Construction Metrics

Construction employment slipped by 3,000 in October as residential specialty trade contractors cut 15,200 jobs

Fri, 06 Nov 2026 10:33:49 -0500

Construction employment fell by 3,000 in October 2026 to 8,367,000, according to the Employment Situation report the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on November 6. The figure is seasonally adjusted and preliminary. It is 0.04% below September and 124,000, or 1.5%, above October 2025. October ranks second among the 25 months in the chart, behind the revised September figure, and sits about 46,000 above the 12-month average of 8,321,000. BLS also revised September up to 8,370,000 from the 8,364,000 it first published, so the September gain is now 16,000 instead of 11,000.

Construction employment held near its 25-month high in October

All employees, construction, thousands, seasonally adjusted

October 2026 is preliminary. September 2026 is revised and still preliminary. Source: api.bls.gov

U.S. construction employment, last 13 months
Month	Employment (000s)	MoM change (000s)	YoY
Oct 2025	8,243	-12	-0.2%
Nov 2025	8,279	36	0.1%
Dec 2025	8,272	-7	-0.1%
Jan 2026	8,317	45	0.6%
Feb 2026	8,296	-21	0.3%
Mar 2026	8,311	15	0.5%
Apr 2026	8,314	3	0.5%
May 2026	8,316	2	0.6%
Jun 2026	8,319	3	0.6%
Jul 2026	8,337	18	0.9%
Aug 2026	8,354	17	1.4%
Sep 2026	8,370	16	1.4%
Oct 2026	8,367	-3	1.5%

Source: api.bls.gov

What moved

BLS put construction on its list of industries where employment “showed little change over the month.” The detail in table B-1 shows where the 3,000 came from. Residential specialty trade contractors lost 15,200 jobs, the largest move of any construction line, and residential building construction lost 1,200. The three nonresidential lines added 13,300 between them, with 7,900 at nonresidential specialty trade contractors, 2,900 at nonresidential builders and 2,500 in heavy and civil engineering.

Construction employment by segment, seasonally adjusted
Segment	Oct 2025 (000s)	Sep 2026 (000s)	Oct 2026 (000s)	Change from Sep (000s)	Change from Oct 2025 (000s)
Residential building construction	925.3	922.1	920.9	-1.2	-4.4
Nonresidential building construction	918.3	949.7	952.6	2.9	34.3
Heavy and civil engineering construction	1,183.5	1,210.2	1,212.7	2.5	29.2
Residential specialty trade contractors	2,368.2	2,347.6	2,332.4	-15.2	-35.8
Nonresidential specialty trade contractors	2,847.5	2,940.7	2,948.6	7.9	101.1

Source: bls.gov

The 12-month view runs the same way and by a wider margin. The three nonresidential lines have added 164,600 jobs since October 2025, and the two residential lines have lost 40,200. Nonresidential specialty trade contractors grew 3.6% to 2,948,600 and supplied 101,100 of that gain on their own. Residential specialty trade contractors are down 1.5% to 2,332,400, and October’s 15,200 decline is 0.6% of that segment in a single month. The spending side of the same split is in the September construction spending post.

So, turning to pay, average hourly earnings for all construction employees rose 38 cents in October to $42.03, a 0.9% monthly gain, and are up 4.7% from $40.14 in October 2025. Across all private employers BLS reports a 3.1% rise over the same 12 months. Average weekly earnings in construction reached $1,655.98, up 6.1% from a year earlier, since weekly pay moves with hours worked as well as with the hourly rate.

How to use this number

Compare your field headcount to your segment. A residential trade contractor whose headcount is down about 1.5% from October 2025 has moved with residential specialty trades as a whole. A nonresidential trade contractor up less than 3.6% has grown more slowly than its segment. Your own payroll count is not seasonally adjusted, so compare October to October, the same 12-month window BLS uses for this figure.
Check the labor escalation in bids for 2027 work. Construction hourly earnings rose 4.7% over the year, faster than the 3.1% across all private employers. If your estimates carry a lower escalation rate on labor, test it against your own payroll for the same 12 months, and read it next to the September job openings and quits figures. The BLS average covers every trade, region and pay arrangement in construction, so your crews may run above or below it.

Revisions and caveats

October is preliminary, and so is the revised September. BLS will revise both when it publishes November data on December 4, 2026. This month’s revision worked like this:

On October 2, BLS first published September construction employment at 8,364,000 and August at 8,353,000. FRED’s USCONS series still carried those figures when this post was written.
The November 6 release revised September to 8,370,000 and August to 8,354,000.
The September gain is now 16,000, and October’s 3,000 decline is measured from the higher September figure.

