Balfour Beatty invests £10m in Pi Labs to accelerate built environment technology

Balfour Beatty has announced a strategic £10m investment in Pi Labs’ Fund IV, an early-stage venture capital fund and platform focused on technologies transforming the built environment

The investment will strengthen Balfour Beatty’s access to emerging built environment technologies that could improve productivity, delivery certainty, safety and performance across major infrastructure projects.

By working with entrepreneurs across the UK, the US, and Europe at an early stage, it will be able to identify relevant innovations sooner, build targeted partnerships, and explore how practical technologies can be tested and applied across its construction projects around the world.

As investment in critical infrastructure accelerates across energy, water, defence, transport and digital connectivity, the industry must find better ways to deliver with greater certainty and efficiency.

The investment supports Balfour Beatty’s Evolve, Energise and Explore strategic growth plan: strengthening how it delivers for customers today while expanding access to the technologies and partnerships that could help shape the infrastructure of tomorrow.

The investment also reflects Balfour Beatty’s wider focus on improving how infrastructure is planned, delivered, maintained and operated – from better use of data and technology to more sustainable ways of working.

Philip Hoare, Balfour Beatty Group chief executive, explained: “To deliver the scale and complexity of infrastructure our customers and communities need, we have to keep finding better ways to work.

Our investment in Pi Labs will give us earlier access to entrepreneurs and built environment technologies that could improve delivery, build capability and capacity and create long-term value.”

He added: “This is a strategic investment in practical innovation, focused on the partnerships and insights our key markets need for the years ahead.”

Together, Balfour Beatty and Pi Labs will bring promising innovation closer to the projects, customers and communities it can benefit most – supporting new ways to improve productivity, delivery certainty and long-term value across the built environment.

Faisal Butt, founder and managing partner of Pi Labs, concluded: “Balfour Beatty’s commitment reflects a shared belief that technology and AI can improve how the built environment is designed, delivered, maintained and operated.

“Our ambition is to accelerate innovation across the sector and back the entrepreneurs working on some of its biggest challenges – from productivity and performance to sustainability and resilience.”