Jobsite of the Future: Suffolk’s Approach to Tech, AI and Digital Transformation

In an industry often characterized by tradition and caution, Felipe Dominguez of Suffolk is part of a new wave of leaders, driving an ancient industry into the digital era. As part of Suffolk’s Construction Technology team, Felipe is helping reimagine how projects are delivered, blending innovation with practical adoption strategies that empower field teams.

For Felipe, the passion for building started early. Growing up in Chile, he spent his childhood on job sites owned by his father’s construction company. “Some of my earliest memories are visiting job sites, watching how people come together to build something from scratch,” he recalls.

That early fascination led him to study civil engineering, where he learned about innovations in construction tech -- like Building Information Modeling (BIM) -- that were transforming the industry. “BIM got me completely hooked,” he says. “I realized technology had the power to reshape how we build and how construction works.”

Bridging Tradition and Innovation

Felipe’s career has been defined by solving one of construction’s biggest challenges: the gap between new technologies and real-world adoption. 

“Driving change in construction is not as simple as just saying, ‘let’s use a new technology.’ There are cultural barriers and resistance to change," Felipe says. "People are building under tight budgets and deadlines—it’s not easy to just start something new.” 

Rather than seeing that resistance as a roadblock, Felipe embraced it as motivation. When he joined Suffolk in 2022, he found an environment where innovation wasn’t an afterthought. 

Suffolk’s Operational Excellence and Construction Technology departments exist to make new tools practical, accessible, and aligned with project outcomes.

Adoption Through Empowerment

For Suffolk, technology adoption isn’t about mandates – it’s about building buy-in through dedicated support. The company has created first-line champions tasked with troubleshooting issues, gathering feedback, and ensuring teams see the value of the tools in their day-to-day work.

The approach extends beyond Suffolk’s walls. Felipe prefers to frame relationships with software vendors like Procore and OpenSpace as partnerships, rather than transactions. 

Listening to the Field

Collecting and prioritizing feedback is a critical part of Suffolk’s tech implementation strategy. With hundreds of active projects, listening at scale requires structure. Suffolk relies on regional CTD Associates, advisory groups, IT ticket reviews, and pilot programs to gather insights from the field.

Those insights are distilled into themes, prioritized, and then shared with software partners to improve their tools and workflows.

Suffolk’s comprehensive feedback loop ensures that innovation isn’t just “top-down,” but shaped by the people who use the tools every day. Felipe calls it “turning feedback into real impact.”

A Fluid Approach to Rollout

When it comes to rollout – actual implementation of new technology – Suffolk takes a measured approach that is driven by the situation.

The journey to buy-in and adoption isn’t always predictable. It requires a phased approach, the timeline for which needs to adapt to the type of technology, the project scope and the metrics for success. Suffolk uses pilot programs to test and validate novel technology to ensure they can actually deliver on the promise before they scale it across the organization. 

The Future: Leaning into AI & Robotics

Looking ahead, Felipe sees two technologies poised to redefine construction: artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.

On the AI side, he envisions both front-end AI – interactive agents and search tools that workers actively engage with – and back-end AI, which silently improves workflows without users even realizing it.

Robotics, meanwhile, is rapidly moving from concept to reality. Felipe points to experiments in bricklaying, autonomous equipment, and teleoperated systems for dangerous environments. While barriers remain, especially around hardware costs, he’s confident adoption will accelerate. 

Inspiring the Next Generation

For Felipe, one of the most exciting parts of his role is inspiring young professionals to see construction as more than hard hats and heavy machinery. 

Felipe Dominguez’s journey from Chilean jobsites to Suffolk’s innovation hub highlights a broader truth: The future of construction will be defined not just by what we build, but by how we build it. By combining structured adoption, meaningful partnerships, and a vision for AI and robotics, Suffolk is proving that the industry can redefine what’s possible.

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