If BLS had left September at its first estimate, October’s 8,367,000 would show as a gain of 3,000. The sign of this month’s change comes from the revision. A move of 3,000 in either direction is 0.04% of the total, and BLS grouped construction with the industries that showed little change. BLS says monthly revisions come from reports that businesses and government agencies send in after the first estimate, and from recalculated seasonal factors. Across all industries, BLS revised August and September combined up by 84,000.

Before seasonal adjustment, construction employment rose to 8,525,000 in October from 8,512,000 in September, a gain of 13,000. The seasonally adjusted series shows a decline of 3,000, which means employers added fewer construction jobs in October than the seasonal factors expected. (Unadjusted construction employment was 8,413,000 in October 2025, so the unadjusted count is also up from a year ago.)

The figures come from the Current Employment Statistics survey of employer payrolls. FRED’s series notes say the construction count includes working supervisors, craft workers, apprentices, helpers and laborers, whether they work at the site or in shops and yards on work the construction trades normally perform. The B-1 table notes that the data have been revised to March 2025 benchmark levels, so the history in the chart will move again when BLS applies its next annual benchmark. The chart and the 13-month table come from the BLS data API, because FRED had not yet posted the October figure when this post was written.

Mach9 adds drone and aerial LiDAR to its AI survey drafting, and Langan says it cut delivery time about 40%

Fri, 06 Nov 2026 06:34:15 -0500

Mach9, a San Francisco company that sells web-based AI CAD software for civil survey work, said on November 4, 2026, that its platform now takes aerial LiDAR and photogrammetry data from drones, helicopters and planes. Until now it worked from mobile and terrestrial scans. The release affects the step between a site flight and a usable topo: classifying the point cloud, drafting the linework and building the ground surface that goes into Civil 3D or OpenRoads.

What it does

On a site job today, a drone pilot can fly the parcel in a morning. Then a survey technician spends hours in the office classifying points, tracing curbs and pavement edges, and building a surface in several different programs. Mach9’s release says one day of flying on a detailed electric utility project can turn into months of office work.

Mach9 puts those steps in one browser application. The survey team uploads LAS or LAZ point clouds from LiDAR or photogrammetry, along with an orthomosaic, which is a stitched aerial photo corrected to map scale. Mach9 says its AI produces a first draft in hours. The draft includes 3D points and lines for curbs, building footprints, pavement edges and vegetation outlines, plus a classified point cloud, meaning each point is tagged as ground, building, vegetation or another class.

The surveyor then checks and edits the draft in the same tool. Surface tools build ground surfaces, breaklines and contours, and a deviation heatmap shows where the surface departs from the points. Exports include DXF, DWG, SHP, GDB and LandXML. For utility work, the release says the software also drafts utility poles and the curved 3D lines of overhead wires for clearance analysis and make-ready design.

On a contractor’s side, the users are an in-house survey or VDC group on a sitework, heavy civil or utility job. The output feeds existing-conditions surfaces for earthwork quantities on land development, solar and data center sites, along with site and ALTA surveys and corridor basemaps.

Mach9’s own guidance on drone data sets limits. Its density guide says a flight needs at least 100 points per square meter for automated linework, and it recommends 400 or more. The same guide lists vegetation edges and overhead wires as beta on drone data. It says signs, poles and manholes are extracted from mobile mapping data but still need an operator on drone data.

Drone LiDAR density and what Mach9 says its automation drafts
Drone LiDAR density (points per sq m)	Approximate point spacing	What Mach9's guide says to expect
Below 100	More than 10 cm (4 in)	Ground classification still runs; most linework is drafted by hand
100	About 10 cm (4 in)	Minimum for automated linework; a 6-inch curb gets one or two points
400 or more	About 5 cm (2 in)	Recommended; a curb gets about three points
About 650 and up in a cross-grid	Not stated	Separate curb lines plus crosshatch and guardrail came through in Mach9's drone projects

Source: mach9.ai

Evidence so far

The evidence so far is Mach9’s release and blog posts, with comments from survey managers at three engineering firms that use the software. AEC Magazine’s coverage repeats the same customer figures.

These claims come from Mach9 and its customers:

Russ Hall, senior survey project manager at Langan, said Mach9 cut the firm’s delivery time by weeks, about 40%, on several multi-thousand-acre projects in Texas that it could not otherwise have finished on time.
Thomas Tucker, survey project manager at Welch Comer, said he saves an average of four to five hours per project. “[Every] two projects, we’re saving a day,” he said.
Welch Comer flies a GeoCue TrueView 540 at 150 to 200 feet above ground and about 5 meters per second. Mach9 calculates from GeoCue’s published figures that those settings give roughly 900 to 1,200 points per square meter in one pass.
Mach9 says it has been used on more than 2,500 projects in all 50 states and that teams work up to 10 times faster at one-fifth the cost.

All three quoted firms are engineering and survey consultants. Mach9 describes its accuracy as centimeter-level at infrastructure scale. A breakdown of Langan’s 40% by step and an accuracy report against surveyed checkpoints are not yet public.

