True Talks
Unpacking the 2025 Construction Tech Landscape

Andy Verone:

Welcome back to another episode of True Talks, sponsored by Contruent. I am Andy Verone, and I am the Chief Strategy Officer for the company. We have a repeat guest coming and joining us today.

Tannis, welcome to the program.

Tannis Liviniuk:

Andy, it’s great to be back. Thanks for having me.

Andy Verone:

I really do appreciate you coming back and joining us. I think we’re going to have some fun today with looking back at 2024 and maybe a brief look ahead on some of the things that you’re excited about for 2025.

Tannis, spend just a couple minutes. Our audience is global. We have people all over the world that listen to these episodes, and I would love you to do an introduction. So please introduce yourself properly, and then we’ll get started.

Tannis Liviniuk:

Absolutely. My name is Tannis Liviniuk. I’m the Digital Advancement Executive at Zachry Group.

I’ve been in the construction industry for about 24 years. I started out in the field, actually, working in industrial construction, heavy equipment, working for our family business. While my friends were having fun on weekends, I was working and not having as much fun, but it was a great introduction to the industry.

I spent a good portion of my early career up in the Alberta oil sands in Fort McMurray, working on heavy industrial projects in a variety of capacities. I had the pleasure of working for contractors, EPCs, owners. I worked for a technology company for a while, and I’ve had the pleasure of traveling the world and meeting teams all over who are doing amazing things, both with processes and with technology.

I’ve had the opportunity to share knowledge and learn along the way, and it’s been an exciting career path. Like I said, it’s been 24 years, and it feels like it went by in the blink of an eye, but there’s a lot of great history there and a lot of good learnings, lots of great memories. It’s exciting to be looking at 2025 already.

My goodness, where did the year go? There’s lots of exciting things in the industry to come. I’m super stoked to see all of the news updates in tech in 2025 because I think there’s going to be quite a few.

Andy Verone:

Tannis, thank you for the introduction and taking the time to do that.

I think if the folks don’t follow you on social, they should, because I think one thing that just rings out, Dennis, is your passion for the industry. Everything that you talk about and post and really sponsor is about advancing the industry that both of us love.

This is my 40th year in engineering construction. If you didn’t have the passion, you wouldn’t be in it that long. I think that’s something that I just gleaned from you when I’m around you, is just your passion for making it better, just doing something you love and making the industry better. We thank you for that.

I’ll start off with a really easy softball. Are you ready for the holidays? Here we are, already into December. I’ll answer myself.

I am not, but what about you? Are you gearing up for any fun plans around the holidays?

Tannis Liviniuk:

You know what? I thought I was going to be really prepared this year. I started gift shopping early. I got everything ordered.

Then our postal service went on strike. While I had great intentions, I have a whole lot of gifts that are stuck in the mail. Now I’m scrambling, trying to figure out what to do at the last minute.

I’m kind of ready. I’m excited for the holidays. I love the holiday break in the winter because you get to catch up with people that you haven’t seen in a long time, family and friends.

There’s a lot of get-togethers and social activities. It’s always a lot of fun just to share stories and talk about what you’re doing for 2025. That stuff I’m ready for, but the gift side of it, I’m not in a great place, admittedly.

I’m working on that. The postal service strike was definitely not on the risk registry for your plans. That’s one that’s hard to plan for, for sure.

Andy Verone:

Thanks for sharing that. Likewise, I think this is just a wonderful time of year. I’m looking for those same activities.

If we look back, where we started True Talks was with you in the beginning of the year. What are some of the technologies that really surprised you in a positive way in 2024? Maybe something that wasn’t on your radar, something you weren’t looking for or looking at, and it just truly surprised you. Is there one or two that you can think through?

Tannis Liviniuk:

I think there’s a couple that surprised me in 2024. One is robotics, actually. I haven’t been a huge fan of the robotics space. It’s exciting.

I’m interested in it, but there are limitations there. The industry that I work in being heavy industrial, you’ve got a lot of uneven ground, challenging navigation prospects for robots. In a perfect environment, they can do a lot of great things, but you start throwing pipe spools and rough terrain around.

