The construction industry is approaching a moment of fundamental change. In a recent article published by Construction Dive, Garrett Jones, Vice President of Product and Customer Strategy at Slate Technologies, explores why today’s project pressures are exposing the limits of traditional construction technology and what must change next.
Rather than focusing on any single tool or trend, there is a broader shift in how construction teams think about data, risk, and decision-making. Below are the core ideas and why they matter for owners, engineers, and contractors navigating increasingly complex projects.
Construction Demand Is Rising While Delivery Is Under Strain
Across the industry, expectations continue to rise while delivery fundamentals are under pressure. Large-scale, technically complex projects such as data centers, energy infrastructure, and transmission networks are accelerating at the same time that construction productivity has remained largely flat for decades.
Teams are being asked to deliver faster and more efficiently, often with fewer experienced resources, tighter cost controls, and increasing regulatory oversight. These pressures are compounded by supply-chain volatility, permitting constraints, and evolving sustainability requirements. As a result, execution risk has become a defining factor in how projects are planned, sequenced, and governed.
Recent data center development provides a clear example. Power availability, equipment lead times, and coordination with utilities have caused meaningful schedule delays across North America. In regions like Northern Virginia, grid interconnection challenges and power shortages have emerged as primary constraints on development timelines. As capital continues to flow into digital infrastructure and energy transition projects, the cost of uncertainty is only growing.
Digitization Has Increased Visibility, Not Foresight
Construction has made meaningful progress in digitizing workflows over the past decade. Cloud-based document management, BIM tools, scheduling platforms, and mobile field reporting have improved access to information and reduced reliance on paper-based processes.
However, most of these tools still operate independently. They generate fragmented datasets that require manual interpretation and reconciliation, limiting teams’ ability to anticipate what will happen next. While visibility has improved, foresight remains difficult. Identifying emerging risks, understanding root causes, and forecasting downstream impacts still depend heavily on individual experience rather than system-level intelligence.
This fragmentation continues to prevent organizations from fully capturing the value of their project data, even as the volume of that data grows.
The Construction Industry Is Moving Toward Integrated Intelligence
A new class of construction technology is beginning to take shape. Instead of focusing solely on documentation or visualization, these systems are designed to connect data across design, planning, and execution, and to generate insights that support earlier and more confident decision-making.
Industry sentiment reflects this shift. Many construction leaders believe AI and automation can improve cost control and efficiency, yet most organizations are not actively using predictive analytics in planning or execution today. This gap highlights both the opportunity and the challenge ahead.
The next phase of construction technology value will not come from adding more tools to an already complex stack. It will come from better integration of project data to reduce uncertainty before it becomes disruption.
Addressing Systemic Project Risks Earlier
The most expensive issues on construction projects are rarely isolated errors. More often, they stem from systemic problems such as misaligned scopes, sequencing conflicts, or risks that surface too late to resolve without significant cost or schedule impact.
Integrated intelligence helps address these challenges by connecting information across the project lifecycle. In practice, this can support:
- More consistent and repeatable preconstruction workflows that reduce manual effort and variability
- Real-time visibility into progress measured directly against 3D models and schedules
- Earlier identification of recurring risks and a clearer understanding of their root causes
By learning from both historical and in-progress data, these systems enable teams to intervene sooner, reduce rework, and improve alignment across cost, schedule, and quality objectives.
Competitive Advantage Is Built on Understanding
As construction enters an era defined by scale, speed, and scrutiny, competitive advantage will increasingly depend on how effectively organizations convert project data into understanding. Success is not be defined by the number of tools deployed, but by the ability to learn from execution, reduce blind spots, and act before risks escalate.
In an industry with thin margins and high expectations, connected intelligence is becoming a prerequisite for delivering complex projects with confidence.
About the original article
This post highlights key themes from “The future of construction is integrated intelligence,” written by Garrett Jones and originally published by Construction Dive in January 2026. The full article provides additional context, examples, and supporting research and is well worth a read.
Sources:
¹ U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Productivity in Construction, long-term productivity trends
² Construction Dive, Data center projects face delays amid power and supply constraints, 2023–2024
³ Reuters, Power shortages threaten Northern Virginia’s data center growth, 2024
⁴ McKinsey & Company, The Next Normal in Construction, insights on fragmented technology adoption
⁵ McKinsey Global Institute, Reinventing Construction Through a Productivity Revolution
⁶ Slate Technologies, AI in Construction: 2025 Industry Report — https://slate.ai/ai-construction-2025-industry-report/
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