AI Could Save Construction $1 Trillion a Year—Here’s How
Chris Boyd
February 20, 2026
More than $1 trillion—around 10 percent of annual construction spend—is wasted each year because of mistakes that require redoing the work.
Construction is the rare industry that, despite massive investments in data-management software, has actually become less efficient in recent decades. And because construction represents more than $13.5 trillion of the global economy—exceeding $2 trillion in the U.S. alone—those inefficiencies are especially costly. More than $1 trillion—around 10 percent of annual spend—is wasted each year because of mistakes that require redoing the work.
Part of that inefficiency is due to a labor shortage. Even though construction added 28,000 jobs in the most recent monthly U.S. labor report, there’s still an industry shortfall estimated at more than 400,000 people. The other big problem, though, is keeping track of the sheer volume of data—architectural drawings, Excel files of cost estimates, PDFs of product specifications, and countless other documents—all in different forms and formats, and totaling millions of pages of information that are involved in a big project.