I’m thinking of some of the robot outtakes that I’ve seen. I’m anticipating that that might be what it looks like. I’ve seen a lot of advancement in the robotics space this year.

That comes down to hardware improvements. I’ve seen a lot of engineering teams focusing on hardware updates, which is exciting, especially being in a space where you do have more challenging navigation needs. On the software side, some of the natural language capabilities, they’re advancing at an exciting rate.

That capability is really impressive. I’ve gotten more excited about the robotics space because of that. I’m seeing teams focused on practical applications instead of trying to do everything.

They’re focusing on one specific area, and they’re focusing on getting that workflow right. It’s not teams trying to boil the ocean. They’re honing in on those areas that they can make an impact in.

I’m super excited about that.

Andy Verone:

I think the robotics space has come a long way in 2024. I think the thing that I see before you go on to your other points on 2024, I think in the robotics space, the agility of the actual hardware has been impressive.

I had the opportunity a few years back to have some use cases up and running at my previous employer. The agility wasn’t there. It was worrisome.

It was clumsy. But man, the agility has gotten so much better so fast. A lot of these robots are now intrinsically safe, which is a big deal in your line of work, for sure.

Sorry to cut you off there, but yeah, I agree. I think the agility of the robots and the hardware has come a long way super-fast.

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal in 2016 that said to avoid or survive the robot revolution, all you have to do is close the door. Then they provided all these examples of robots trying to open a door, and it was comical, right? They’d face plant and fall over.

Then I saw the Boston Dynamics Atlas robot lending a hand on a construction site, and I was like, well, now what do I do? That went right out the window. It’s a completely different ballgame, but you’re absolutely right. I mean, the agility is really improved, and it just opens so many use cases in our industry.

Tannis Liviniuk:

The second area that I’ve been really pleasantly surprised is a focus on integrating supply chain and procurement into overall workflows. That’s from estimating all the way through to actual fabrication of components, sourcing components, and really following that digital thread all the way through the lifecycle. It’s something that I haven’t seen a lot of in the past.

I’ve often seen procurement as kind of a standalone offering, but the integration across the project lifecycle has really been exciting. There’s a lot of startups that are working in that space and really trying to focus in on areas that pull that information together to provide more visibility to teams. I think from a project planning, analytics, costing perspective, that provides a lot of capabilities that teams didn’t necessarily have in the past.

I’m super excited about that as well.

Andy Verone:

Yeah, Tannis, the one thing too that I wonder, and I think it had a lot of momentum before the pandemic, was offsite construction. One of the big deterrents in offsite was that connectivity with the supply chain.

You didn’t know what materials were being shipped to site and then assembled at the offsite location. You got to think that that’s going to make a big difference for offsite construction as well once that supply chain is completely tied up.

Tannis Liviniuk:

I think it definitely will.

We live in a world where you can go back to my holiday shopping experience. I can open an app on my phone, I can procure products, I get a notification that it’s been ordered, it’s been shipped, I can track it in transit. We expect that type of experience in our work lives as well because it’s been normalized in our personal lives.

I think teams that are focusing on providing that level of transparency are going to win big in 2025 because I think that’s what a lot of project teams are really looking for now. The data is there, but how do you combine it in such a way that it enables teams to view all those data points in a consolidated location and then make decisions based upon that information?

Andy Verone:

For sure. What else in 24? What else were the surprises?

Tannis Liviniuk:

I think AI surprised me a little bit.

I’m super excited about AI, but going into the year, I was a little skeptical about how much progress we would actually see a lot due to the data quality issues. I’ve really been pleasantly surprised by some of the work that’s been done in that space. Some recent announcements have been really exciting.

There’s a few startups that are working in the space that have really gotten good traction and good development. And what’s excited me most is really the focus on purposeful and practical use cases instead of just AI for everyone, for everything. Teams are really focused in on areas where it can make a big impact, where you can also manage some of those industry-wide data quality issues and mitigate some of that risk.

Andy Verone:

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the progress in the AI development and deployment space in the industry this year, and I think we’re going to see a lot more of that in 2025. Yes. If you think about an executive, how do you take the hype of AI, how do you take it down to something practical that you can then go implement? I think that’s the biggest issue we have.

