This past year has been an interesting one for the construction folks, to say the least. In 2022, we kicked off strong with four consecutive months of increased construction spending. However, supply chain bottlenecks, inflation, and labor shortages all remained significant challenges for the construction industry. A 2022 study by the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) and Autodesk found that 93% of construction firms have unfilled positions.
Challenges will certainly flow into the coming year, but there are many reasons to be optimistic. To gain even more insights into the exciting opportunities and transformations in the year ahead, we asked more than 20 construction industry thought leaders and insiders to share their trends and predictions for 2023. This year, we’ve broken down their insights into three main focus areas:
- Industry Transformation: significant economic and global shifts
- Future of Work: the changing tides of construction’s workforce
- Advanced Innovation: the evolution of data and technology
Take a look at what they have to say.
1. 2023 Trends: Construction Industry Transformation
Furthermore, rising environmental and government pressure as well as requirements from responsible owners will drive the industry to make better, informed decisions regarding more sustainable materials and methods. Specifically, we’ll see a rise in the use of embodied carbon calculators, which will help project teams determine the impact of emissions generated by materials used during construction. I also expect this pressure to drive a steep increase in DfMA and other offsite and modular methods. In addition to helping better manage the environmental impact of construction, modular construction methods will improve project productivity, deliver construction outputs more quickly, better manage scarce resources, and improve site safety.” – Jim Lynch, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Autodesk Construction Solutions
New business models
Design and build reimagined
“Construction tech will continue to rapidly disrupt the industry with focus on the connected jobsite and leveraging data collection and interconnectivity to increase productivity, quality, and safety.”
Circularity in construction
We have to reduce our resource consumption and our CO2 emissions. This is not easy because our current business models are centered on growth. With technology, we can adapt the ways things are being designed, built, and operated. But the rules of the game need to change more deeply. To lower the pressure put on the planet, we also need to transform the business models governing companies, project delivery networks, supply chains, ecosystems and the whole industry. This is urgent.” – Olivier Lépinoy, Global Business Development, Autodesk
A focus on quality
Across 2023 I think we’ll see owners put more investment upfront into what will get them a better quality project delivery. Meanwhile, the contract game is beginning to change as well. Owners are becoming much more willing to sit down with contractors when issues occur to figure out solutions into what’s working and what’s not.” – Waleed Zafar, Mission Critical Director, XYZ Reality
Community impact
Expanding investments
Stress on data collection, research, and management – With the advance of the types of construction software, the methodologies of collecting and using data, with regards to preconstruction and operations is helping the way we bid projects and forecast production on projects. This will be very instrumental in budgeting future projects given certain relevant parameters.
Improved supply chain research – Focus on robust procurement methods and supply chain research will be one of the mainstream efforts based on all the post covid issues faced by the industry. This will definitely be another market worth exploring in construction tech over the next decade.” – Suchayita (Sue) Bhattacharjee, Director of Preconstruction, Herrero Builders
2. 2023 Trends: Future of Construction Work
Knowing that the industry cannot attract and retain a workforce fast enough, we have to increase efficiency and effectiveness with advanced digital construction management methods and tools. Digital upskilling and training for specific technology, as well as a broader focus on knowledge sharing, is critical to capture institutional knowledge and IP that is leaving the business due to retirement. We’ll also continue to see more construction firms reduce silos for digital methodologies and pull that skillset and methods across the organization. The knowledge will no longer live within the BIM/VDC or innovation departments – it will be more broadly part of the means and methods of preconstruction and operations. This shift creates compelling opportunities for digital natives to flex their experience to help firms adopt more sophisticated workflows, enabling them to attract and retain emerging leaders due to an increase in career paths that are tech-enabled.
As construction firms look for additional ways to attract and retain new talent, many have also realized the importance of robust training and knowledge sharing programs to nurture a culture of learning and development. According to a recent survey by Deloitte, firms that have high learning cultures have 30–50% higher employee engagement and retention rates. As a result, we’ll also see an increase in user and behavior-based training across the industry. Recognition and gamification of learning to incentivize ongoing development is poised to grow as firms look to entice talent to upskill, stay within the organization, and increase effectiveness.” – Allison Scott, Director, Customer Experience & Industry Advocacy, Autodesk Construction Solutions
“Digital upskilling and training for specific technology, as well as a broader focus on knowledge sharing, is critical to capture institutional knowledge and IP that is leaving the business due to retirement.”
