Construction’s next productivity problem is fragmentation, not lack of tech

The useful part

BIM models guide delivery, drones monitor progress, mobile apps connect teams on site and cloud-based project management platforms have become commonplace. What teams often lack is the context and authority needed to act and deliver on it. Work stalls while a design package awaits client approval, and a subcontractor waits for an executed contract.

How it works

• Procurement pauses while someone searches for the latest version of a document, and an AI assistant is asked about a project change, but the decision and supporting documents sit in systems it cannot access.
• Across every stage of a project, work doesn't usually stop because technology has failed.
• Teams spend valuable time checking whether they have the latest version or whether the next stage of work has been approved.
• Instead, it's to make the technology they already rely on work better together, while keeping information with the organisation that owns it.
• Connecting these sources becomes even more important as AI enters project workflows.

What to take from it

It stops because the right information hasn't reached the right people to keep the project moving. As the industry continues to focus on productivity, construction's problem is no longer simply access to technology. Every project creates a temporary company In construction, every project effectively creates a temporary company.

Example or evidence

• New research sponsored by Dropbox illustrates the wider challenge: 74% of US business professionals manually move work between applications at least three times during a typical AI-assisted working day.
• The programme slips, preliminaries continue and the cost rarely sits neatly with the person holding the decision.
• It's about coordinating the right information, authority and action across the project team, while ensuring the AI tools teams increasingly use can access the right project context without fiction too.
• Clients, designers, contractors, suppliers and consultants bring together different people, systems and processes, yet they must operate as one team until the project is complete.

Details worth keeping

Yet despite this investment, projects still lose valuable time every day. Most organisations have digitised their own operations. Even where the handoff is digital, ownership, status and the next decision are often unclear, and the steps can still be surprisingly manual.

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