Consultants
AI strategy, service positioning, business model risk, evidence review and innovation management.
AI / built environment / strategy
What is AI actually changing in your market — and what should you do next?
38thMove gives senior, independent advice to built-environment leaders before important AI decisions: a clear, evidence-led view of what is really changing and what is worth doing next.
What I do
Independent advice before important AI decisions.
38thMove is not an implementation shop. It provides senior, independent advice where leaders need a clear view of what AI is changing and what is worth doing next. The work is short and focused:
- Evidence review — assess public case studies, vendor claims and benchmarks before they shape a decision.
- Leadership briefing — a clear read on what is changing, what is still hype and what deserves attention.
- Strategy challenge — stress-test AI priorities, adoption assumptions and business-model implications.
- Due diligence support — challenge AI narratives and test value-creation claims before money moves.
The output is a clearer point of view: what appears credible, what needs testing, what may change commercially, and what the organisation should consider next.
Who it is for
Different audiences, the same need for clear judgement.
Investors
Due diligence support, commercial review, market mapping, investment thesis challenge and evidence-led assessment of AI claims.
Client-side leaders
Advice on suppliers, assets, procurement, risk, public value and service models as AI changes delivery.
Senior teams
Clarify leadership appetite: what to back, what to stop, what to test and what to monitor next.
Evidence
Not AI enthusiasm. A sharper read on what is actually changing.
The advice is grounded in a working library of 70+ public AI case studies, claims and benchmarks across the built environment and adjacent sectors — tracked, graded by evidence quality and how close each claim gets to real money, and reviewed continuously.
Published AI claims are useful evidence of where the market is moving, but they are uneven: many are written by firms and vendors who want to show progress. The library exists to separate what is measured from what is merely claimed, and it underpins client briefings, strategy challenges and due diligence work.
Humans × machines
The hardest AI questions are human.
Inside every organisation, AI raises the same questions: what does this mean for me, what do humans do best, and who is accountable when machines do more? Good AI strategy answers them deliberately — better decisions and better services, with the value shared across clients, firms, communities and the people doing the work.
About
Darren Russell
Darren is an engineer by background, with early career experience in academic research and more than three 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.
View Darren on LinkedInThe name
Why 38thMove?
The name comes from AlphaGo. In 2016, Move 37 looked wrong to expert observers: unexpected, unlike normal human play, and later recognised as brilliant. It changed the game.
38thMove is about what happens next: how leaders respond after the game has changed, what they learn, and what they decide to do.
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