Why I Joined Built Intelligence and What I’ll Be Writing About

Genna Rourke joined Built Intelligence as Industry Engagement Director in January 2026. With nearly twenty years’ experience across quantity surveying and commercial leadership, Genna brings first-hand industry perspective to our work across FastDraft, Academy and wider thought leadership. In this new series, she will share practical views on the challenges construction teams face in contract management, capability development and commercial control.

Hello. Here’s who I am and why I’m writing.

I joined Built Intelligence in January 2026 as Industry Engagement Director. Before that, I spent nearly twenty years working as a quantity surveyor and commercial leader across infrastructure, civil engineering and contractor environments. I am a Chartered QS, MRICS and FCInstCES, and I have worked at every level from junior QS through to Sector Commercial Director.

I am starting this blog because I want to talk more openly about the commercial challenges this industry still faces. Not in the form of reports or technical documents – I have produced plenty of those – but through honest, practical views from someone who has worked through them first-hand.

Twenty years in construction

I started in 2007. Over nearly two decades I progressed through contracting and commercial leadership, administering NEC and JCT contracts, managing claims, mobilising teams and mentoring professionals at every stage of their careers. I have also spent more time than I would like searching for project records that should have existed but did not.

I love this industry. It is complex, demanding and full of genuinely skilled people. But it also has persistent problems: a commercial capability gap, too little investment in developing people, and ways of working that often make already difficult jobs harder than they need to be. Those problems are a big part of why I want to write.

The move to Built Intelligence

Leaving live project work was not a decision I made lightly. For nearly twenty years, live projects were where I operated: the pressure, the pace, the problem-solving. That is what I knew and what I was good at. 

But I reached a point where I could see that the contribution I wanted to make was bigger than any single project. The commercial skills gap in this industry is real. Too many contracts are still administered through email chains and spreadsheets. Too many professionals are placed in senior roles without the structured knowledge to support them. Chartership helps, because the process of working towards it forces you to confront what you do not yet know and gives you a map of the gaps. But chartership alone is not enough if the wider culture does not invest in developing people and technology alongside it. 

Joining Built Intelligence gave me the opportunity to work on those problems directly. FastDraft addresses something I encountered constantly on live projects: the absence of a proper system for administering contracts. Too often, correspondence sits in email threads, compensation events are tracked on spreadsheets that only one person understands, and key records live in inboxes rather than somewhere accessible when they are needed most. FastDraft brings structure, consistency and visibility to an area of project delivery that is still too often held together by workarounds. That is not a technology pitch. It is something I watched teams struggle without for twenty years.

Alongside that, the Built Intelligence Academy is building structured, competency-mapped learning for commercial and project professionals across the industry: the kind of development that helps close the gap between what people are asked to do and what they have actually been trained to do.

It felt like the right moment to make the move, and I have not looked back.

CICES: Vice President and the Women’s Network

Alongside my commercial career, I have also been closely involved with CICES, the Chartered Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors. I am currently Vice President of CICES and founder and Chair of the CICES Women’s Network, both of which reflect something I care strongly about: professional development, connection and progression across the industry.

I founded the Women’s Network because women in civil engineering and construction benefit from having a dedicated space to connect, share experience and support each other’s progression. The network is there to improve visibility, strengthen support and help more women build long-term careers in the industry.

What I will be writing about

The posts in this series will cover the commercial challenges I see most often: contract start-up, early warning culture, cost and programme transparency, commercial capability gaps, and what it actually takes to run a well-managed project from a QS perspective. I will also write about professional development, chartership and why the industry needs to invest more seriously in building commercial talent.

Some posts will be practical. Some will be more opinion-led. All of them will be grounded in direct experience rather than theory, and written in a voice that is recognisably mine.

If you work in commercial management, quantity surveying or project management in construction, this series is written with you in mind. I hope it helps you recognise some of the challenges, think differently about them, and feel better equipped to deal with them.

Genna Rourke is Industry Engagement Director at Built Intelligence. She is a Chartered QS, MRICS, FCInstCES, Vice President of CICES, and founder and Chair of the CICES Women’s Network.