Why Big Tech Keeps Failing At Construction Tech (And What To Look For Instead)

Re-Published With Permission From Construction News and Review

By AJ Waters

Let’s say you’re in the market for new technology to support your construction business.

It’s easy to be drawn to the big names in Silicon Valley – the global hub of innovation, home to trillion-dollar companies that have transformed entire industries. On the surface, it makes sense. Why wouldn’t the tech giants, with their vast resources and cutting-edge solutions, be the best choice?

But if your challenge involves construction or capital project management, you might be looking in the wrong place.

Here’s the reality: Silicon Valley is filled with brilliant tech minds – but they’re just that, tech minds. They haven’t worked in the field, navigated the unpredictability of a jobsite or faced the daily challenges of managing complex projects. Many have never even stepped foot outside the office. And no amount of sleek software or AI-driven predictions can replace firsthand industry experience.

So what should you look for instead? Here’s what truly matters when choosing construction tech.

A Perfect Storm for Change
Construction is at a critical inflection point, becoming more an industry of knowledge than an industry of brute force. Workforce shortages are intensifying as experienced professionals retire faster than new workers enter the field. With the average age of construction workers hovering up around 46, companies are clamoring to find ways to transfer knowledge and onboard workers as fast as possible.

Meanwhile, that new generation of workers the industry covets grew up with tech as an integral part of their everyday life. Inherently, they expect seamless access to tech in their daily work.

But while new tech is developing rapidly, Silicon Valley’s approach – acquiring solutions to fill gaps and then retrofitting them into their product with a new skin – often falls flat in construction. The job site is already disparate, broken and often unpredictable. Not to mention the fact that no two projects are ever alike.

So, the industry has grown tired of tech with exhaustive feature lists that often feel the same. And it most definitely has grown tired of hearing about your “game-changing” new acquisition. Construction wants solutions. Solutions that truly work end-to-end, not just look it.

Now, more than ever, construction (as an industry) wants to be understood. They want their challenges to be heard and solutions to be built, not be to sold a random collection of features.

Construction Is Stubbornly Siloed
The reason productivity in industries like manufacturing, finance and logistics has skyrocketed over the past few decades is that much of their work has been digitized or automated. Of course that was easier. It was done inside a controlled environment within a single location.

Construction, however, remains a deeply siloed industry. The only way to know that is to live it.

Big tech has become addicted to filling product gaps by acquiring a standalone solution. But in construction, everything is interconnected. Take the tracking of construction budgets that have been spent: in many platforms, it’s just about tagging a field and creating a dashboard filter. In reality though, tracking the color of money ties into capital drawdown, bid package development, contract management and payment allocation. A siloed solution that doesn’t integrate with these other systems is more of a headache than a help.

Construction is Predictably Unpredictable
I’ve already mentioned that construction is widely unpredictable, but so is every client or project you work with. Workflows vary, forms change, Wi-Fi is unreliable and conditions change by the minute.

Big tech moves fast, embraces failure and thrives on experimentation in an effort to uncover the perfect solution: one that will work the same way for every customer in every industry that can be deployed out-of-the-box.

The construction industry, by contrast, has zero tolerance for failure – because in construction, failure isn’t just a bug in the system; it can mean project delays, financial losses or, in extreme cases, a worker’s death.

And while an AI-enabled, standardized template of predictable workflows and automated tasks might sound great in an office, they leave little room for even the slightest of customizations. Client specific change forms, swings in regulatory oversight and even innovative new suggestions are all placed on a backlog of feature requests longer than the Nile.

Machine Learning Needs to Learn
Machine learning, AI and big data have enormous potential to improve construction, but their effectiveness depends on one key factor: real-world experience.

You thought I was going to say quality data, didn’t you? Sure, quality data is great. In fact, quality data is essential. But, in order for AI to spit out a quality result it must first learn what a quality result is.

Now more than ever, big tech is full of big tech people. People that live and breathe the tech they build. People that have incredible experience successfully developing and/or disrupting outdated industries.

Those aren’t construction people.

Take an estimator, for example. Successful estimating isn’t just about analyzing historical numbers. It’s about intuition. Experience taught an estimator when to adjust pricing based on unpredictable factors like material shortages, labor constraints or even regional discrepancies. The same applies for a scheduler, knowing the variations for differing labor unions, weather patterns or even migratory bird flights (yes, that was real).

No algorithm can replace the instincts of a seasoned construction manager who’s navigated these challenges before. Unless, that is, you know to teach it that.

Tech Needs to Work for Construction, Not the Other Way Around
As I said at the beginning, construction doesn’t need another “game-changing” new feature or acquisition from a Silicon Valley giant that’s never set foot on a job site. It needs to be understood. It needs purpose-built solutions that have the flexibility and adaptability to handle the complexities of daily life.

Yes, construction needs to be modernizing, leaning in as AI and big data play a critical role in shaping its future. But the companies that will lead this transformation aren’t the ones sitting in glass-walled offices in Palo Alto. They’re the ones who’ve been in the trenches, who know what it takes to get a project built and who design tech that actually works seamlessly and flexes brilliantly.

For contractors, owners and construction managers looking for a tech partner, the key isn’t just flashy announcements – it’s understanding.

The next wave of construction tech won’t come from Silicon Valley’s brightest minds. It will come from the people who know construction best. Because at the end of the day, the best technology doesn’t just disrupt. It delivers.

And at the end of the day, construction is cool. Tell your friends.

AJ Waters is Chief EngiNerd at TheEngiNerdLife