AI has officially moved past the hype phase in construction, and the reality is a bit more nuanced than the headlines suggest.
As we've found in Autodesk's State of Design & Make: Construction Spotlight report, AI continues to be top of mind for construction leaders. Early adopters are using AI to help them analyze more variables, move faster during design and planning, and reduce manual work.
That said, folks aren’t as enthusiastic about AI as they were a year ago, and we found that just 32% of construction leaders say they’ve met or are close to meeting their AI goals.
Regardless of how you feel about AI, it’s definitely here to stay. Firms that have a solid grasp of where the technology is heading will be better equipped to harness AI effectively in 2026 and beyond.
With that in mind, we reached out to 25+ construction experts to get their take on the AI construction trends that will shape 2026.
Take a look at their input below.
"AI is becoming indispensable in our industry, although it is still not fully structured. By 2026, AI agents will be more common and widely democratized. I expect AI usage to become more standardized, supported by structured libraries. AI will also enable stakeholders to take advantage of multiple options during the design stage. The client, the architect and the contractor will be able to generate and simulate several design alternatives with a single click and select their preferred option based on specific criteria.
The growing reliance on cloud services might quickly lead to saturation, creating challenges with connectivity and data security. This will push companies and authorities to work on-premises and continue building data centers to maintain data sovereignty. When the cloud keeps growing, we shouldn’t be surprised by the rain. We just need to be prepared for it. AI remains highly energy-intensive and will need to be used wisely."
"In 2026, AI will make the biggest impact in everyday project management and field operations. Instead of feeling like a separate tool, AI will become a built-in assistant that quietly supports teams by summarizing RFIs, drafting meeting recaps, organizing punch lists, and identifying schedule or cost risks earlier than before. This will help project managers and superintendents spend more time making decisions and less time processing information.
AI will also improve accuracy and visibility on the jobsite. Tools that combine AI with reality capture and model-based workflows will help teams understand what has been installed, what is missing, and where potential issues may be forming. This will reduce rework, improve quality, and support more reliable progress tracking.
Another major shift will be the accessibility of AI for smaller firms. As AI becomes easier to use and more integrated into existing platforms, companies of all sizes will be able to improve coordination, documentation, and risk management without adding more administrative burden."
Steven Bloomer
GHD
"In 2026, I expect AI to be far more embedded in day-to-day project delivery, not as a standalone feature, but as a practical layer that supports faster decisions, cleaner data, and smoother coordination across teams.
One of the biggest changes I see coming is how people interact with project information. Instead of switching between platforms or digging through documents, AI will make it possible to simply ask for what you need and receive it instantly, drawings, specifications, past decisions, or model updates. This shift will cut out a lot of unnecessary searching and reduce delays.
I also believe AI will play a larger role in keeping data consistent and complete. It will quietly handle routine checks, highlight gaps, and keep information aligned across disciplines. Designers, engineers and construction teams will spend more time focusing on what matters, problem-solving, while AI manages the background housekeeping."
"AI is already embedded in construction workflows today, and its role will continue to expand in 2026. AI chatbots will remain a powerful tool for everyday tasks such as summarizing documents and assisting with communications—making routine work faster and more efficient. At the same time, I expect to see progress in domain-specific applications. Generative AI will continue to be leveraged for automated creation of parametric design alternatives.
As organizations invest in enterprise AI adoption, priorities will shift toward transparency, governance, and adaptability. There will be growing demand for clear AI performance evaluation workflows, robust support for training and customization to meet organization-specific needs, and strong measures for cybersecurity and data privacy. Despite these advancements, the human element will remain indispensable, and human oversight will continue to play a critical role."
Hammad Chaudhry
Cupix
“In 2026, AI systems for construction are going to start to draw more on spatial context–in other words, accurate captures of the world around us. Most AI systems today have been trained on textual data (documents, schedules, structured records), but not visual data. They can optimize a plan, but can’t detect if the plan is executable or not based on site conditions. The result is often insight that looks correct on paper but fails in the field.
This is where spatial grounding starts to matter. When AI systems are connected to visual and spatial data from the job site, they gain a form of situational awareness. They can begin to reconcile what the schedule says with what the site shows. That does not magically solve execution, but it closes a critical gap between digital intent and physical reality.
This feels like the missing link in many AI stacks today. Not more intelligence in isolation, but intelligence grounded in what is actually happening. In that sense, spatial AI is less about prediction and more about verification. Less about replacing judgement and more about scaling it.”
"In 2026, AI will transition from experimental to essential becoming a foundational layer of modern construction operations. Project teams will increasingly rely on AI to read drawings, analyze field data, monitor inspections, summarize reports, and surface early indicators of risk. This shift will allow teams to spend less time compiling information and more time making informed decisions.
