Groundbreak 2026: What Construction Leaders Should Look for in the AI Era

Groundbreak 2026

What Construction Leaders Should Look for in the AI Era

Groundbreak returns to Orlando on October 21-22, and this year one subject will be impossible to avoid: AI. Procore has built the whole event around it, from the theme (“Build and win together in the AI era”) to the keynotes, with CEO Ajei Gopal opening Day 1.

The Jones team at Groundbreak 2025. This year: Booth 1110.

With almost every vendor in the Expo Hall saying “AI-powered,” the useful question is no longer “Who has AI?” It is “Where is AI actually making a decision I can trust?” Here is what we would pay attention to, and how to make the most of two days in Orlando.

Context

What Procore Is Signaling This Year

On its Q2 2026 earnings call, Procore described the shift from a system of record to a system of intelligence: software that moves work forward instead of just storing it. Procore AI now ships with 20 construction agents that can query specs, drawings, submittals and contracts, and in July Procore agreed to acquire DroneDeploy for about $845 million, extending that intelligence to the jobsite.

Closer to the back office, Procore Pay can make insurance compliance a payment requirement on a commitment, holding the payment until it is met.

Why it matters for the Expo Hall: the platform your teams already use is getting better at storing, surfacing and gating information. The value of any partner now sits in what it adds on top: interpretation, judgement and a decision Procore can act on.

Part 1

Look Beyond the AI Demo

“AI-powered” tells you very little about whether a product will create value. When you see an AI solution, ask:

Six questions for every AI vendor

• What specific manual work does this eliminate?
• What data is the AI using to make its decision?
• Does it extract and summarize, or can it actually interpret?
• What happens when the answer is ambiguous?
• How is accuracy measured?
• What action happens after the AI produces an answer?

This matters most in safety, financial controls, risk and insurance compliance, where a fast answer is useful but a fast wrong answer is expensive. The winners will be the companies that turn AI into dependable operational outcomes.

Part 2

Connected Workflows Beat Another Piece of Software

The construction stack is already crowded. Another login or isolated data source can solve one problem while creating another. So ask every vendor: “What can my team actually do without leaving Procore?” Look for technology that becomes part of the workflow rather than sitting next to it:

The less your teams re-enter, reconcile or chase between systems, the more likely the technology gets adopted, and the more useful your data becomes.

Part 3

Watch the Shift From Automation to Decisions

For a decade, construction technology digitized processes: paper became software, reminders became workflows. AI goes further. It is starting to decide what the information means and what should happen next.

Take subcontractor insurance. Most systems can tell you a COI was received, log its expiration date and flip a status when it lapses. That is tracking. Verification is a different job: does the coverage meet the contract, and do the endorsements behind the certificate hold up?

A common example

A sub provides a CG 20 10 for ongoing operations but not the CG 20 37 for completed operations. The COI looks fine, the status reads compliant, and the GC is exposed on the defect claim that surfaces years after closeout. A policy cancelled mid-term looks identical on paper.

A system built for decisions catches the gap, flags the exception and triggers the next action. And when that status is gating a payment, someone has to be able to defend it.

Part 4

Ask Where Humans Still Matter

The question for every AI vendor is “When does a human get involved?” Not because every decision needs review. AI should handle routine extraction, comparison and classification at a scale people cannot match.

But construction runs on exceptions. Contracts vary, requirements conflict, documentation is incomplete, and insurance alone runs on more than a thousand endorsement forms where the legal nuance is exactly what an automated read can miss. The interesting models pair automation with a clear approach to confidence, exceptions and accountability. At Jones we call it AI speed plus specialist expertise: automate what should be automated, escalate what needs judgement.

Part 5

Make the Expo Hall a Working Session

Give the hall its own block in your agenda, and arrive with two or three problems you actually want to solve. For example: “We are stuck in reopen loops: request a COI, get a non-compliant one, email the sub, wait, repeat.” Or: “Our project teams have no visibility into risk inside Procore.” Then use them as your filter. Instead of “What does your product do?”, ask “Show me how you would solve this.”

A few more habits that pay off: protect time to talk to other contractors about what they actually deployed, leave gaps in the schedule for the conversations between sessions, and close each day with three takeaways. What did we learn, what should we investigate, what should we change.

Why It Matters Now

Insurance Compliance Belongs on Your List

The 2026 insurance market is split. Marsh’s Global Insurance Market Index for Q2 2026 shows global commercial rates down 6% and property down 12%, while casualty rose 2% globally and 7% in the US on claims severity and litigation pressure.

Source: Marsh Global Insurance Market Index, Q2 2026.

Premium relief in some lines, continued pressure exactly where subcontractor risk transfer lives: general liability, auto, excess and the endorsements that make additional insured status real. And as insurance status starts holding or releasing payments inside Procore, the quality of the decision behind that status stops being an administrative detail.

Where Jones Fits

Insurance Compliance That Starts, and Ends, in Procore

Jones combines purpose-built AI, insurance expertise and a deeply embedded Procore integration to turn complex insurance evidence into compliance decisions your team can act on, inside the workflows it already uses. Teams request COIs from Procore, including straight from Commitments; Jones collects, reviews and follows up with subs and brokers; compliance status flows back into Procore.

Keep reading: Jones + ProcoreJones VS CompetitorsJones Policy Review