GEFIE 3 - AI Hackathon : OCC Construction

Client: OCC Construction

Event: GEFIE 3 - AI Hackathon

Industry: Construction

Date: 17th December 2025

Consultant: Rufus Curnow, Samiul Hoque

How OCC Construction Turned AI Experimentation into Practical AI Construction Workflows

OCC Construction partnered with Dixon AI to deliver a GEFIE 3 AI Hackathon in Ireland, bringing together teams from across the business to turn earlier AI learning into working prototypes. The day marked the transition from exploration to applied innovation. Grounded in the AI Transformation Playbook, the session focused on collaborative experimentation, structured iteration and real-world workflow improvement within a construction context.

OCC had already progressed through earlier stages of the transformation journey, building organisational AI literacy and beginning to test tools within day-to-day roles. The Hackathon provided the next logical step within the Seven Stages model: moving from individual experimentation to coordinated, team-based innovation.

Within the AI Transformation Playbook, GEFIE 3 sits in Stage 5, Collaborative AI Experimentation. At this point, literacy is no longer the constraint. The challenge becomes focus, structure and alignment. For a construction business operating across complex projects and stakeholder networks, this meant identifying where AI could remove friction, reduce duplication and support better information flow.

Objectives of the Event

The objectives of the Hackathon were clear:

• Convert existing AI curiosity and experimentation into structured team projects

• Apply AI tools to real construction workflows rather than theoretical use cases

• Build cross-functional collaboration around shared operational challenges

• Identify emerging AI talent within the organisation

• Create a visible pipeline of prototypes ready for further refinement or embedding
  

What Happened During the Event

The day brought together participants who had already developed foundational AI literacy. Working in small teams, they refined previously identified ideas and moved quickly into building and testing prototypes.

Each team defined a focused purpose, clarified the problem they were addressing and selected appropriate tools to support execution. The emphasis was practical: build something tangible within the day, test it, refine it and present it.

Rufus Curnow and Samiul Hoque facilitated the session, providing structured guidance while allowing teams autonomy to explore. Iteration cycles were deliberately short. Teams built, reviewed, adjusted and rebuilt. This rhythm reinforced that innovation is rarely linear. It improves through feedback and repetition.

By the end of the Hackathon, every team had developed a working prototype or a clearly scoped AI-enabled solution relevant to OCC’s construction operations.

Key Insights and Takeaways

Several broader insights emerged from the session that extend beyond a single organisation.

1. AI value in construction is often operational rather than abstract. The strongest ideas focused on streamlining documentation, improving knowledge capture or supporting coordination across project stakeholders.
   

2. Progress accelerated when domain expertise and AI literacy were combined. Participants who understood site operations, compliance requirements or project management nuances were best placed to shape useful tools. The Hackathon reinforced a core principle from the Playbook: AI does not replace expertise. It amplifies it.
   

3. Structured collaboration matters. Informal experimentation can surface good ideas, but a dedicated environment for focused build-and-test activity creates momentum. The discipline of presenting a prototype at the end of the day sharpened thinking and clarified purpose.
   

The immediate impact was clarity and momentum.

OCC left the session with:

• A set of validated AI project concepts grounded in real construction workflows

• Cross-functional teams with shared ownership of those ideas

• Increased confidence in building and refining AI-enabled tools

• Greater visibility of individuals capable of leading future innovation initiatives
  

What Happens Next

Following GEFIE 3, the logical next step within the AI Transformation Playbook is Strategic Integration. The prototypes and ideas generated during the Hackathon provide a foundation for structured prioritisation, governance alignment and longer-term embedding.

This involves identifying which initiatives move forward as baseline improvements, which develop into champion-led projects and which warrant strategic investment. The momentum generated during the Hackathon becomes the raw material for formal integration into business objectives.

For OCC, the focus now turns to sustaining that rhythm of experimentation while aligning it with organisational priorities across projects and regions.

Closing Insight

AI transformation in construction does not begin with large-scale automation. It begins with teams identifying small points of friction and redesigning them with better tools. When structured experimentation is combined with domain expertise, AI becomes part of how work is done, not an add-on.