Predictive capabilities will accelerate. AI will help identify schedule impacts, procurement risks, and coordination challenges before they materialize, improving planning accuracy and strengthening project outcomes. The value will not be automation alone; it will be the ability to anticipate issues early enough to act. Ultimately, AI will enhance, not replace, the construction workforce by accelerating decision-making and capturing the expertise that sustains successful projects."
"The use of AI tools will create a significant bifurcation—companies that adapt will see better returns in 2026, with that advantage compounding through 2027 and beyond. 2026 marks the shift from AI as a 'future trend' to 'industry baseline.' Firms that fail to adopt risk losing contracts to competitors who deliver faster, safer, and more sustainably. Early adopters will capture a disproportionate value as AI scales from pilots to production deployment, establishing competitive moats that will be difficult to overcome."
"Perhaps I’m too pessimistic, but I don’t believe AI will be terribly transformative in construction in 2026. I regularly tell people that training AI is akin to educating a child – and AI for construction is still, in my opinion, too early in its training fulfill the big promises being made by the tech sector. That said, as AI is more heavily relied upon, I think concerns around legal liability and intellectual property will help the construction industry focus on how to best shape its use of AI technology going forward."
"I’m predicting a major shift in how we trust, adopt, and ultimately depend on AI in 2026. AI is already helping us analyze data, automate tedious takeoff tasks, and even forecast outcomes. That impact grows exponentially when all project data—from every stage of the construction lifecycle—lives in one connected environment.
This year’s customer conversations have reinforced a key insight: AI’s next frontier isn’t just doing tasks for us but helping teams understand their projects more deeply and far faster than ever before. Traditionally, “learning a project” meant hours of studying drawings, reviewing models (when available), performing takeoffs, hunting down updated costs, and combing through massive spec books.
In 2026, AI will start transforming that process. It will digest these documents, summarize what matters, surface actionable insights, and highlight every scope area that needs to carry a cost. The anxiety of missing something in a bid—the highs, lows, and second guessing—will become a thing of the past."
"On the AI side, my view is simple, you either get on the bus, or you get left standing at the stop. The last time the industry saw this level of hesitation around new technology was when the internet showed up, and anyone who resisted it found themselves playing catch-up for years. I do not believe AI replaces expertise, but it absolutely accelerates it. I use AI to generate a fast, accurate foundation, then I layer in the human judgment, constructability awareness, and project nuance that only experience provides. The companies that figure out how to blend the speed of AI with the decision-making of real builders will outperform the rest, and they will do it at scale."
Emmanuel Graves
Autodesk
"In 2026, AI will continue to move from being a buzzword to becoming a differentiator in how contractors and project teams are awarded projects. Owners and general contractors will seek partners who can demonstrate how AI is embedded into project workflows—from preconstruction through operations and closeout. Teams that can leverage AI to reduce risk earlier, streamline operations, and improve schedule accuracy will stand out, shifting industry norms from reactively putting out fires to proactively driving decisions.
As the return on investment from AI becomes clearer, the role of AI consultants and internal specialists will continue to grow. These roles will help organizations train AI on project-specific data and simplify how AI integrates into existing systems through technologies like Autodesk MCP Servers. This shift will move teams beyond generic, chat-based tools toward AI agents that can audit documents, review plans, and prepare project information—allowing teams to review and validate deliverables while remaining grounded in trusted project data that resides in a single source of truth."
"By 2026, I see AI taking a central role across architecture, engineering, construction, and real estate, becoming a trusted partner from the earliest stages of a project. AI systems will help clients generate project requirements, technical specifications, and BIM-driven facility-management criteria based on a deep understanding of the business' needs and historical facility data. These integrations will ensure buildings' digital information are delivered with strong interoperability and seamless integration across facilities management platforms, digital twins, and operational systems.
Beyond construction, AI will start to reshape real estate through precise market analysis, portfolio optimization, strategic planning, and predictive insights into demand, risk, asset performance, and sustainability trends. These systems will synthesize financial data, spatial analytics, and user behavior to support smarter decisions across the property lifecycle."
Artificial intelligence is moving rapidly from experimentation to operational advantage across the construction lifecycle. In 2026, leading organisations are applying AI not as a standalone innovation, but as a practical layer that improves predictability, safety, and decision-making across planning, design, and delivery.
AI-powered scheduling, forecasting, and risk analysis are enabling teams to predict schedule delays, resource constraints, and cost impacts far earlier than traditional methods, allowing for proactive intervention rather than reactive recovery. In early project stages, generative design is accelerating optioneering by automatically producing multiple alignment, grading, and routing scenarios that balance cost, carbon, and regulatory constraints, making decisions faster and more evidence-based.
