Construction technology adoption is slow and uneven not simply because tools are missing or inadequate, but because project economics and delivery practices often fail to support their use. A tool’s value depends on who pays for it, who must learn it, whether it works with existing systems, and who keeps its information current across a project. Technology does matter—especially when interoperability or bespoke technical requirements are involved—but buying software alone does not resolve those conditions.
What do adoption figures actually show?
There is no single adoption rate that reliably describes construction as a whole. The available figures measure different technologies, populations, geographies, and stages of use; they should not be combined into a global trend line.
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| Study and scope | Finding | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Building Commission NSW and Western Sydney University study summary, NSW, updated 27 March 2025 | 57% of class 2 builders and 48% of class 2 designers were at a basic stage of digitalisation. | Designers and constructors involved in NSW class 2 multi-storey residential buildings—not all construction firms or technologies. The summary estimates about ten years to digital maturity, defining maturity in terms of BIM and digital twins becoming standard; that is the report’s outlook, not a guaranteed forecast. |
| RICS, AI in Construction report 2025, based on Q1 2025 Global Construction Monitor responses | About 45% reported no AI implementation; 34% were in early pilot phases; just under 12% reported regular use in specific processes; 1.5% reported use across multiple processes; fewer than 1% reported organisation-wide embedded AI. | More than 2,200 professional responses about AI, not a census or a measure of construction technology generally. The regional mix was uneven: 48% UK, 19% APAC, 14% Middle East and Africa, 10% Americas, and 8% Europe; rounded totals may not equal 100%. |
| RICS, Digitalisation in Construction report 2024, published 15 November 2024 | The report describes modest increases in some uses alongside a growing share of projects where digital tools remained unused. | Project-level digitalisation trends. It highlights low current uptake of whole-life carbon assessments, alongside cost, digital skills, and collaboration as concerns. |
| NBS / Hubexo, Digital Construction Report 2025 overview | 559 design and construction professionals were surveyed. | The overview covers digital ways of working, including AI, BIM, cloud technology, and sustainability; it does not provide detailed response figures for those topics. |
These measures describe different things: basic digitalisation in one segment of NSW housing, stages of AI use among RICS survey respondents, project-level digital-tool use, and the scope of a broader professional survey. None alone establishes how quickly every construction business is adopting technology.
Why does adoption stall across project delivery?
Adoption is a chain of decisions across the project owner, designers, main contractor, specialist trades, and eventual asset operator. A tool may save time for one participant while shifting data entry, training, coordination, or model upkeep to another. If project fees and responsibilities do not account for that work, the tool can remain isolated even when it is technically available. This is a practical interpretation of the barriers reported across the studies, not a quantified model of every project.
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Costs meet tight budgets and fee structures
In the NSW class 2 study context, 67% named software and licence costs as a barrier, 57% hardware costs, and 55% inadequate design fees. The same summary says 80% of the industry in that study context was small business, defined as fewer than 20 employees. Those findings help explain why an investment that looks manageable for a large organisation may be difficult for a smaller firm whose project fees do not cover digital coordination work. They apply to the NSW study context, not the entire industry. (Building Commission NSW)
Skills and training take time as well as money
Digital tools require people who can use them and teams that understand how new processes change their work. In the RICS 2025 AI survey, 46% selected lack of skilled personnel as a top-three barrier to AI adoption. A separate Australian Government summary of a 2022 construction-sector scoping study describes limited exposure to technology in education and work, as well as limited awareness of how technology might improve firm and supply-chain efficiency. These are distinct sources and scopes, but both point to a capability gap that cannot be fixed by licensing alone. (RICS; Australian Department of Infrastructure)
Information has to travel between systems and stay current
In the RICS 2025 AI survey, 37% selected integration with existing systems as a top-three barrier. A 2024 study of integrated digital delivery in Hong Kong identified data interoperability across software and frequent model updates across the project lifecycle among its five especially critical barriers. A model or record can lose value if teams cannot exchange it reliably or if nobody is resourced to keep it accurate as designs and site conditions change. The Hong Kong findings concern integrated digital delivery there, not every software deployment elsewhere. (RICS; Wuni et al., Journal of Building Engineering, 2024)
Fragmented adoption can produce isolated fixes
The Australian Government’s 2022 scoping-study summary describes adoption as fragmented across industry segments, tiers, and smaller firms. It identifies piecemeal use that solves isolated problems rather than building integrated technology stacks, low investment and difficulty establishing a strong business case, limited awareness, and limited exposure to technology in education and work. When each participant chooses tools around a local need, the result may not support the end-to-end information flow a project requires. (Australian Department of Infrastructure)
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Technology is part of the problem when products do not exchange information cleanly, demand bespoke technical work, or are poorly matched to the workflow. The 2024 Hong Kong integrated digital delivery study found influential barriers associated with stakeholder attitudes and bespoke technical requirements, in addition to interoperability and other obstacles. The defensible point is not that technology is irrelevant; it is that product capability cannot compensate for weak project incentives, budgets, training, coordination, or information-management responsibilities. (Wuni et al., 2024)
AI makes the distinction between interest and implementation especially visible. In the RICS 2025 report, respondents planning more investment stated future investment plans 16 percentage points above current AI adoption globally. That is a difference between reported plans and reported adoption in that survey, not evidence that the planned spending will occur or that it applies to other construction technologies. The report also discusses data availability and implementation costs as AI barriers. (RICS)
How should a construction firm make the business case?
Start with a workflow problem and a result the team can measure—not with a product category or a promise of digital transformation. The following steps are practical implications of the reported barriers; the cited studies do not establish that these interventions will produce a particular return on investment.
- Define the problem and outcome. Specify what should improve—for example, the reliability of a handoff, the time required to find current information, or the effort involved in coordinating a defined process. Choose a bounded use case that can be assessed.
- Map who pays and who benefits. Identify the owner, designer, contractor, specialist trades, and operator who will fund, use, supply information to, or depend on the workflow. Account for work shifted between participants as well as time saved.
- Budget for the full lifecycle. Include hardware and licences, integration, training, and the recurring work of updating models, records, and other project information. A licence price alone does not represent the cost of adoption.
- Check information exchange before committing. Confirm how the proposed tool exchanges data with systems already in use and with project partners’ tools. Test the handoff and data portability that the workflow actually requires.
- Pilot, measure, and decide whether to expand. Run the bounded use case with the people who will do the work. Compare the agreed outcome and total effort with the current process, then use that evidence to decide whether broader rollout is justified.
What should teams compare when evaluating options?
For construction information-management, BIM collaboration, integrated digital delivery, or AI tools, compare the conditions that determine whether a product can work in the project—not just its feature list.
Best Value
- Total implementation and lifecycle cost: include integration, training, hardware, licences, and ongoing information upkeep.
- Workflow and project-stage fit: check whether the tool supports the actual tasks and handoffs in scope.
- Interoperability and data portability: assess whether information can move between current systems and project partners’ tools in usable form.
- Model and record maintenance: decide who keeps information current, how often it changes, and whether that work is resourced.
- Training burden: consider who needs to learn the process and how new work fits existing responsibilities.
- Client and supply-chain participation: establish whether the people needed to create, share, or use the information will take part.
- Measurable value: tie the purchase to an outcome the organisation needs to improve; the evidence reviewed here establishes neither a best vendor nor a universal return on investment.
Construction technology adoption is therefore best understood as a delivery-system challenge. The tool matters, but so do the economics, skills, interfaces, responsibilities, and continuing work that allow it to become part of how a project is delivered.
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