AI for architects, surveyors and engineers.
Moonlabs is the operator-led AI Academy in Derby. We run three live companies — Homemove, home.co.uk and homedata.co.uk — and we teach twelve students per cohort to ship a real AI product, sell it to a real customer, and raise on it. Three pillars: Coding, Commercials, Investment. Twelve weeks. £6,000.
Moonlabs is what we are. Two operators — James Freestone and Louis O’Connell-Bristow — who run Homemove, home.co.uk and homedata.co.uk. The whole homedata.co.uk product is built on UK property and planning data — we work with the regulation, drawings layer and historical project records the built-environment professions live in.
The Academy is what we do. A twelve-week, in-person, twelve-student cohort in Derby. You build a real AI product. You sign a paid pilot on it. You write a deck and a financial model. You leave with a deployed system, a paying customer reference and a live investor pipeline. Coding, Commercials, Investment — the three pillars taught in equal weight every week.
Why this page exists. Architects, surveyors, planners, civil engineers and construction operators all sit on enormous archives of regulation, drawings, specifications, site data and historical projects — and almost none of it is being retrieved or analysed by AI tooling built for the profession. The current vendor pitches over-promise; most courses skip the field entirely. You leave the Academy as the practitioner who can ship the AI — or as the founder of an AEC-AI product your former practice would actually buy.
Coding · the built-environment AI stack, defensibly
Retrieval over planning policy and Building Regulations Approved Documents, specification drafting, drawings archive search, site-data triage, post-occupancy analysis. Evals, audit trails and on-prem-capable deployment from week one because AEC AI has to defend itself under RICS / RIBA standards and PI insurance. A deployed AEC-AI tool by week twelve.
Commercials · selling AI into a practice or contractor
Pricing per project, per fee earner, or per drawing-package. Procurement, PI sign-off, partnership cut, the technical sponsor. A one-page pilot agreement with one team or one site. A paid pilot by week six — for many graduates, sold back into the practice or Tier-1 contractor they arrived from.
Investment · raising on AEC-AI
Hypar, TestFit, Spacemaker (acquired by Autodesk), Higharc raised $53m, Briq, BuildBetter, Doxel raised at $150m+, Augmenta (autonomous building design) funded — AEC-AI is one of the loudest emerging vertical-AI thesis areas with named UK investors (A/O, Pi Labs, Sweet Capital). Cap table, ten-slide deck, financial model. A live investor pipeline by demo day.
Common questions.
I have never coded. Is this realistic for an architect or surveyor?
Yes. AI tooling has collapsed the on-ramp; we have taken senior non-coding professionals through to a deployed product in twelve weeks. The drawing-reading and specification fluency you bring is most of what you need; we add the engineering.
Will I learn how to evaluate vendor AEC-AI products too?
Yes. After twelve weeks of building you can read a Hypar, TestFit, Spacemaker or BIM-AI-vendor demo with operator-grade scepticism. The procurement conversations afterwards change shape.
Can my practice fund this?
Often yes — CPD budgets, professional development allowances, and the Apprenticeship Levy can all apply. Larger practices almost all pay the Levy. Full funding routes here.
Will I learn anything specific to BIM, Revit, AutoCAD?
The general AI engineering disciplines transfer to those contexts; we are not a Revit / Autodesk course. If deep BIM workflow specialism is what you want, your professional body is a better artefact. If shipping AI on top of those workflows is what you want, the Academy is the right route.
I am a civil engineer at a Tier-1 contractor. Same fit?
Yes — civil engineering with site-data, project-archive and specification-heavy workflows is a strong fit. Several past students from large contractors have moved into AI lead roles inside their firms on the back of the cohort.
More Academy entry points.
The Academy is one course with many doors. Each of these pages is a different entry point into the same twelve weeks.
Build it. Sell it. Raise on it. In twelve weeks.
Tell us what your practice or specialism is and what AI tool you would build for it. James and Louis read every application personally and reply inside the week.
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