René Morkos is the founder and CEO of ALICE Technologies, an AI-powered platform that helps construction teams simulate, compare and optimize different ways to build complex projects. A second-generation civil engineer, Morkos spent more than a decade managing projects in more than 20 countries, from rebuilding infrastructure in Afghanistan to working on a refinery expansion in Abu Dhabi. Those experiences led him to pursue a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence for construction at Stanford University, where he now serves as an adjunct professor.
Today, ALICE is used by leading contractors worldwide to manage more than $115 billion in capital projects. The company is also expanding its platform with ALICE Analyze, an AI-powered project and portfolio intelligence solution that helps teams better understand schedule and project health, and a forthcoming Field Planning solution designed to bring planning intelligence closer to jobsite execution.
In this Q&A, Morkos discusses how simulation is changing the way construction teams plan work, respond to delays, manage risk and make better decisions from planning through execution.
From your experience managing large-scale projects around the world, why do schedules slip even when things seem on track? Can you share a story from the field that shaped your thinking
Projects slip because conditions change, and schedules do not always keep pace.
On paper, everything can look fine. Then work begins, and a crew is unavailable, equipment is needed elsewhere, unexpected weather disrupts the work or supply chain issues and global events delay materials. One activity falls behind, and suddenly five others are affected.
Early in my career, I was responsible for sequencing work on a project that looked simple from the outside. The question was essentially what should we build first, what should come next and how should we use the people and equipment we had available? At first, that sounds like a manageable problem. But once you start testing the combinations, the number of possible ways to build even a simple project gets very large very quickly.
That was the part that stayed with me. Construction teams are making these decisions every day, usually with limited time and incomplete information. I kept coming back to the same question. Why are we asking people to hold all of that complexity in their heads? Why can’t the computer help us understand the options
Was there a specific moment that prompted you to create ALICE Technologies? What construction challenge convinced you that the industry needed a different approach?
There was not one perfect aha moment. It was a few observations that kept pointing to the same problem.
One of the biggest came during my Ph.D. research. I was looking at a construction site and realized that most of the physical space was not being used for active work at that moment. There were pockets of activity, but large parts of the site were empty.
Once you notice that, you start seeing it everywhere. Most construction sites are not busy in every area at once. Work happens in certain places, at certain times, based on access, crews, equipment and sequence.
That matters because space is one of the most important resources on a project. It determines what can happen, where work can overlap and how quickly the job can move. If we could understand and optimize those constraints better, we could build better.
That became the foundation for ALICE. Could we teach a computer the rules of how a project gets built? Could it understand crews, equipment, calendars, constraints and logic, and then simulate different ways to build the same project? That was the problem I wanted to solve.
For readers who may be new to ALICE, what does the platform do, and how does it help contractors and owners plan projects differently?
ALICE brings generative construction scheduling to project planning, helping teams move beyond a single static schedule to find better ways to build.
There is never only one way to build a project. There are many possible ways, and each one has different consequences. One option may be faster. Another may cost less. Another may reduce risk. Another may use fewer resources.
Traditionally, teams build one schedule and then manage against it. ALICE lets them simulate and compare many different ways to build the same project. They can test different crew sizes, sequences, equipment strategies, calendars or recovery plans, then see how each choice affects time, cost, resources and risk.
We call that construction optioneering.
The important thing is that ALICE does not replace the project team’s judgment. Construction does not work that way. The people who know the project still make the decision. ALICE gives them more options, more visibility and a better way to compare tradeoffs before they commit.
ALICE allows teams to compare multiple ways to build a project before choosing a path forward. How does that change real-world decision-making for contractors and owners?
It makes the conversation much more useful. Without simulation, a planning discussion often centers on one schedule. One person thinks the work can move faster. Another person worries about cost. Someone else sees a risk in the sequence. All of those perspectives may be right, but they are hard to compare when the team is only looking at one path.
With ALICE, teams can put real alternatives next to each other. They can look at the faster plan, the lower-cost plan, the lower-risk plan or the recovery plan and understand what each one requires.
That is where analytics and intelligence become important. They help teams see schedule and project health more clearly, so they can understand where the plan is strong, where it is starting to slip and what needs attention. From there, optimization becomes much more useful because the team is not just guessing where to focus.
Construction decisions are almost always tradeoffs. If you want to go faster, what does that do to labor and equipment? If you want to lower costs, what happens to the timeline? If you want to recover a delay, where does that pressure show up? ALICE helps teams see those tradeoffs earlier, when there is still time to choose a better path.
