Driving Value Through Innovation

At CRH, we apply an entrepreneurial approach to improve performance, accelerate growth, and optimize investment decisions.

Innovation at CRH is focused on delivering tangible, measurable outcomes. Whether it's improving performance or driving growth, our innovation efforts are designed to maintain a competitive edge.

Our approach leverages CRH’s unmatched scale, customer focus and connected portfolio with the ingenuity of external partners. Through an open innovation model, we connect internal expertise with startups, customers and other stakeholders to challenge assumptions, identify new opportunities and shape the future of construction.

Juan Pablo San Agustin, Group Head of Strategic Planning, Innovation and Venturing, provides insight into innovation at CRH.

How do you define innovation, and why is it critical to CRH’s long-term strategy?

To be honest, I don’t really like the word innovation. It has become something of a buzzword - used so often and so broadly, that it often loses its meaning and distracts from what truly matters.

At CRH, we don’t believe in innovating for the sake of it. Instead, we focus on applying our entrepreneurial mindset with purpose: to improve performance, accelerate growth, and make smarter decisions about where and how we deploy capital. For us, innovation is not about the label; it’s about action. It’s about creating real value for our customers, our people, and our business. It’s how we stay ahead of the competition, lead our industry, and most importantly, give meaning to our purpose: to reinvent the way our world is built.

Innovation is critical to CRH’s long term strategy as to remain a leading performer, we’ve got to keep pushing ourselves … trying new things, taking smart risks, and learning as we go.

People often tell me I thrive in uncertainty … and it’s true. I love a good challenge, especially when it involves creativity, building a new path, or finding a better way forward. I don’t mind a bit of chaos; in fact, that’s often when the best ideas emerge. But creativity needs direction. At CRH, that direction is clear, we innovate to drive value creation and superior growth.

What market trends are you capitalizing on to achieve this growth?

Trends don’t drive growth, companies do. At CRH we’re relentless in asking ‘why’ and pushing beyond the obvious. Our focus is on meaningful impact… creating new products or services that increase productivity, expand market share and improve competitiveness.

Four key trends that we are engaging with:

• Digital technology and AI-powered decision making is helping us to improve safety on site and our ability to plan and design more efficiently.
• Robotics and automation are boosting productivity and improving how we operate…empowering our people to work on high value-add activities and often handling the repetitive tasks so our people don’t have to.
• Data analytics and IoT is enabling smarter decision-making and predictive maintenance, which reduces costs, minimizes downtime and improves reliability and productivity.
• Next generation building materials is another key trend for us, from increasing volumes of RAP (recycled asphalt pavement) to using innovative SCMs (supplementary cementitious materials) and admixtures, which help reduce carbon emissions while improving durability and performance.

What is CRH's approach to innovation?

At CRH, we have developed an open innovation model that connects our internal strengths with external ingenuity. To continue leading this industry, we need to see beyond the traditional patterns and recognize new patterns. Our goal is not to become a company of innovators … our goal is to be best in class in leveraging new technologies and business models to disrupt ourselves.

We stick to four key principles:

1. Customer first, always. We prioritize what creates real value for our customers. If it doesn’t serve them, we don’t pursue it.
2. Scalable by design. Great ideas don’t belong in a lab, they need to work in the real world. We build with scale in mind from day one.
3. Driven by Our Strategic Edge. We harness CRH’s unmatched scale, connected portfolio, customer focus and empowered people to accelerate growth in ways others can’t.
4. Fail Fast, Learn Faster. Mistakes are inevitable- what matters is learning from them. Fear of failure leads to inaction, embracing failure fosters growth.

Our approach is how we stay ahead of the curve, lead our industry, and consistently deliver superior shareholder returns.

Can you share some exciting developments from across CRH?

We’re working on a range of exciting projects that deliver real value to our customers... from advanced water management systems and smarter road infrastructure to more resilient, sustainable building materials. For example:

• Building an integrated water asset management solution by:
  • investing in Voda AI, which helps our water customers, by predicting which pipes are most likely to fail,
  • making a strategic investment in Fido AI, which reduces water waste, cost and improves water security by identifying and sizing pipe issues, and
  • providing products and solutions like durable pipe systems that help with the repair and maintenance of water management infrastructure.
• Developing lower carbon asphalt materials within our Roads Solutions. This involves using high levels of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), warm mix technology, and other innovative methods. These solutions aim to reduce emissions during both the production and construction stages without compromising on quality. In one such example we’ve achieved 70% reclaimed asphalt using warm mix technology, bio binders and HVO-powered equipment.
• Collaborating with Carbon Upcycling Technology to launch its first industrial project at our Mississauga plant. The project will transform waste from a nearby steel facility and capture CO₂ emissions from the cement kiln to create a lower carbon, high performance cementitious material.

We are also deploying technologies that benefit our operations. For example:

• Partnering with Boston Dynamics, to pilot a robotic dog at a cement plant in Seattle, enhancing safety and efficiency during site inspections.
• Expanding our capabilities in Roads by investing in start-up companies that specialize in leading-edge data analytics to enable predictive maintenance, optimize lifecycle costs and support smarter asset management decisions.
• Developing bespoke AI solutions - for example - an AI-driven emergency stop system that proactively stops machinery the moment a person approaches a danger zone.

What is CRH Ventures?

CRH Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of CRH. This team is dedicated to investing in and partnering with leading-edge startups that are redefining the future of construction.

We identify entrepreneurs and support their transformative technologies and innovative business models with strategic investments and deep collaboration. Through these partnerships we help to test, deploy and scale their ideas. In fact, what makes CRH Ventures so unique is our ability to harness our unrivalled scale and broad market reach, combined with over 50 years of operational expertise, to accelerate growth.

These partnerships are much more than an investment or a transaction. Together, we’re not just investing in innovation - we’re building it. To date, we’ve built a portfolio of nine innovative companies and successfully completed three accelerator programs, which demonstrates our ability to foster early-stage innovation and convert it into scalable growth.

What does the future of innovation look like for CRH?

At CRH, leadership means anticipating change, not reacting to it. That’s why we embrace the concept of open innovation … because our job isn’t to know everything, it’s to connect. Our open innovation model goes beyond solving our customers’ challenges – it’s about developing new business models which will benefit the entire construction value chain.

Through initiatives like our accelerator programs, we are building a hub where, startups, competitors, academia, customers and our own operating companies come together to drive the next wave of value creation in the industry.

Innovation at CRH isn’t a destination - it’s a continuous journey.

We’re constantly testing, learning, and adapting. In a world that’s evolving faster than ever, standing still is the greatest risk of all

It all boils down to a simple question: do you want to be a follower, or a leader? We have made our choice.