Direction
“Where should we focus?”
Cut through a noisy market and identify the decisions, capabilities and areas of work that could genuinely matter.
Senior AI advisory / built environment
Decide what AI should change.
I provide senior, independent advice to leaders in the built environment, grounded in four decades of experience and a continually reviewed public evidence base.
I help you set direction, challenge plans and claims, and decide what deserves action.
Discuss a decision →
Independent · senior · evidence-led.
What I help with
Clear judgement before important AI decisions.
I work directly with senior teams when the question is bigger than choosing a tool. The aim is a clearer view of what matters, what stands up to scrutiny and what should happen next.
I advise consultancy leaders, investors and client-side owners and operators. The context changes; the need for informed, independent judgement does not.
Challenge
“Does this stand up?”
Pressure-test a strategy, business case, investment thesis or supplier claim before you commit money and credibility.
Action
“What should we do next?”
Turn the evidence into a practical next move: proceed, test, narrow, pause or stop.
How I work
Your team does the work. I help you decide.
I do not sell a platform or arrive with a large transformation team. I work with the people you already have, bringing an external perspective with no stake in the answer being flattering.
- Senior briefings: what is changing, what is still uncertain and what deserves leadership attention.
- Strategy and decision challenge: an independent read on priorities, plans, business cases and claims.
- Ongoing advice: a senior sounding board while your team tests, learns and delivers.
The engagement can be short and focused or continue as the decision develops. The output is clarity: a recommendation, its evidence and the next action.
See the methods behind the advice →Experience + evidence
Judgement informed by both.
Experience provides context: four decades working with technology, digital change and business transformation in and around the built environment.
Evidence provides discipline: a working library of 85 reviewed public AI Cases, organised into 14 recurring Workflows and labelled to show who made each claim and how close it gets to measurable value.
The library is research behind the advice, not the service itself. It helps me distinguish genuine movement from marketing and show where a recommendation came from.
Reviewed means checked against the available public source trail and accepted with visible caveats. It does not mean independently audited.
Interactive map
Explore the evidence map
Browse the 85 reviewed public AI Cases by geography, evidence strength and proximity to measurable value.
Open the map 14 WorkflowsSee where AI is changing work
Move from individual Cases to 14 recurring areas of work, from project delivery to business operations.
Explore the Workflows Latest evidence noteRead what the Cases show
See what the current evidence supports, where claims remain weak and what leaders should test next.
Read the evidence note38M methods
From evidence to action.
Evidence helps identify where to act. These working methods help leaders organise how: clear structures for decisions, governed tests and operating change, adapted with the people doing the work.
They support the advice. They are not off-the-shelf systems or substitutes for judgement.
Decide what to test, fund and scale.
A challenge-led route from strategic priority to evidence-backed test, scale decision and owned operation.
Explore the Innovation Method →- 01Challenge
- 02Spark
- 03Test
- 04Scale
- 05Operate
About
Darren Russell
Darren is an engineer by background, with early career experience in academic research and four decades working with technology, digital change and business transformation in and around the built environment.
His work brings together leadership, business model change, organisational change and innovation. 38thMove is deliberately small: direct senior advice, independent thinking and a practical view of what the evidence does and does not support.
The hardest AI questions in any organisation turn out to be human ones. What does this mean for me, what do people still do best, and who is accountable when machines do more? Those deserve a deliberate answer, not an accidental one.
View Darren on LinkedInWhy 38thMove? The name refers to what leaders do after an unexpected move changes the game: how they respond, what they learn and what they decide next.
Contact
What are you trying to decide?
Tell me the question in front of you. We will work out whether an independent conversation would help and what shape it should take.