On-site, AI-driven safety monitoring uses computer vision from cameras and drones to identify unsafe conditions, PPE non-compliance, and hazardous behaviours in near real time, helping reduce incidents before they escalate. AI is also transforming quality management by comparing LiDAR and drone scans against design models to automatically detect defects and deviations early, minimising costly rework. Across commercial workflows, machine learning–based quantity extraction automates takeoff from PDFs, DWGs, IFCs, and point clouds, significantly reducing manual effort and improving the accuracy and consistency of estimates.
"In 2026, artificial intelligence will move from isolated experiments to fully integrated, mission-critical workflow tools that function as the nervous system of the modern job site. AI will be used across all project roles to improve work experiences and enable better, faster decision-making through data-driven insights, significantly improving project certainty through advanced prediction and scenario planning. Project teams will move beyond static Gantt charts to dynamic, AI-driven “what-if” analysis, allowing planners to quickly test schedule disruptions, resource reallocations, and sequencing adjustments. Cost and workforce forecasting will also become more accurate, with AI models trained on vast historical datasets enabling better conceptual and detailed estimates as well as data-driven resource planning.
On the job site, AI will increasingly focus on safety, quality, and productivity, with computer vision systems automatically detecting safety violations in real time, reality capture tools comparing as-planned versus as-built conditions, and robotics—particularly collaborative robots—taking on repetitive and high-risk tasks alongside human crews. Ultimately, the true value of AI in 2026 will lie in its ability to connect previously siloed structured and unstructured data."
"During 2026, AI will be deeply integrated into core construction workflows rather than used as a standalone tool. We’ll see AI automating model-based coordination, generating takeoffs, optimizing schedules, and analyzing progress through image recognition and sensor-based data. AI assistants will play a major role—acting as virtual project engineers that can answer technical questions, track daily tasks, detect safety risks, and automatically produce reports.
With predictive analytics powered by digital twins, teams will be able to identify delays and cost overruns months earlier and respond proactively. Instead of replacing professionals, AI will enhance human decision-making and free project teams from repetitive administrative work—resulting in safer, faster, and more predictable project outcomes."
"AI becomes the digital co-pilot for mission control. In the office, AI will become the indispensable digital co-pilot for project teams. Its primary role will be to automate administrative burdens—summarizing daily reports, analyzing the sentiment of RFIs, and flagging high-risk items in submittals. This is what enables the "mission control" concept - it frees up project managers from reactive firefighting and empowers them with the data to make proactive, strategic decisions."
"In 2026 AEC companies will use AI in two significant ways. First, AI will analyze design and construction data to identify potential challenges and reveal opportunities for optimization. By evaluating historical project data, material costs, and supply chain information, AI will facilitate risk mitigation. It can also be used to improve quality methods by analyzing process and audit data, comparing digital plans against actual delivery, and help to automate inspection. Second, AI and particularly through model context protocol (MCP) will be used to build more robust digital workflows by connecting capabilities and automating manual and error prone tasks.
The primary benefit will be providing data translation between heterogeneous design and collaboration tools. AI will enable building design tools to explore wider set of building solutions and empower optioneering for building components. Additionally, MCP will connect design tools supply chain data to provide access to material costs, availability and sustainability information improving early design decisions and accelerating workflows. "
"In Canada, the construction industry is entering a phase where technological, geopolitical, and security considerations are becoming structural. Growing reliance on foreign digital platforms, combined with the current global political climate, is accelerating interest in digital sovereignty, data security, and technological independence, influencing how digital infrastructures and information flows are governed across projects. At the same time, increased investment in defense, critical infrastructure, and resilience is raising expectations around data protection, traceability, and risk management. In this context, data has become a strategic asset. Architects, aFrom a Canadian perspective, artificial intelligence will be firmly embedded in the construction industry by 2026 as a professional enabler, not a substitute for expertise. Within Canada’s regulatory and risk-conscious environment, AI adoption will focus on automating repetitive and low-value tasks such as document production, baseline compliance checks, data analysis, and reporting.
This shift will allow architects and project teams to concentrate on higher-value activities—professional judgment, advisory services, strategic thinking, and complex problem-solving. AI will function as a co-pilot, improving efficiency and consistency while preserving human accountability. Used responsibly, AI should not weaken professional thinking but elevate the complexity and value of the challenges architects are able to address, reinforcing trust, ethics, and professional integrity."
"This is a big topic. AI will continue to inform virtually everything in construction in the coming years, whether it’s preconstruction, bidding, design, or construction operations. That “digital footprint” of past construction projects with labor, subcontractors, materials, and supplies to costs can and will be informing future projects that would be similar in nature to those past projects. This will result in huge time savings and cost efficiency gains with labor, material and supplies procurement, and project management."
"AI is moving at a rapid pace across all sectors and potentially the most disruptive technology that we will experience in our lifetime. I see opportunity where the hype moves into practical use for instance with estimating, scheduling, and proactive risk management for construction. We know that AI workloads will continue to fuel the data center demand and there will be a significant intersection between these projects harnessing AI to drive planning, design, installation, commissioning, and proactive operation management."
