The construction industry’s most coveted commodity in 2026 isn’t materials, equipment or the latest technology, it’s qualified labor.
The industry is mired in what Michael Bellaman of Associated Builders and Contractors termed a “chronic, massive worker shortage.” And projections indicate the squeeze likely will persist, with the industry needing to attract an estimated 349,000 net new workers in 2026 and another 456,000 in 2027 to meet demand for construction services, according to ABC. The problem could compound by 2030, according to new research from JLL, which estimates that 2.1 million skilled trade positions for electricians, HVAC technicians, plumbers, pipefitters, construction equipment operators, general maintenance workers and others could go unfilled.
“We risk operational disruptions that will ripple through the entire economy, affecting everything from construction timelines to energy costs to building safety,” said Dr. Paul Morgan, JLL’s Global COO for Real Estate Management Services. “The window to act is now, before the gap becomes insurmountable.”
Filling the gap is going to require action on multiple fronts, from recruiting to maximizing the existing workforce. That’s where upskilling can help. By targeting the right competencies to develop, identifying the best candidates for upskilling and providing them with relevant, rich and ready-to-apply training content, construction companies can inject their workforces with skills that are better suited to an increasingly tech-driven industry, and that enable them to do more with less, a must in a tight labor environment.
Upskilling for Maximum Impact
Done right, upskilling can increase the effective supply of qualified labor while bolstering the overall productivity of a company’s workforce. Doing upskilling right means developing programs that address targeted areas where a skills infusion likely would have the most positive impact on the business and the project outcomes it provides to clients, including:
- Digital delivery. Upskilling workers on the latest digital systems and tools to use in the office and in the field can unlock measurable and sustainable productivity and quality gains. That’s particularly true in the area of digital delivery. When people in the field are comfortable receiving and acting upon information they receive in a digital format via an app on their mobile device to execute a set of tasks—the safety protocols to follow to prepare the jobsite for work, for example, or specifics on preparing the substrate for a certain type of sealant used in window installation—that can reduce rework substantially. Beyond field apps, upskilling for digital delivery also applies in a broader sense to the collaborative processes and systems that project stakeholders increasingly rely upon across various stages of a construction project, from 3D modelling and GIS to common data environments. When workers regularly use digitized workflows across the various steps and stages of a project, not only does that project tend to run more efficiently from a labor standpoint, it also tends to yield better overall outcomes for the customer and firm alike—quality, timeline, cost control, profitability, etc.
- Agentic AI. From scheduling to data entry to explaining and tracking compliance with complex requirements, artificial intelligence agents can perform a vast range of tasks to support workers in the field and the back office. Upskilling workers to use the agents that come embedded within the systems and workflows they regularly rely upon is an effective way to improve their hourly productivity rate. From there (and depending on the kinds of AI-powered systems your firm has), you can also upskill them to create their own AI agents.
- Physical AI. With AI-powered robots and drones becoming more viable as a tool for collecting real-time information on task execution, work progress, quality, compliance, etc., in the field, construction firms need workers who know how to use these tools (and to be the human-in-the-loop to review and confirm their findings). A drone might identify a quality issue before it gets covered up, so it can be reworked with minimal additional cost and before it compounds to potentially delay a project. Skilled labor thus can spend less time on rework and more time on tasks that move a project forward.
- Sustainability and green building. The extensive tracking and documentation requirements associated with LEED and other green building codes, as well as the new wave of carbon-reduction laws and regulations impacting construction companies, put a premium on developing skills around carbon accounting, materials documentation, track-and-trace/chain-of-custody and sustainability systems (such as a “control tower” system that monitors the carbon emissions, waste and resource usage associated with a project.
- Safety in high-complexity environments. Safety is paramount. And here in the AI boom, projects involving data centers, energized electrical systems and the like require specific safety and compliance training for dynamic risk assessments, near-miss reporting, digital work permits and other tasks that require a strong working knowledge of environment, health and safety management systems.
- Subcontractors. Growing the effective supply of qualified labor applies not only to a company’s own employees but also to workers who are employed by the subcontractors on which a company relies. Here’s where a company that often serves in a general contractor role on projects can encourage subcontractors in its ecosystem to upskill their employees in specific areas, enticing them to do so with the promise of consistent work for firms that build those skillsets, specializations and credentials. This in turn instills confidence that specific subcontractors can handle standardized work packages, which create new efficiencies across projects.
Once a construction firm identifies where to focus its upskilling efforts, then it’s a matter of taking measures to ensure those programs deliver ROI. Developing a skills and roles ontology that connects people to specific roles, upskilling opportunities and training resources is critical, as is creating robust training resources with which people can easily engage. A new generation of training tools come with embedded conversational AI that can gauge a person’s competency and depth of knowledge on a subject via interactive questions in the context of an exercise or exam.
Having the means to measure the impact of upskilling programs is also vital—the fill rate for critical roles, time to competency for certain key tasks, trends in recordable incidents and near misses, how upskilled workers are performing relative to others (in terms of punch lists, rework, etc.) and more. Ultimately, using KPIs like these, your firm can gauge just how effective its upskilling programs are at closing the labor gap.
SEE ALSO: MORE RESEARCH ON THE BENEFITS OF A MULTISKILLED CONSTRUCTION WORKFORCE