Labor shortages, tighter margins and supply chain uncertainty have made project planning more important than ever. What are you seeing in the market that makes this a critical moment for better scheduling technology?
There is less room for error. Labor is harder to secure. Equipment is expensive. Materials are less predictable. Owners want projects delivered faster. At the same time, margins are tight, so teams cannot simply absorb every change with more time, more cost or impact to quality.
The schedule matters much more in that environment. It affects labor planning, equipment, procurement, cash flow, risk and claims. When the plan is weak, the whole project feels it.
What I hear from teams is that they do not only want to know where the project stands. They want to know what to do next. If the schedule is slipping, what are the recovery options? If resources are constrained, what sequence makes the most sense? If a project is at risk, how early can we see it and respond?
That is also why Field Planning matters. Planning cannot only live in the baseline schedule or in an office meeting. The jobsite changes every day. Crews move. Access changes. Constraints show up. Field Planning is about bringing better planning intelligence closer to the field, where those day-to-day sequencing and coordination decisions happen. That is where scheduling technology needs to go. It has to move from reporting what happened to helping teams decide what to do about it.
Many construction leaders are careful about adopting AI, especially when major budgets and timelines are at stake. What does it take to build trust with project managers and schedulers?
It starts with respecting the people doing the work. Project managers and schedulers are right to be cautious. These are high-stakes projects, and no one should accept an answer just because software produced it. The team needs to understand the assumptions, the logic and the tradeoffs behind any recommendation.
That is how we think about ALICE. It is not there to replace the scheduler or project manager. It is there to help them see more options faster.
The software can run scenarios and compare possibilities, but the project team still brings the judgment. They know the site. They know the subcontractors. They know which plan is practical and which one only looks good in theory.
Trust comes when the output is explainable and the team can challenge it. If people can understand why an option works, adjust the assumptions and apply their own expertise, the technology stops feeling like a black box and starts becoming useful.
Can you share an example of how a customer used ALICE to recover time, reduce costs or improve the way a project was planned?
Andrade Gutierrez is a good example. They were working on a major infrastructure project in Brazil and needed to recover time.
When a project is delayed, the obvious question is whether the team can go faster. But the better question is how to go faster in a way that makes sense. There are many ways to recover time. You can add crews, change the sequence, shift resources or accelerate certain activities. Each option has a cost and a consequence.
Using ALICE, the team was able to test different recovery strategies and identify a plan that helped recover 27 days. It also helped avoid significant liquidated damages.
What matters is that they were able to evaluate the options instead of guessing. They could see the tradeoffs and choose a recovery plan that fit the reality of the project.
ALICE is continuing to expand beyond optimization into broader construction planning intelligence. What are you most excited about in the company’s roadmap, and how do you see upcoming capabilities changing the way teams manage project and portfolio risk?
I am excited about helping teams answer the next question. Optimization began with a specific question. What is the best way to build this project? That is still central to ALICE. But once a project is moving, the questions become broader. Is the schedule healthy? Are we tracking to plan? Where is risk building? If something is wrong, what should we do next? That is the direction we are moving with ALICE Analyze. Many tools can show a dashboard or identify that a project has a problem. That is useful, but the real value comes from connecting that insight to action. If the schedule quality is weak, what should the team fix? If a project is slipping, what recovery options are available? If several projects in a portfolio show similar risk, what does leadership need to know?
What excites me is connecting those pieces. Schedule quality, project performance, portfolio visibility and optimization should not live in separate worlds. They should work together.
Planning should not be something teams do once at the beginning and then leave static. It should keep helping teams understand where they are and what options they have as conditions change.
Looking ahead, what needs to happen for AI-powered planning and simulation to become a standard part of how major construction projects are built?
It has to prove itself on real projects. Construction teams will not adopt AI because it sounds interesting. They will adopt it if it helps them protect margins, win more work, recover time, reduce cost, manage resources, see risk earlier and make better decisions under pressure.
It also has to fit into the way construction actually works. That means connecting to the schedules teams already use, respecting project constraints and producing outputs that experienced professionals can understand and act on.
The goal is not to take judgment out of construction. The goal is to give people better options. Construction is full of hard decisions, and the people making those decisions need more than one static plan. They need options, visibility and a way to respond when conditions change.
If we can do that, we can reduce the cost and uncertainty of construction. That has always been the mission behind ALICE. Optimize construction worldwide.
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