Everyone’s talking about AI in our industry, but from an executive perspective, how do you take it down to something that’s executable? Have you had any experience with that?

Tannis Liviniuk:

Yeah. I mean, the question that a lot of executives are asking right now is, is it worth the investment? Is this something we’re going to just play with in an R&D state for a long period of time, invest a lot of money in, and it’ll kind of be the flavor of the year, and then we move on to something else? Or is there actual tangible returns that can be achieved through use? I was reading a report a while ago, and it said in the United States, the adoption of AI, I think it was up to February in 2024 in the construction industry, was only about 4% of companies that had on an organizational basis actually deployed applications with AI capability. The other side of that data point is most people are using it already, whether the organization has deployed AI applications or not.

People have cell phones and tablets and laptops, and they’ve got ChatGPT and Gemini and other tools that provide those capabilities. So I think the best way to pull an executive into the conversation is to say, look, you can let your teams just kind of navigate and use public applications and take the risk of that, or you can start looking at training and deploying applications at an enterprise level that are going to protect your data and still enable teams to work smarter, not harder. There’s a lot of great applications of AI tools in the industry, especially for ideating and writing and things like that.

Somebody might really struggle with writing skills, and they can get a starting point in a couple of minutes and then finesse that instead of taking an hour to write an email just because they’re trying to make it sound good. That might not be their skill set. I think for executives, a lot of the questions are centering around financial benefit and productivity benefit, but I think we need to reframe that to bring executives in, in terms of overall organizational data security, cyber security and workflow enablement.

Because if we’re not, as an industry, providing those tools, people are going to want to navigate to companies where they are being provided because they can do tasks in shorter periods of time. They can focus their efforts more on high value activities and problem solving instead of some of those workflows that can be easily automated. There’s lots of practical applications, but I think a lot of it comes down to just getting people to the table and really having those conversations around what AI can and can’t do and the benefits to the organization of starting to play with it and giving your teams access to tools that are safe to use.

Andy Verone:

No, I think that’s fantastic. I think the thing that I always like to start with is get your data in order, right? Because if you want to truly make it a competitive advantage, you got to make sure the data that your company, my company, your company has already. And there’s just mountains of great data that you can glean information from.

So, yeah, that’s all really good. I think the challenge I hear is, hey, we need some of that. We need some of that AI, right? But to your point, frame it in a way, show the use cases.

And by the way, does it end up giving the firm a competitive advantage? I mean, at the end of the day, that’s the way I like to look at it. All right. Anything else? Yeah.

Tannis Liviniuk:

So I was just going to say with AI applications, I mean, to your point, if you have poor data quality, you’re just going to get bad answers faster. And I saw an article on that.

Somebody had asked a question. I think it was on ChatGPT around how to get the cheese to stick to their pizza because the toppings kept falling off. And the response that it gave was to use Elmer’s glue.

And it pulled that response from some somebody’s Reddit post that was obviously not meant to be advice on how to make good pizza, but that’s what it spit out. And organizationally, I mean, yeah, if you have bad data, you’re just going to access bad data faster. And people might run with that bad data and make bad decisions as a result.

And it’s not the exciting work that necessarily happened in 2024, but I think a lot of organizations smartly invested in data architecture, data governance, and improving the quality of their data so that when they do deploy AI tools, even if they’re not at that stage yet, they’re going to get more value from it in return, because that foundational piece has been established. And you’re right. I mean, there’s a lot of people asking, how can I use AI? And you can go buy tools and throw them out there and hope they work.

But if your data’s garbage, you’re just going to get garbage results. And there’s not really much benefit in that. Build that foundation and then it really becomes valuable.

Andy Verone:

What else in 24 from a positive surprise? Any tech that you’ve obviously gone through three of them already, but is there anything else out there? Oh, there’s lots. Surprising in a good way from 24. You were like, never thought they would get there, never thought that that capability would be available.

Tannis Liviniuk:

Past a minimal viable product, something that you said, that is something that really changed the industry. I think focus on areas that we often feel in the operations space are a little bit tangential, but are critical to execution capability. So I’m looking at the use of AI solutions for information accessibility.

