Written by: Tiffanie Reynolds
The construction industry has a timing problem. Projects generate enormous amounts of data, but most of it reaches decision-makers too late to change anything significant. Technology platforms built for construction now exist to close that gap, and the firms adopting them are operating in a different category than those that are not.
Procore’s 2025 Future State of Construction Report found that 18 percent of project time is lost searching for data and 28 percent is wasted on rework. Those figures represent recoverable margin on every project a firm manages. The platforms being deployed now aim to reclaim that time by connecting field activity, cost data and project controls into a single live environment.
Operations and Commissioning: The Asset as a Forecasting Signal
Commissioning failures are expensive and almost always preventable. The operational consequence shows up well before closeout: a subcontractor updates a status in a spreadsheet no one else can see, the project manager pulls a report reflecting conditions from the prior week and the window to intervene closes before anyone knows it opened. McKinsey Global Institute research spanning 20 countries and 70 years found that large projects run 20 percent over schedule and 80 percent over budget on average. Per KPMG’s Global Construction Survey, only 25 percent of projects finish within 10 percent of their original budget.
Traditional financial systems are backward-looking by nature. By the time labor, equipment and materials data appear in reports, the work is complete. What changes is not just visibility into current conditions; it’s the ability to identify, weeks in advance, which sequences are trending toward failure. A sequence falling behind in week three does not have to become a commissioning failure in week 11. The platform surfaces the signal early enough to act on it.
PlanRadar’s Construction QA/QC Impact Report 2025, which surveyed 811 professionals across 13 countries, found that firms with consistent quality management processes keep rework costs under 5 percent of project budget at nearly twice the rate of firms without them – and that firms without standards are 21 percent more likely to experience avoidable rework and 50 percent more likely to face warranty exposure. Those outcomes reflect earlier detection.
Kahua, a capital planning platform built for owners managing multi-project portfolios, builds on that premise at the portfolio level, integrating real-time budget data and project execution into a single platform so that cost forecasts reflect what is actually happening in the field – not what was true as of the last reporting cycle. When commissioning milestones, construction schedules and equipment delivery sequences feed into that environment, the system can flag a stalling sequence before it stalls, not after.
The Next Generation: From Visibility to Prediction
That shift from visibility to prediction is where the next wave of investment is concentrated. The AI market in construction is projected to grow from $3.99 billion in 2024 to $11.85 billion by 2029, according to Autodesk’s 2025 construction trends report, sourced from Mordor Intelligence, with integrated project controls and predictive analytics driving the largest share of that growth.
Real-time connectivity is now the baseline. The platforms gaining ground in 2026 use accumulated data to forecast what may happen. In April 2026, McKinsey partnered with ALICE Technologies to bring generative scheduling to infrastructure, data center and energy clients, reporting schedule acceleration of up to 20 percent across more than 35 projects. ALICE simulates millions of construction sequences to identify the most efficient path before work begins.
“When embedded within the right operating model and supported by strong project controls, it can help organizations make faster, more informed decisions,” said Erikhans Kok, senior partner and leader of McKinsey’s Capital Excellence Practice. For firms already operating on connected platforms, tools like ALICE do not require a separate implementation. They turn existing project data into a forecast.
The Compounding Advantage
The firms moving on these platforms are building institutional knowledge that compounds. Every project cycle adds to the dataset that makes the next forecast more accurate and the next bid more defensible. Procore’s 2022 ROI Report found that 75 percent of respondents agreed the platform reduced rework and that customers managed 48 percent more construction volume per person than prior methods allowed.
“We’re entering a new era in construction technology that’s enabling teams to harness the power of their data, driving safer, more productive and more predictive projects,” said Tooey Courtemanche, founder and CEO of Procore. “With the advent of AI, especially autonomous agents, teams can not only gain powerful insights into challenges and opportunities but also direct these agents to solve issues on their behalf.”
Firms that continue to operate from spreadsheets and disconnected tools are falling further behind. Integrated, AI-backed platforms give experienced project teams something they have lacked: a current, cohesive picture of what is happening across a project before a problem compounds into a crisis.
The industry has spent decades managing by exception. Managing by foresight is now an operational reality.
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