James Reed.

Executive summary

Currently Director at Adelphos AI with four-plus years as Project Director at JPA M&E Consultants, a UK building services practice. Leading the practice alongside a business partner, the role covers bidding, contract negotiation, design assurance, compliance, dispute resolution, and P&L. The automation programme addressed the workload every regulated practice carries — repeated calculation, specification, scheduling, and reporting — freeing engineering capacity for design judgement. Over the period gross margin moved from 30% to over 70% and the delivery team settled at four engineers sustaining ~£1m turnover. Adelphos AI productises that IP for the wider AEC sector.

Capabilities

• Leadership and commercial

  P&L ownership, framework wins and delivery, commercial negotiation, technical hiring and team leadership, client and contractor engagement, and cross-functional roadmapping across engineering and software functions.

• Project and programme management

  Multi-project portfolio delivery, framework agreements, RIBA-aligned stage gates, risk and change control, contract administration, and dispute resolution across public sector and private commercial work.

• AI strategy and in-house LLM deployment

  Agent orchestration, MCP tooling, retrieval-augmented generation, structured-output validation, and deterministic versus generative architecture patterns for regulated environments.

• Construction design automation

  RIBA Stages 0–7, BIM workflows aligned to ISO 19650, compliance with British Standards, CIBSE guidance, and UK Building Regulations. Uniclass and NRM2 classification, IFC and COBie data exchange.

• Software architecture

  Service architecture and delivery across backend (Python / FastAPI, C# / .NET 8/10, WPF), frontend (TypeScript / React / Next.js), and data (SQL / Postgres). REST and event-driven patterns, test-driven, containerised, CI/CD.

• MEP engineering

  Compliance, design, management, and sustainability across heating, cooling, drainage, ventilation, water, gas, LV and HV electrical, lighting, data, and fire systems. Thermal modelling to CIBSE TM52 and TM59, Part L compliance via SAP and SBEM, heat networks to CIBSE CP1.

• Data and infrastructure

  Production data platforms on Postgres / Supabase with row-level security, Redis caching, and vector stores for retrieval. Container deployments via Docker, Railway, and Vercel; CI/CD through GitHub Actions; WebSocket streams and structured observability across services.

• Modelling, geospatial, and 3D

  Drawing and model exchange across AutoCAD, Revit, and IFC. Thermal modelling in IES VE, electrical compliance in Amtech, lighting design in Dialux / Relux. Geospatial and 3D workflows including CesiumJS, MapLibre, LiDAR point-cloud processing, and 3D Gaussian Splatting.

Experience

1. Co-Founder & Director

   ·Adelphos AICurrent

   Jan 2026 — present · Dublin

   Technical co-founder building the company alongside two business partners. Responsible for platform architecture, AI and automation strategy, the drone and LiDAR surveying pipeline, and the Spec Builder / Compliance engine that productises the JPA automation IP for the wider AEC sector. Set financial and strategic direction including budgeting, cash runway, pricing, and unit economics. Run investor relations: pitch narrative, data room, technical due diligence preparation, and ongoing reporting. Market strategy, partnership development, engineering hiring, and the technology roadmap also sit here.

   Pre-seed engagement is underway across MEP consultancies, contractors, and surveying practices ahead of a seed raise — early signal that the deterministic-spec and BIM-to-compliance approach lands with the sector it was built for.

2. Project Director

   ·JPA M&E Consultants GroupCurrent

   Apr 2022 — present · United Kingdom

   Four-plus years running the practice end-to-end alongside my business partner: bidding, contract negotiation, design assurance, compliance, dispute resolution, and P&L. Co-designed and operationalised the automation programme that underpinned delivery, including a bidirectional AutoCAD–Revit data bridge across 424 C# files and the Spec Builder rule engine. Over the period gross margin moved from 30% to over 70% and the delivery team settled at four engineers sustaining ~£1m turnover. Frameworks delivered for a Tier 1 tech sector client (NDA), Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Defence, Willmott Dixon, LJJ, Fit Out UK, and others.

3. Senior Automation Engineer

   ·Gleeds

   Feb 2022 — Aug 2022 · United Kingdom

   Worked with the in-house development team and external partners to improve engineer and surveyor workflows. Developed mobile-to-central system compatibility for field engineers, enabling data capture and synchronisation with the firm's central information models. This in turn produced automated EPC estimates, condition reports, and RIBA Stage 2 loading calculations that were transposed to automated plant selection schedules.

4. Senior Mechanical Engineer

   ·Kinetic Engineers Ltd

   Mar 2021 — Feb 2022 · United Kingdom

   Mechanical engineering design across commercial fit-outs and residential developments. Heating, cooling, ventilation, hot and cold water, drainage, and gas systems to UK Building Regulations and CIBSE guidance. Team management and client-facing responsibilities: chaired technical design reviews, coordinated across MEP disciplines and with architects, and mentored junior engineers through to issued drawing stage.

5. Mechanical Design Engineer

   ·Wilson Gray Consulting Ltd

   Oct 2015 — Mar 2021 · Newcastle upon Tyne

   Five and a half years of foundational mechanical design across heating, cooling, ventilation, drainage, and hot/cold water systems. Project mix spanned residential developments, education, healthcare, and mixed-use commercial schemes. Calculations to CIBSE Guide A, ventilation to Part F, energy compliance via SAP and SBEM. Scope grew from junior design tasks into leading project workstreams during the period, including site visits, contractor coordination, and client-facing design reviews.