And in the construction industry, I mean, when you look at an active project, you have tens of thousands of documents that are circulating drawings and contracts and specs and standards. That’s a lot of information for a team to consume and not just read, but understand and remember, hopefully, as they’re going out and executing work. And there’s been a focus in the startup space on tools that are improving information accessibility.

So condensing that information, putting it in plain English, putting it in front of people that need it. And contracts are a great example, highly complex. I’m not a lawyer.

So when I read a contract, there’s terms that sometimes I just am not familiar with, I have to Google to figure it out. So I think technology that’s making that information more accessible and putting it in front of the right people, distilling it down to what really needs to be understood is key. And it’s not just in terms of legal documents, but I’m thinking also in terms of analytics.

There’s so much data that’s available on a project. And if everything’s important, nothing’s important, right? So I think tech teams that are really focusing on taking all of that data and turning it into something meaningful. And I know everybody got really excited about dashboards and Power BI, and then people ended up with like a thousand dashboards.

Well, the dashboard doesn’t help you if everything is displayed, right? So I think being really intentional about the use of that data. And I think there’s startups focused on that space, but larger organizations as well have really focused on working with project teams and consolidating that in a way that makes it meaningful instead of just plentiful. And I think that’s been a nice surprise in 2024, and I’m hoping we see more of that in 2025.

Andy Verone:

That’s fantastic. All right. So we have a whole list of things in 24 that you’ve got some great surprises out of and make great progress.

What are some of the things that you thought in 2024 would make the grade that just fell flat? Just things that just kind of out there that had all the makings of being great and it just didn’t come through. What are some of those?

Tannis Liviniuk:
I’ll talk out of both sides of my mouth. I think AI as well, right? There was so much excitement and hype that I’ve seen tons of applications with AI capabilities.

And I think companies pivoted maybe a little bit too early into that space just to say, hey, look, you’re looking for AI, we do AI. And deployed in areas where there was not really a lot of practical benefits. So it was more just the ability to use the term instead of actually creating value.

And I think that was a miss for me in 2024. So you kind of had to sort out the valuable applications versus, hey, look, we have AI and we don’t really know what value it’s going to create for you. But look, it’s here in case you want it.

I think there was a little too much of that in 2024. And I think I’m looking at the reality capture space. I think there’s so much capability there, but it’s really been hyper focused on by teams.

And I keep seeing startups and more companies that are focusing in on the space. And I think we’re probably getting to a level of saturation in the reality capture space in terms of capabilities and offerings and all of that. So that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

It’s nice to see all the investment in that space. But I think we’ll probably see less startups focused on reality capture in 2025. And I think we’ll see those organizations that are in that space starting to expand their capabilities and really getting those use cases down and focused on.

I mean, drones, spot the robot. I mean, it’s great to have the technology out there doing that capture. Sometimes it’s personnel and 360 cameras.

But I think we’re going to see a lot more capability enhancement in 2025. And I’m looking forward to that because right now, what I’m seeing is a lot of new companies that are getting into the reality capture space. And at some point, you have too many companies and not necessarily enough application potential there.

So I think we’ll see that change a little bit in 2025. Yeah, I think we’ll see a little bit of consolidation. I keep my eye on that market very, very closely.

And I also think that the ability to capture progress doesn’t have to be super sophisticated. And I think the industry has proven that. I know you have.

You don’t need to spend a whole ton of money on the actual device capturing the progress. You can capture progress with things that you have access to today. So I agree with you.

As great progress as robotics have made with agility, I think that the progress capture, it’s been stalled a bit. Yeah, so we’ll see. We’ll see how it carries out in 2025.

Andy Verone:

Anything else from 2024 kind of just didn’t make the grape? And that’s good. I mean, we got two of those. That’s good conversation.

Tannis Liviniuk:

Yeah. I mean, I was pretty stoked in 2024. I attended a lot of events, areas where I wasn’t even necessarily focused on and had the opportunity to meet with teams who were exploring those areas.

And that includes very large companies and very small ones. I think we saw a great deal of R&D in 2024. And that has me pretty excited, even though some of those efforts may not have materialized into something that was made commercially available.

