By ALICE TechnologiesLearning Objectives
- Understand what ALICE does and the limits of traditional scheduling
- Evaluate how generative AI optimizes construction sequencing
- Assess where ALICE fits for heavy-civil and infrastructure projects
What Is ALICE Technologies?
ALICE Technologies is a construction-technology company, spun out of Stanford research, that uses generative AI to plan how projects get built. Traditional construction scheduling produces a single plan that reflects one set of assumptions about sequence, crews, and equipment. But there are countless ways to build a large project, and the chosen sequence has an enormous effect on cost and duration.
ALICE explores that space automatically. Given a project's building-information model and its schedule, it generates millions of feasible ways to sequence the work — different orderings, crew sizes, and equipment strategies — and surfaces the options that finish fastest or cost least while respecting real-world constraints.
💡Key Concept
Generative scheduling: Instead of refining one hand-built schedule, the AI generates and evaluates vast numbers of valid construction sequences against goals and constraints, then presents the best. It treats "how to build it" as an optimization problem rather than a fixed plan.
How AI Changes the Workflow
The payoff is the ability to test what-if scenarios in minutes rather than weeks. A team can ask what happens if a piece of equipment is added, a crew works a second shift, or a milestone moves — and ALICE re-optimizes the whole sequence. The company reports duration reductions on the order of fifteen percent and meaningful labor savings, and a 2025 mode focused on targeted acceleration for the highest-impact changes.
In 2025, ALICE partnered with the consulting firm McKinsey to bring generative scheduling to dozens of major clients. Its users are heavy-civil and infrastructure contractors on some of the world's largest projects, including high-speed rail — exactly the programs where a better sequence saves the most time and money.
Who Uses ALICE Technologies?
ALICE is aimed at general contractors, owners, and project-planning teams on large, complex builds — infrastructure, data centers, energy, and major buildings. Its value is highest on schedule-driven megaprojects where compressing the timeline or smoothing resource use translates into very large savings.
Company Details
| Detail | Info |
|---|---|
| Product | ALICE Technologies — generative AI for construction scheduling |
| Company | ALICE Technologies (founded 2015, Menlo Park, California; Stanford spin-out) |
| Method | Generates millions of construction sequences and optimizes them |
| Inputs | A project's building-information model and schedule |
| Reported impact | Around fifteen percent duration reduction plus labor savings |
| 2025 partnership | McKinsey, to deliver generative scheduling to major clients |
| Target users | Heavy-civil and infrastructure contractors on large projects |
| Website | alicetechnologies.com |
Strengths
- Explores millions of sequences — far beyond what a planner can try by hand
- Fast what-if analysis — re-optimizes the whole schedule in minutes
- Real savings — reported duration and labor reductions on big projects
- Built for megaprojects — used on heavy-civil and high-speed-rail builds
- AI-native optimization — generative scheduling is the core of the product
Limitations and Considerations
- Model-dependent — needs a building-information model and structured schedule
- Large-project focus — value is highest on complex, schedule-driven builds
- Planning, not execution — optimizes the plan; teams still build it
- Enterprise pricing — sold to contractors and owners with custom quotes
Pricing
ALICE Technologies is enterprise software sold to contractors and owners, with pricing based on project scope. There is no public list pricing. Contact ALICE for details.
Key Takeaways
- ALICE Technologies uses generative AI to plan construction, generating millions of ways to sequence a project and surfacing the most efficient
- It lets teams test what-if scenarios in minutes and reports around fifteen percent duration reductions plus labor savings
- A 2025 McKinsey partnership extended it to dozens of major clients across heavy-civil and infrastructure
- It is a leading example of AI optimizing how infrastructure actually gets built, not just how it is designed
