More than 100 information technology leaders or startups and construction materials producers joined together at the 2025 AggNexus Digital Innovation Conference in Austin, Texas, exploring advanced software, new Internet of Things devices, data deluge management and best practices aimed at strengthening competitive positions in mining, processing and hauling.
The September event was organized by SEMCO Publishing, parent company of Rock Products, Concrete Products and Cement Optimized.
In its second year, AggNexus brought together key players who are shaping the future. From quarry managers to software developers, attendees shared a common goal: to build not just stronger structures, but a smarter, safer, and more sustainable industry. Through a series of engaging panels and presentations, the event sparked honest dialogue and inspired a vision for a cleaner, more innovative future.
Takeaways ranged from the quarry and plant functions where artificial intelligence can have the greatest near-term impacts, to the escalating role of AI in information retrieval, to workforce development and retention tactics.
SEMCO organized the 2025 AggNexus Conference with partners representing a cross section of hardware, software and business services providers serving aggregates, cement, concrete and asphalt operators: alterBiota, BCMI/XBE, Burgex Mining Consultants, CheckProof, EveryPoint.io, Giatec Scientific, INFORM, Requordit and Truckpay. Partners invited key producer accounts or prospects to round out attendance.
“The variety and depth of session content assured AggNexus 2.0 was a huge success,” said Rock Products and Cement Optimized Editor Mark Kuhar.
“The construction-materials industry is well-served by a conference like this, focusing on new ideas and the technological advancement of operations,” said Concrete Products and Cement Optimized co-editor Editor Don Marsh.
Allen-Villere Partners CEO and Cement Optimized columnist Pierre Villere kicked off AggNexus on an upbeat note, expressing confidence that aggregates, concrete and major construction segments “will thrive for the foreseeable future. Material margins will continue to expand as pricing strength continues in the industry.” The prospect for a slowing economy exists, he added, “but we don’t believe it.”
Villere, the leading management consultant and M&A specialist in construction materials, set the table for the conference session program, beginning with “Serving Customer Needs.” Panelists stressed the importance of producers respecting contractor schedules and having team members who maintain customer relationships and fully understand how customers think.
To underscore contractors’ increasingly demanding tendencies, Mike Nolan, president of North Carolina’s Sunrock Industries, noted, “We used to tell them they could have price, service or quality, pick two. Now they want all three.”
Tools for meeting customer demands were featured in “Immediately Actionable AI,” a panel assessing how large language models, natural language recognition programs and machine learning methods support applications primed for construction materials producer deployment. Among them, panelists noted, are programs that:
- Help streamline employee training and onboarding.
- Enable extraction, processing and delivery team members to move from reactive to predictive mode.
- Drive a migration of traditional material monitoring and quality control practices to ones based on in-line image capture and data from extensive sensor placements.
- Flag truck time variations, equipment breakdown frequency or other critical matters not always immediately evident to operations teams.
“There is something very special about the construction materials industry,” said Show Manager David Jones. “This industry is the quiet miracle that builds our world. It is the basis of everything we rely on daily, from the roads we drive on to the hospitals that care for our loved ones. It provides the foundation of the data centers that fuel our insatiable need for data and the houses we live in. In the coming years, the AggNexus community will continue to grow and provide transformative leadership.”
SEMCO Publishing and partners have already begun work on a third AggNexus Digital Innovation Conference in fall 2026.
