If you've been in this industry long enough, you've heard of Groundbreak. It's Procore's big annual conference, and this year it ran October 20-22 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando.
I had friends heading there as Procore super users almost ten years ago. I'd heard the stories for years, but I'd never been.
When I saw the open submissions for the 2026 Groundbreaker Awards, I figured why not? I take every chance I can to put our team's work in front of people and cheer them on. They earn it every day, and most of the time nobody outside our office ever sees it.
So I submitted one of our recent CM programs, and honestly, I forgot about it.
It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but it's a founder habit. You finish one thing and move straight to the next. Once it's done, it doesn't exist again until it comes back into your universe.
When Procore emailed to say Stronghold had been named a finalist in the Empowering the Industry category, I was skeptical. My first thought was "surely not." That's a global program!
Then the bio requests came. Then the media requests. Then the speaker schedules. It sank in pretty quickly that this was happening whether I was ready or not.
And this is exactly what I'd asked for!
For a founder at a young company our size, this is the stuff dreams are made of. I'm talking about the midnight, staring-at-the-ceiling kind of hope. Back when the only things you're hoping for are more work and that payroll clears.
So, still a little hesitant, I was headed to Groundbreak to represent our team.
I did what anybody does now and had AI dig up Reddit threads so I'd know what I was walking into. Landing in Orlando the day before took me right back to my traveling superintendent days, when I ran a job down there. Same city, very different reason to be there.
Day one, my expectations were shattered almost instantly – in a good way.
I had sessions booked and a plan for the day. Most of it got overshadowed by great conversations with just about everyone I met.
The room was full of people who know this industry better than most, from every corner of it. Huge projects and huge companies, all the way down to people just getting started, with reps from the supporting industries on every side. It was the melting pot of construction.
One thing I expected but wasn't quite ready for was the amount of software. At times it felt more like a tech conference than a construction conference. If there's a problem on a jobsite, somebody in that building had software for it.
The biggest difference between Groundbreak and a construction event back home was the exposure. It showed me where Oklahoma sits in the bigger picture.
Don't get me wrong, Oklahoma has great companies doing great things. But I was talking with a founder from Texas who started his company last year, and he was the one introducing me to reps and companies I needed to meet. A guy one year in was walking a guy four years in around the room. That told me a lot.
The gap I saw was exposure. A lot of us here just aren't seeing what's out there, so we keep building the way it's always been done while the rest of the country keeps moving.
That's on us to fix. It starts with showing up to rooms like this one, and bringing what we learn back home.
Speaking on the Elevation Stage was a true highlight. It's a much smaller stage than the keynote, and it was lightly attended. But if you give me a stage to talk about lessons learned and what our team has pulled off, the nerves melt, and I'm locked in.
It was a sit-down interview with Airon White from Procore. We talked about our team, how Stronghold got started, and our culture. A big part of that was how we focus just as much on culture as we do on building projects. In our world, those two go hand in hand.
Much of the conversation focused on our work with tribal nations here in Oklahoma. Every nation has its own culture, history, and way of doing things. Respecting that, and finding ways to build it into the work, is so important to how we do those projects.
We also talked about finding projects you can believe in. The kind you can put real passion and purpose into. Those are the projects that make the hard days worth it.
We presented the finalists for each category on the main stage during the keynotes. In true anxiety-inducing fashion, our category got skipped at the closing keynote on day one and pushed to the next day. So that was another night of staring at the ceiling.
When they finally got to Empowering the Industry, they introduced the two other finalists before us. I got nervous, unreasonably so.
Maybe it was a fluke. Surely they picked someone else, and I was here by mistake. Big event, big media team, wires crossed somewhere. Maybe this was all just a mix-up.
Then boom—our company, our name, our team, our achievements, our culture.
It hit.
My picture flashed across a screen that had to be 30' tall and 100' wide, and I almost sank in my chair. Don't put me up there! Use one of the 20 other photos I sent of our team or our projects. Please, for the love of God, anything else.
But it was us. The crowd applauded, and I clapped right along with them like I was just another spectator. They had just put up the projects we'd been living and breathing for the last two years, and I was sitting there clapping like I was hearing about them for the first time.
I felt a kind of pride I hadn't felt before. Not for anything I did. That was our team up there.
The late nights. The stress. The projects we had no clue how we'd get done. All of it came flooding back, up on that screen in front of thousands of people.
We didn't win, and it doesn't matter.
Talking with the team that took our category, we joked that they had more people at Groundbreak than we have on payroll. Congrats to them, well deserved!
We still made it. We were a finalist on a national stage. Procore's CEO shook hands with a founder from a small GC in Oklahoma and handed him a plaque. That was all we needed.
In my eyes, and I'm sure a lot of founders feel this way about their people, our team was finally getting the recognition they deserve for what they do every day.
If you're a contractor who's been thinking about Groundbreak, or any national event like it, here’s my two cents:
Groundbreak was packed with AI, next-generation tech, and software, and it was all impressive. I came home with a calendar full of follow-up meetings.
But my real takeaway was the people.
From the Procore team, to the attendees, to my new friends at the ConstructionOwners Podcast, the people are what make this conference special. Not so much what's offered in products, but the knowledge, the shared experiences, and all the "been there, done that, please don't make the same mistake I did.”
It was industry and industry-adjacent folks supporting each other. That's my takeaway.
Will we be back? Absolutely. Maybe not on the Groundbreaker stage, though I wouldn't count this team out.
Either way, we'll be back to bring home more knowledge and keep pushing to improve our industry, our state, and ourselves every day we show up to work here at home.
Written by Zach Simmons,CCM President of Stronghold Construction