The future of training
AI and robotic’s impact on the workforce
Robotics is definitely going to have an impact on our sheet metal and pipe fitter shops even five or ten years down the road. Eventually, that impact is going to expand to the jobsite too. For instance, look what Boston Dynamics is doing with Spot. We’re already seeing that come to life.” – Ron T. McGuire, Program Administrator, International Training Institute
Multi-disciplinary skills development
3. 2023 Trends: Advanced Innovation in Construction
At the same time, we expect to see construction companies become increasingly data driven across their business processes. Today, while contractors generate significant amounts of data across their projects, it is typically stored across multiple disparate systems making it unusable to inform business decisions. Unlocking the value of this data to derive actionable insights will be critical to the future success of construction companies. Ultimately, construction firms can reduce risk and make smarter decisions with the right insights, which requires standardized data practices (including benchmarking) and making information readily accessible to all team members. The more siloed workflows are, the more challenges firms will face in getting a comprehensive view of projects and information across their organization. Companies that standardize how teams access data and derive insights will set themselves up for long-term success, and I believe this will be a priority for many construction firms in 2023.
Finally, with labor shortages continuing to negatively impact the industry, construction companies will look to adopt more automation both on the jobsite for field execution as well as for office-based project management tasks. To that end, I expect to see firms aggressively leverage both robotics and AI/ML in order to augment the worker, save time and more importantly enable focus on higher value activities.” – Sidharth Haksar, Senior Director, Head of Construction Strategy & Industry Partnerships, Autodesk Construction Solutions
Proving data’s value
Data automation
Progress tracking of the construction process is a fantastic example. Before, it was highlighting physical drawings or just updating percentages on a white board, this eventually has progressed to highlighting a PDF or updating percentages on an Excel file. Now there are many ways to more accurately track this data with different software. These are all huge steps forward in being able to manage the vast amount of data created on large projects. There is now a new problem that this has exposed. Everyone is too busy to manage and enter all of the data. The way it stands now everything must be entered manually. If you want a 3D representation of your progress tracking you must click on every piece of duct, pipe, conduit, mechanical equipment, and change its status. This can be extremely time consuming and this is where the automation comes in. There are many companies starting to offer automated progress tracking where AI will figure out what has been installed and even installed incorrectly by comparing what it sees from a video walkthrough or photos to your coordination model. This takes the time investment from project staff from many hours a week to the time it takes to walk through the building. By having them put a camera on their hardhat and do a walkthrough of the building that they would already be doing, you can now have an accurate and up to date progress model of the building. While this is still currently very costly from a cost perspective, it will come down in price as all technology eventually does. But I think this will open the floodgates on using AI on jobsites to accurately and efficiently collect and manage data. I see in the future the speed of AI increasing to a point where we walk around a jobsite with 360 camera on our hardhats and while we walk, do inspections, or have conversations with people the AI will be checking everything it sees and give us an alert when it sees something out of place that will cause an issue in the future. I believe this is the most likely path forward with technology much more so than us regularly seeing robots in the field doing the job of an actual person.” – Andrew Cooper, VDC Engineer, AECOM Hunt
Everyday VR, AR, MR
The evolution of graphical and scheduled data
“My hope is that the next decade will see an evolution in linked systems for graphical and scheduled data, where designing, building, operating, and maintaining assets is as intuitive and universal as social media.”
Growing power of the cloud
IT’s influence
Stay Ahead of Top Construction Trends in 2023 and Beyond
Which construction trends are you most excited about in 2023? Share your thoughts in our comments section, below.
Meanwhile, you can stay ahead of the latest in construction this year and beyond by subscribing to our blog. Get construction tips, tricks, insight, and news, delivered straight to your inbox!