory
•Move on
When Kane Group first encountered BIM over a decade ago, they fell into the same trap. Technology existed. But it wasn't driving operational change.
"It was really only producing drawings and coordination," Gary recalls. "It was hit and miss because they weren't using it as it was intended."
The real issue: Most leaders conflate purchasing software with transforming operations. These are entirely different things.
From Layering to Integration
Stop treating technology as an output tool. Treat it as the operational spine that drives decisions across your entire organization.
Kane Group's breakthrough came when they stopped asking, "How do we use BIM?" and started asking "How do we build our entire operation around digital information?"
Kane Group delivering MEP services & prefabricated energy centre at Lewisham Gateway, London
A single digital model became the source of truth for design, manufacturing, logistics, and site execution. Coordinate-based set-out eliminated human measurement error. Real-time data meant changes propagated instantly across teams.
The result: Kane scaled from one to two projects annually to ten to twelve simultaneous projects.
That's not a software win. That's an operating model win.
The Discipline Problem
Establishing digital control at project start is one phase. Maintaining it through completion is another, and it's significantly harder.
Most leaders treat implementation as a moment. But digital discipline decays. Mid-project, changes go undocumented. Communication protocols slip. The house of cards collapses.
What happens when you lose discipline mid-project:
Changes go undocumented
Finance doesn't adjust forecasts
QS doesn't update takeoffs
The site discovers the issue during installation
Rework multiplies
Costs balloon
Gary describes it this way:
"It's dangerous. You go in and establish control, and the company leaves. But as the building progresses and builds, sometimes that control is lost. It needs to be maintained through the whole thing, or else it starts to fall apart. It's like a house of cards. If you start messing about with it later on, it can fall apart very quickly."
Your technology is only as good as the sustained protocols you build around it. Implementation budgets should skew heavily toward change management and sustained discipline, not licensing fees.
This is the hard part. It's also where the real value lives.
The People Layer
Adoption failures are rarely about the technology. They're almost always about people.
Construction teams aren't homogeneous:
People in their twenties working alongside people in their sixties
English speakers and non-English speakers
Digital natives and skeptics
Credit: Digital Construction Week
Kane Group designed multiple pathways. Some team members work through tablets and headsets. Others accomplish the same tasks on screens. Both are adoption. Neither is compromise.
You cannot force cultural change. You can only create conditions where people choose it. According to World Economic Forum research on construction digital transformation, the construction sector remains human-centric, with training and upskilling being vital so that workers can effectively utilize new technologies.
Data Silos: The Silent Killer
Most digital transformations stall at the organizational layer, not the technology layer.
Manufacturing makes a component change. Finance doesn't update the budget. QS doesn't adjust the takeoff. The site discovers the undocumented change during installation. Rework multiplies. Costs balloon.
The root cause isn't lack of software integration. It's a lack of organizational alignment on a single source of truth.
Gary frames the challenge differently:
"Real-time data is a thing. If someone makes a call and that decision is made from one part of the team, once that button is pressed, all the team are aware of it. But if you don't do that original job, you don't understand there are so many complications down the line."
The hard truth:
You can buy integration tools
You cannot buy the mindset shift from departmental to enterprise thinking
Integration requires cultural buy-in, not just software implementation
Kane Group's current focus is building a unified data thread connecting design, operations, and finance teams in real time. When this fully materializes, it represents the step toward a single source of truth across every phase of a project, eliminating the cascading failures that plague most contractors.
The Next Evolution: From Coordination to Intelligent Decision Systems
Kane Group's 10-year journey isn't static. It's accelerating into new territory.
The company has recently signed a major project pushing XR and AR to their absolute limits across two square miles and 12 to 15 buildings. Teams are now using real-time mixed reality headsets to virtually walk projects and resolve issues in minutes instead of weeks.
Kane Trials Augmented Reality (AR) Technology
Simultaneously, Kane formed an AI Advisory Board to explore generative design, predictive modeling, and data automation. The goal: extend the company's transformation from digital coordination to intelligent decision systems.
According to industry research on AI in BIM, AI-driven clash detection and resolution streamline the design phase and minimize costly rework during construction, while integration of AI with BIM facilitates data-driven decision-making and predictive analysis.
From Services to Digital Offerings
After a decade of refining its digital practice internally, Kane is preparing to extend this expertise to clients. The company is developing turnkey digital solutions: scan the building, produce a high-grade model, retrofit the entire project, and hand over the completed work.
What began as a compliance exercise has evolved into a new revenue stream. "We're sparks and plumbers," Gary notes. "But we're technology specialists and experts now as well."
The Real Lesson
Technology transformation in construction takes a decade because culture change takes a decade.
The contractors winning this era are the ones who commit to sustained discipline, organizational alignment, and the hard work of changing how decisions flow.
Everything else, the tools and software and features, is secondary to that commitment.
The question isn't whether to transform.
It's whether you're willing to do the unglamorous work of maintaining it.
Check out the early release episode with Gary Cowan here 👇👇👇
WEEKLY MUSINGS
Promotion, ConTech M&A, Credit Decay
Celebrating a true success story
The new M&A focus
The silent killer of startups
SPECIAL OFFERS
The GTM Bundle
Together, they give you the full GTM playbook for construction tech from building trust-first marketing to structuring your sales motion, pricing models, and land-and-expand strategy.
 |  |
Individually, each guide is $100. Today, you can get both for $150.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Premium Insights
More Insights
Reports and Case Studies
Most Popular Episodes
Super Series
OUR SPONSORS
 | Archdesk - The #1 construction management software for growing companies. Manage your projects from Tender to Handover. |
 | BuildVision - Streamlining the construction supply chain with a unified platform for contractors, manufacturers, and stakeholders. |