In the United States, there is currently an unprecedented level of construction projects surrounding infrastructure improvement and development, manufacturing facilities, data centers, critical minerals mining, transportation and affordable housing. These massive undertakings are required due to our increasing population, consumer demands, reshoring of U.S. manufacturing industries and lack of investment over the last half-century.
And it’s not just a domestic phenomenon: Countries across the globe are seeing a need for increased infrastructure investment due to a growing population and demand for technology-related facilities—and the lack of a highly skilled workforce is leading to project delays and cancellations, major cost overruns, rework, and quality and safety concerns.
This isn’t just a construction problem. National security is put more at risk every day as U.S. cybersecurity is threatened due to a lack of much-needed data centers; space dominance is reduced due to inadequate manufacturing or launch facilities; and failing infrastructure leads to the inability to efficiently move goods and military in and out of state and country. Add to that the ever-increasing damage caused by climate change and the magnified effects of natural disasters, and the major infrastructure and reconstruction projects required in the near-term are at a scale never seen before in the history of humanity. According to the United Nations, the global population in 1950 was around 2.5 billion, more than doubled to 5.3 billion by 1990 and is projected to be nearly 10 billion in 2050—meaning the volume of housing and infrastructure construction needed over the next 25 years to accommodate an additional 2.5 billion people is equivalent to everything built from the beginning of civilization to 1950.
Over the last few generations, careers centering around construction have earned a bad reputation as a last resort for the non-college-bound. Career technical education program budgets were gutted across the U.S. and other countries over the last few decades in favor of university degree programs. The value of construction careers, though, is beginning to see a shift toward the positive in recent years as higher education costs and competition for white-collar jobs have risen hand-in-hand. The key to attracting the up-and-coming workforce lies in showcasing the rapid advancements in construction technology and getting young people excited to work for construction companies that are invested in implementing those solutions.
Can construction technology solve all of the world’s problems? Certainly not—but the world’s problems can’t be solved without it. Design, engineering and construction professionals need tech to create accurate digital twins that can be used to estimate, order, fabricate and install prefabricated modular construction elements. Earth-moving machines can utilize tech-generated digital terrain models to operate semi-autonomously. Robots can perform simple, repetitive construction tasks, and data collection devices and project management software can better organize jobs and use historical data to drive better performance. All of these technology tools help achieve the same aim: reducing strain on the construction workforce—and that’s exactly the kind of efficiency needed to help build for the next generation.