I think what I’m most excited about is the fact that teams are really taking some of the technology advances and exploring the potential use cases without just kind of throwing a product out in front of people and saying, here, look what we have. They’re really focusing on partnering with companies and testing and getting feedback and determining if there’s even product market fit before they start heavily investing. And if there’s not, then they pivot to something else.

I think it’s nice to see that because it’s unfortunate when teams invest a lot of money in a solution that doesn’t really have product market fit. They’ve got a great tool. It does what it’s supposed to do, but unfortunately, it’s just not something that companies necessarily need.

Yeah. I could pop up a project plan that I was building today around market potential and just myself looking out into 25 and some of the product ideas that we have. What is that product opportunity? You got to go validate that with customers before you put pen to paper, right? You got to go validate the idea.

Andy Verone:

So that’s great advice. Tannis, before we shift to 25, let’s think about the markets for a minute. So if you think about construction and capital project delivery, look into your crystal ball.

What big construction markets do you think are going to make a big difference in 25? Any thoughts on that from a market perspective?

Tannis Liviniuk:

Yeah. I think there’s two areas that probably aren’t overly surprising to anybody who’s watching this. One is data centers.

I mean, the level of investment there is substantial. I mean, on-shoring work in the United States as well. I think you’re going to see a lot more investment inevitably in manufacturing, especially in the technology space.

So those are two areas that 2025, I think we’re going to see a lot of growth in. And secondary, I think, is the nuclear space and the small module reactors. I’ve seen a lot of news publications and press releases and even chatter at events around investment in nuclear to support the growth of data centers because of the high energy draw that’s required there.

So I think we’re going to see a lot more activity in that space in 2025. And I think that’s fantastic. Obviously, my background is industrial, so I focus on industrial activity quite a bit.

Industrial activity in 2025 is certainly going to be substantial. But in combination with the data center, on-shoring manufacturing and nuclear space, I think we’re going to see a lot of work areas open up in 2025. And that’s going to be a to contractors and technology companies in the industry, but it’s also going to create some challenges because it’s going to increase demand.

I mean, we’re already dealing with a labor shortage in the industry that becomes even more difficult to manage when you have high workflow coming in. And some of those construction projects become sometimes a little more attractive because they’re in large city centers versus remote areas. So some teams and projects might experience that challenge a little more than others.

But I think we’re going to see a lot of activity in 2025. I think we’re going to see a lot of investment in technology in 2025 because of some of the labor challenges in the market. So teams will be looking for automation capabilities and the use of technology to mitigate labor risk.

But I think we’re also going to see a lot of discussion and dialogue at events and around roundtables about how to navigate the growth in industry, in industry work and investment.

Andy Verone:

Yeah, I think you’re right. I mean, I agree with you.

I think the one that I’ll add there is I just read a really compelling article on the capabilities of subsea cabling, right, to have a bigger backbone across the world. I know Meta is working on. There was an article I read about their capability that they need, that they want to have dedicated bandwidth.

So I think you’re right. And I think it all ties to mining as well. I mean, if you think about building those data centers and having the natural resources to do that, I’m always bullish on mining.

And that’s one of our best markets for contruent. We do a wonderful job in mining. So Tannis, with that said, with thinking about those markets and those movements, where are you going to place your bets in 25? What are the techs, the tech that you think that will move the needle big time? And of course, I think some of it might be a repeat.

Tannis Liviniuk:

I think AI is obviously something still worth betting on. But what are some of the bets you want to place in 25? Yeah, 2025, my bets are in established technology solutions, expanding capabilities through the use of AI and process automation. I think that’s going to open up a whole new level of productivity for teams that are already using proven applications and really just enabling even more capabilities there.

And it creates a lower friction point for organizations to go down that road, because people are already trained on the solution. So it’s an add-on instead of something new. And that’s why I think we’re going to see a lot more announcements in terms of broadening of capabilities for existing platforms through the use of AI.

I think we’re going to see more investment in the AI space. That’s going to include organizational capabilities, training for sure. I think process development and R&D exploration within organizations, so that includes AEC firms, GCs, design firms, tech companies, EPCs.

