Every year, contractors and construction managers pour millions into new technology, promising to revolutionize how they build. Unfortunately, many of these initiatives fail before they even get off the ground. Not because the technology doesn’t work, but because many ignore a simple principle many of us in construction technology have learned — yet perhaps not internalized — that successful transformation is 10% technology and 90% people.
After years of watching digital initiatives crash due to organizational resistance, a clear pattern emerges. The companies that succeed don’t just buy better software. They follow a disciplined approach to managing change and encouraging a paradigm shift across their organization.
Through our work with contractors navigating digital transformation, we’ve identified eight core principles that separate success from failure.
These aren’t theoretical concepts from business school, but rather real strategies that address construction’s unique challenges: distributed workforces, ingrained practices, and an industry culture that values experience over experimentation.
Create a Sense of Urgency
Tech initiatives stall, not for lack of long-term value, but because adoption only happens when the business case feels “urgent” and tied to day-to-day reality.
Successful transformations must start with some sort of match being lit under the organization. When leadership frames digital adoption as essential to staying competitive, resistance starts to melt away.
Without genuine urgency tied to real consequences, initiatives lose momentum. You need to set clear timelines, define what happens if nothing changes, and — perhaps most importantly— make the cost of inaction more painful than the discomfort of change.
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Build a Top-Down and Bottom-Up Coalition
One of the most common missteps is assuming executive sponsorship is enough to drive adoption. In construction, day-to-day behavior is shaped on the jobsite — by superintendents, foremen, and the project team rhythms they’ve relied on for years. If those teams don’t see the value for themselves, usage becomes compliance, not commitment.
Frank Ciminelli, CEO of Arc Building Partners — a contractors headquartered in Buffalo — put it plainly in a recent interview:
“As CEO, I saw enormous potential and value…But our site team just wasn’t on the same page. They used [the platform] because I, the boss, was demanding it, not because they saw value… This project taught me that change management was the real challenge we needed to overcome. A top-down implementation wasn’t going to work…I realized we needed an internal advocate to help the team curate progress and issues data into something more digestible. Project teams are used to having a firefighting mentality, thinking, ‘I know a problem when I see it.’ So, we gave them a co-pilot to help them transition towards a more proactive approach.”
The contractors that get this right build a coalition from the C-suite to the jobsite. They enlist respected project managers and superintendents as internal champions, and they back them up with practical support —what Ciminelli called “a co-pilot” — to help teams translate progress and issues data into something usable. The goal isn’t to replace field judgment, but to help teams move from constant firefighting toward a more proactive cadence.
Develop a Clear Vision
Saying “we’re going digital” doesn’t tell the field anything. If the plan isn’t clear about what changes on Monday morning — who does what, where the info lives, and what stops being tolerated — people will keep building the way they always have.
Compelling visions paint a picture of the future that everyone can see themselves in. For example: “Within 12 months, our foremen will start each day knowing exactly which areas are ready for work. Project managers will spend their time solving problems, not hunting for progress updates. Executives will spot margin risks weeks before they impact the bottom line, and everyone will be doing these things based on the same shared data set.”
Visions should answer questions like: What does success look like for senior management? For project managers? For foremen? When people see their daily frustrations addressed, they’ll pull toward change rather than resist it.
Communicate consistently
Your workforce is scattered across job sites, working different shifts, with varying levels of technical comfort. One announcement at a company meeting doesn’t accomplish much, even if everyone is listening at that moment, which they might not be.
Explaining why the change is needed and the intended outcome are both critical. Teams are far more likely to resist change (and justifiably so), when management has not explained to them why they are being asked to do something and what the long-term vision is. Once they understand their role and the broader reasons for doing something, they will be far more likely to embrace technological changes.
Successful companies over-communicate tech rollouts through every channel: toolbox talks, project meetings, worksite posters. They share wins, acknowledge challenges, and maintain transparency about the journey. Most importantly, they listen. Regular feedback sessions can reveal adoption barriers that senior management may have never imagined.
Remove Obstacles
This is where rollouts often stall: new tech gets introduced, but the old process stays, so teams end up running two workflows. Or the tool shows up without enough training, and the field is left to figure it out mid-flight.
As Colin Bell, Digital Director at Kier Group, put it at Digital Construction Week: “Don’t make it feel like extra work. Teams shouldn’t feel like using new technology is a distraction they must handle before getting back to their day job. Instead, the tech should be seamlessly integrated so everything points in the same direction.”
That means doing some detective work to figure out where to remove friction. Spend time with the teams using it. Watch where they hesitate, where steps get duplicated, and where the tool creates delays instead of saving time. Sometimes the fix is small – like crews avoiding mobile apps because screens are unreadable in bright sunlight, and a simple hardware change solves it.
Vendor partnership matters here, too. Providers who understand jobsite reality can help you find these barriers early and design the rollout so the tool replaces work, rather than adding to it.
Generate Small Wins
Construction professionals are often skeptics by nature and experience. They’ve seen too many “revolutionary” solutions fizzle. But small, visible wins convert skeptics into believers.
We’re past the era of pilot projects.
If a project manager uses AI progress tracking to spot a trade falling behind early – and correct it before it turns into a two-week delay with knock-on impacts – that’s a result everyone will talk about. If teams share their small wins and celebrate them, everyone is more likely not just to embrace new technologies but also to be excited about them.
To maximize impact, celebrate these wins publicly. Make heroes of early adopters and show concrete benefits: hours saved, rework avoided, disputes prevented. Nothing sells change like proven success, and sometimes that success can come directly from a pilot or other generated opportunity to create small (or big) wins.
Avoid Declaring Victory Too Soon
Initial success breeds dangerous complacency. Companies may hit 50% adoption, declare victory, and watch utilization slide back to zero within months. Change requires sustained pressure until new habits solidify.
When people complain that you can’t access old systems anymore, it probably means you’re getting close. Until new processes become muscle memory – which takes months, not weeks – maintain focus, support, and gentle pressure.
Anchor the Change
True transformation occurs when new approaches become “how we do things here.” This requires embedding changes into company DNA: hiring practices, training programs, performance reviews, and corporate culture.
Leading companies now include digital competency in superintendent job requirements. They build data reviews into standard project meetings. They celebrate data-driven decisions as enthusiastically as they once celebrated gut instinct.
The Cost of Getting Better
These principles aren’t magic. They’re a framework for the hard, non-glamorous work of organizational change. They require leadership courage, sustained effort, and acceptance that transformation is messy.
But as companies continue to debate whether to change, margins continue shrinking, skilled workers grow scarcer, and projects become more complex. Companies that master both technology and transformation thrive, while those that don’t will struggle to compete.
The question isn’t whether construction will digitize; market forces guarantee that. The question is whether company leadership decides to change or is dragged along into change. These principles light the path to the former option.
Mike Schnizlein is an associate director of account management at Buildots, where he helps contractors navigate change and adopt AI progress tracking and delay forecasting. He brings more than two decades of GC experience, including leadership roles at Clark Construction Group and Related Companies, and holds a BS in Construction Engineering & Management from Purdue University.
Source: www.enr.com