"AI is rapidly moving from concept to co-worker on construction sites, and 2026 is shaping up to be a turning point. Building on recent momentum, firms are deploying AI to monitor safety and progress in real time, flagging hazards before they become incidents. Machine learning and generative AI are streamlining repetitive tasks like document processing and clash detection, freeing teams to focus on higher-value work. These advances not only ease labor shortages but also boost speed, quality, and decision-making.
At the same time, trust and transparency are becoming just as critical as innovation. While most construction leaders believe AI will enhance the industry, concerns around data privacy and ethical use are growing. Companies are responding with governance frameworks and tools, such as AI Transparency Cards, that provide clear disclosures on how AI features operate and how data is protected. Solutions that keep sensitive project information within secure ecosystems are gaining traction, ensuring confidence as adoption accelerates. 2026 will be the year AI proves its value not only through efficiency and safety gains but also through responsible, trustworthy integration into everyday workflows."
"In 2026, AI in construction will move from "nice-to-have" to normal operational practice - driving smarter planning, automated progress updates, and more accurate forecasting through digital twins. Routine administrative tasks such as reports, document handling, and digital forms will be increasingly automated. On-site team will benefit from AI-powered Assistant or AI agent with instant access to updated information. Ultimately, AI will not replace people but will supercharge the project team by simplifying workflows, reducing human errors, and transforming them into data-augmented decision makers.
"So far, most of the buzz has been about AI in the field with progress tracking, image recognition, safety, and so on. By the end of 2026, I expect the more important story to be AI showing up in the least forgiving parts of the business: finance, compliance, and controls. Those workflows don’t have room for hallucinations, so you’ll see AI paired with structured rules and approval paths to handle invoices, pay apps, change orders, lien waivers, and vendor compliance, with humans focused on the edge cases and commercial judgment instead of re-keying data.
B2B SaaS usually follows the patterns in the consumer world: once people get used to an assistant living inside the tools they use every day, they expect the same thing at work. I expect construction software to follow that arc: starting with simple summarization and search, then quickly moving to AI that can propose coding, spot financial risk, and help orchestrate multi-step workflows across field and back-office systems—quietly raising the bar on accuracy and speed without trying to replace the people running the projects. I think 2026 is the year when that becomes not only possible but widely adopted across the industry."
"In 2026, AI will shift from a separate layer of innovation to a true partner in daily decision making. AI will help teams understand the immediate impact of design and planning choices by assessing constructability, cost, energy performance, and scheduling simultaneously. This will sharpen coordination, align intent with execution, and give teams the confidence to explore more options with less rework. AI agents built specifically for the AEC industry will monitor project conditions, flag risks early, recommend alternatives, and automate the repetitive tasks that slow teams down today. These agents will be supported by computer vision and automated progress tracking that give teams a clearer picture of what is happening in the field.
AI will also begin turning years of project knowledge into insights that anyone can use, narrowing the gap between veteran expertise and rising talent. The organizations that gain the most will be those that adopt AI with intent and build a culture grounded in curiosity, transparency, and steady improvement. For leaders who pair smart tools with strong collaboration, 2026 will mark a turning point where this innovative mindset produces real results."
In 2026, I believe one of the most prominent areas of advancement for AI in the construction industry will be safety and health. Every year, countless accidents occur across global industrial sites, and construction teams have long relied on safety guidelines, inspection procedures, and monitoring systems to prevent these incidents. However, there are clear limitations to relying solely on human oversight to monitor and control every potential hazard in real time.
Against this backdrop, AI-powered vision-based safety systems have been rapidly expanding. By analyzing video feeds from CCTV, drones, and wearable devices in real time, AI can detect potential risks—such as fall hazards, heavy equipment proximity, missing PPE, or unauthorized access to dangerous zones—and immediately alert site managers. This technology is quickly becoming a new standard for proactive safety management.
In addition, AI-driven predictive safety technologies leveraging BIM data are advancing rapidly. By analyzing 4D BIM models and construction schedules, AI can identify potential process conflicts, equipment path interference, and worker exposure risks before they occur, shifting safety management from reactive measures to true prevention."
"The year 2026 is expected to provide further insights into the practical applications of AI in daily operations. Significant advancements are anticipated, particularly with the establishment of additional industry standards. These improvements will likely enable AI to automate a greater proportion of manual tasks within the AECO sector, especially regarding BIM model development, Scan-to-BIM processes, clash detection, and building site monitoring. Furthermore, AI holds the potential to enhance both the quality and the maturity of As-built documentation. With appropriate guidance, AI may serve as a valuable tool for improving design practices and contributing to the development of more sustainable buildings for the future."