You’re going to see a lot of R&D and activity in that space, even if it’s just in preparation for more to come in 2026. But I think we’re also going to see more venture investment in AI startups, albeit I was reading an article earlier today that the liquidity levels in the VC space are a little concerning at this point in terms of capital returns. So I think we’re going to see a little less investment in 2025, but probably bigger bets placed by VCs on those applications where they’re practical, they’ve got very valid use cases, and are already making market headway. I think we’ll start to see some focus on that. I think robotics as well.

Just looking at all the work that was done in 2024, I can’t see that stopping or slowing down in 2025. We talk about industry labor shortages all the time. I mean, robotics is definitely a way to address that and provide more capabilities on site.

I don’t see robots out there fitting up pipe or installing electrical cables, but there are a lot of things that robots can do and take that workload off of humans. I think we’re going to see expansion upon those capabilities, more development in that space. I’m hoping we’ll also see more teams trialing some of that technology, because you can’t grow and develop unless you have the ability to test and fail and iterate and improve.

Tech companies out there need partner companies to do that with. You can build a robot in a warehouse and it might work really well, but you throw it on a construction site, it might struggle a little bit. Teams need the capability to test and partner with companies that will enable them to do that.

I think in 2025 we’re also going to see I think we’re going to see a lot more focus on startups that are providing really practical solutions. I think you’re going to see some consolidation in the space. As you mentioned, I think some of the areas are a little bit heavy in terms of players.

I think you’re going to start to see some consolidation there. But I also think you’re going to see organizations that are out there with accelerator programs and things like that getting away from some of the hype topics and really honing in on those products that solve a real pain point that affects a large swath of people in the industry or organizations in the industry. I think you’re going to see more of a hyper focus there, and that will probably involve some consolidation and amalgamation of capabilities of different companies.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think it’s going to give the market more options and reduce the number of point solutions that companies have or are looking at. It’s great to have all these capabilities, but when you’re using 36 different applications on a project, it becomes a little bit difficult, not just for your technology team to manage that, but for the end user to use all of those different applications.

Having a consolidated ecosystem, I think, is going to be a compelling offering in 2025 and probably into 2026 as well. I think the analytics space is going to get a lot more focus. One of the big pain points in the industry, and I hear everybody talking about it, is dashboards.

Dashboards everywhere for everyone, for everything. You can’t make good decisions when you’re just being flooded with information all the time.

Andy Verone:

I mentioned established tech companies really focusing in on consolidating that data and providing visuals and analytics and project management tools that support strategic decisions and tactical decisions without flooding the user with every piece of information that’s ever been created.

I have my opinion on this. Do you think that we are finally at a point where the tech providers are willing to work together and, to your point, help with that consolidation, even if it’s not a company consolidation, a roll-up, a merger, a partnership? Do you see it that people are more willing to say, here’s the use cases I bring to market. By the way, if I surround those with other providers, we actually have something really special.

What’s your opinion? Do you think there’s a willingness?

Tannis Liviniuk:

I think there is. I don’t know that that willingness is completely prolific in the tech space. There certainly are companies that want to keep you in their ecosystem and offer less in terms of APIs and integration capability, but I think we’re seeing a pretty substantial increase in that space.

The ability to go to market and bring a customer in and have them use every single one of your tools or modules and only your tools or modules, it sounds great in theory, but in practice, that’s probably not going to happen in a lot of cases. If you’re not offering that capability, you’re not working with other companies in the space, you’re not providing that open and accessible environment to make those connections and really integrate that ecosystem, I think those are companies that are going to flop probably in the not-so-distant future. It’s the expectation that people have now.

They’ve got a variety of applications. They want them to work together. If you’re providing one that doesn’t, well, there’s lots of others that do.

That application can be swapped out with something else. Unless you’re doing something that’s so unique that there’s no other company that does it or could ever do it, I think that willingness to work together is really quite key. I think that applies across the industry.

It’s the ability for solutions to integrate with other solutions. I think the term is coopetition. It’s companies working together that are in the same market space and providing information, sharing best practices and things like that because everybody benefits from that knowledge sharing as a result.

I think that also applies to the contractor space. There’s a lot of great industry associations out there, organizations that bring people together to share lessons learned and best practices. I think that collaboration is key across the industry.

