Inaugural Groundworks 2026 Summit Brings Industry Leaders to London to Scale Construction Robotics

One-day London event will bring together contractors, developers, asset owners, technology companies, investors and government to address the barriers to deploying robotics on real jobsites

LONDON, Oct. 09, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Groundworks is launching its inaugural construction robotics summit on November 11, 2026, at UCL Here East in London, bringing together 150 leaders from across construction, infrastructure, energy and mission-critical development to focus on how robotics can be deployed more widely on real jobsites.

The one-day summit will bring the organisations responsible for delivering major projects into the same room as robotics companies, investors and government. Through 10-15 main-stage sessions and live demonstrations, Groundworks will focus on the practical questions surrounding adoption: where robotics can make a meaningful difference today, what is preventing wider deployment and what needs to change for the technology to operate at scale.

The summit comes as Europe faces a significant construction challenge. New energy infrastructure, transport networks, data centres, manufacturing facilities and defence projects are adding to what the industry needs to deliver, while the construction workforce is already under pressure.

Robotics has become commonplace in industries such as manufacturing, where Europe averages 267 robots for every 10,000 workers. By comparison, construction has seen far more limited adoption, despite advances in machines capable of tasks such as layout, drilling, material handling, surveying, and other repetitive or physically demanding work.

For Groundworks Founder Owen Drury, the scale of what Europe needs to build makes the conversation around adoption increasingly important.

“Two years ago, I was heading out for a run and searched Spotify for ‘construction robotics’. I could only find two podcasts covering it. One was ours. That felt like an opportunity, so we started pushing more content on the subject; honestly, the interest wasn’t there yet, said Owen Drury, Founder of Groundworks and Co-Founder of the Bricks & Bytes Podcast. “Now, it’s a very different conversation. Businesses are under pressure to deliver more; they can’t find enough people, and the technology is moving quickly. But there’s still a big gap between seeing a robot in a demo and putting one to work on a live site".

He added, “That’s why we’re launching Groundworks in London on 11 November 2026. We’re bringing together people from government, major contractors and robotics companies, alongside live demonstrations, to tackle one question: how do we increase the adoption of robotics on site? For us, that means honest conversations about what works, what’s failed and what needs to change. Shiny demos and talk are cheap if we can’t get these things working.”

Groundworks will structure those conversations around six areas where demand for new construction is growing: construction, infrastructure, manufacturing, energy, defence and mission critical, including data centres and semiconductor facilities.

Across the main-stage programme, speakers will examine issues ranging from workforce shortages and major project delivery to grid infrastructure, defence and data centre construction. Each conversation will be grounded in three questions: Should we deploy? What should we deploy? How do we deploy?

The programme will be complemented by an active demonstration area at UCL Here East, where attendees will be able to see construction robotics operating live and speak directly with the teams developing them. The demonstrations are intended to move conversations beyond what a technology can do in principle and toward the realities of introducing it into active construction workflows.

Groundworks 2026 will take place on November 11, 2026, at UCL Here East in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. To learn more and participate, please visit groundworkssummit.com

About Groundworks

Groundworks is a UK & European summit focused on closing the gap between robotics innovation and real-world adoption on construction sites. Bringing together contractors, developers, asset owners, robotics companies, investors and government, Groundworks creates a forum for practical conversations about what works, what has failed and what needs to change to move robotics from demonstration to deployment. Its inaugural edition takes place on November 11, 2026, at UCL Here East in London, combining a curated main-stage programme with live demonstrations of robotics built for real-world construction environments. Groundworks is brought to you by Bricks & Bytes. To learn more, visit groundworkssummit.com

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