In the tech space specifically, it’s definitely expected from a customer perspective. I can’t imagine many customers who would be okay with using tech that doesn’t integrate with anything else. That’s probably going to be a deal breaker.

I think across the industry, we’re seeing more collaboration. I hope we see even more of that going forward. I’m with you.

I see it. I see it every day. When I started in construction tech 15, 16 years ago, it was, this is mine.

I don’t care if you integrate with it. We can do everything that the customer needs. That’s really changed.

I think that people, organizations are looking to provide a solution that the customer is going to be very satisfied with. By the way, become very sticky inside that organization. I agree with you on that.

Andy Verone:

Tannis, we’re running up on time. One last point before we close up here is, you and I have both talked about the organization Girls Who Code. I had some experience with it myself and my family.

You’ve had some experience with it. They’ve fallen on hard times. I think if there’s a call to action to people that follow us on social is, what other programs are out there? How do we pick that back up and advance it?

Tannis Liviniuk:

It was doing some incredible work. I know you have some statistics on how many people it actually touched. I saw an update on LinkedIn. Somebody had posted a news article one day.

It broke my heart as I was reading it. The Girls Who Code organization had shuttered its doors because of lack of funding. I looked at some stats.

It was about 360,000 people had participated in the program. It was global. From the perspective of impact, it’s hard to parallel the impact that that organization had.

It was uniting Girls Who Code around the world. Efforts to replicate that, if anybody’s out there listening and you’re doing work in that space and really trying to bring women into the technology ecosystem and extending that during the younger phases of life into youth and getting girls exposed to coding and frankly, any young person exposed to coding. The need in the technology space for that skill set is growing.

AI is not replacing developers, certainly not yet, especially when it’s suggesting that people put glue on pizza. We need developers. We need great people.

We need brilliant minds in this space. Being a woman in an industry where women are highly underrepresented, seeing an organization like that shutter its doors because it didn’t have enough funding is really heartbreaking. Unfortunately, that organization is no longer active.

There’s lots of regional groups. I’ve seen lots of organizations that are focused on improving the accessibility to STEM education, specifically technology and coding capabilities in schools as part of clubs and associations for youth outside of school hours. I think there’s lots of great work being done in that space.

The focus on improving representation of underrepresented groups I think is important. I’m hopeful that we’ll see an organization perhaps step up and look at funding girls who code. Maybe they can open up again if they had that funding available.

Perhaps we see more regional efforts in terms of associations. Maybe that’s countrywide or maybe state-specific or province-specific, but more efforts improving representation of underrepresented people. That’s not just women.

That’s minorities, just people who aren’t typically represented in that space.

Andy Verone:

Yeah, for sure, Tannis. To the audience, let’s keep that conversation going.

I think that’s one that’s important to both of us. We appreciate any insights and thoughts that the audience might have on that. Tanis, it’s a wrap.

I want to thank you. The friendship that we have formed over this past year is amazing. You are truly one of the top thought leaders in our space.

I appreciate your time. I appreciate your friendship. I appreciate you coming on and doing this with us.

We’re going to jot down those 2025 big bets that you articulated and we’ll have you back on as the year progresses. Tannis, thank you for being with us and thank you for supporting me and I truly value that.

Tannis Liviniuk:

Andy, absolutely.

It’s been a pleasure participating in these events. I truly value your friendship as well. You and your team at Contruent are doing amazing work.

I’ve truly enjoyed following you and the team on social media and seeing some of the advancements that you guys have made in 2024. 2025 is going to be an exciting year for you and your team. I’m looking forward to seeing all the great things that are planned and going to happen next year.

I appreciate the offer to come back on the show at some point. Love doing this. It’s great to talk tech.

I can geek out on tech all day long. For anybody in the audience who’s listening, if you want to continue the conversation, join us on LinkedIn. We’re posting content on these topics all the time.

Tag us in posts. Happy to continue the conversation. If anybody out there is looking at funding Girls Who Code or if you’re running an organization, you want to increase awareness about that, please reach out.

We’d love to have a conversation and learn more about that. All right. Have a great holiday.

Andy Verone:

Happy holidays to you. Hope the gifts arrive. Hope the post is resolved.

We’ll talk to you in 2025, Tanis. Thank you so much. Thanks, Andy.