How to measure it on your projects

Track office hours per acre of finished topo. Start the clock when the flight data reaches the office and stop it when the LandXML or DWG goes to the estimator or the engineer. Count classification, drafting, surface building and QA. Log any return trip to the field for missed features as a separate count.

Capture the baseline before the pilot:

Pull three recent drone topos of similar site type, with acreage and the flight’s point density.
Get the office hours on each from timesheets or from the technician.
Note how many features were added after the first delivery, and whether anyone went back to the site.

On the pilot, log the same figures, plus the hours spent fixing the AI draft. Check the finished surface against your own control shots, and record the vertical difference at each check point. That gives you an accuracy figure for your own sites.

A first step on one job is to check the point density of a flight you have already processed. If it falls below 100 points per square meter, Mach9’s guide says most linework will still be drawn by hand, so plan the next flight lower and slower before the pilot.

Availability and cost

The aerial support is available now. Mach9 prices by quote through a demo request. The company is holding a webinar on the aerial workflow on November 17, 2026.

How to weigh crew hours by BLS fatal injury rates, from roofers at 48.7 to electricians at 5.3

Thu, 05 Nov 2026 10:33:43 -0500

A safety director who reports to the owner each year usually brings TRIR, DART and the experience mod. None of the three says much about the risk of a death on the job, because a firm’s own fatality count is almost always zero. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes fatal injury rates by occupation, and a contractor can weight them by its own payroll hours to see which crews carry the most exposure.

The source is the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), a count of every fatal work injury in the US in a calendar year. BLS published the 2024 census on February 19, 2026. It recorded 5,070 fatal work injuries, down 4.0% from 5,283 in 2023, and an all-worker rate of 3.3 per 100,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers. Construction had 1,034 of those deaths and a rate of 9.2.

The formula

The BLS Handbook of Methods gives one formula. Divide the number of fatal injuries by the total hours the group worked in the year, then multiply by 200,000,000. That base stands for 100,000 full-time workers at 40 hours a week for 50 weeks, the same convention as the 200,000-hour base in the TRIR and DART post, scaled up a thousandfold.

The hours come from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly household survey. BLS says hours-based rates are generally considered more accurate than rates built on headcount, because they measure risk per standard length of exposure. In 2024 construction workers logged 22.5 billion hours, about 7.6% of the 297.6 billion hours worked by all workers, and accounted for about 20% of fatal work injuries.

The formula also shows why a single contractor cannot compute a useful rate of its own. A firm with 500,000 hours a year that had one fatality would post a rate of 400 per 100,000 FTE. A firm with none would post zero. Neither number tells the owner much about next year, so the useful step is to apply the national rates to the firm’s hours.

Rates by trade

BLS publishes a rate for an occupation only when it had at least 5 fatal injuries and 40 million hours worked in the year. The chart and table show ten construction occupations from the 2024 file.

Roofers had the highest fatal injury rate of any construction trade in 2024

Fatal work injuries per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers, 2024, hours-based

Final 2024 data. Occupation rates include workers in that occupation in every industry. Source: bls.gov

Hours worked, fatal injury rate and 95% margin of error for construction occupations, 2024
Occupation	SOC code	Hours worked 2024 (millions)	Fatal injury rate per 100000 FTE	Margin of error (95%)
Roofers	47-2181	400	48.7	7.38
Structural iron and steel workers	47-2221	100	37.8	13.35
Helpers, construction trades	47-3010	100	35.8	9.63
Construction laborers	47-2061	4,200	15.8	0.86
First-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers	47-1011	1,600	12.8	0.87
Construction equipment operators	47-2070	800	11.7	1.28
Carpenters	47-2031	2,400	7.5	0.52
Pipelayers, plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters	47-2150	1,400	6.9	0.73
Painters and paperhangers	47-2140	1,000	6.6	0.68
Electricians	47-2111	2,000	5.3	0.40
All construction and extraction occupations	47-0000	16,300	12.6	0.34
All workers		297,600	3.3	0.01

Source: bls.gov

The margin of error is the range around the rate that BLS gives at 95% confidence. It comes from sampling error in the CPS hours, and it widens for small trades. Roofers, at 48.7 with a margin of 7.38, logged 400 million hours and had 104 fatal injuries. Structural iron and steel workers had 14 fatal injuries on 100 million hours, so their rate of 37.8 carries a margin of 13.35.

Construction laborers sit at 15.8 with a margin under 1 point, on 4.2 billion hours, the most of any trade in the table. A contractor with a large self-perform labor force will find that this row drives its weighted result.

Where construction deaths come from

BLS also breaks the 1,034 construction deaths down by the event that caused them. Falls, slips and trips caused 389, or 37.6%. Transportation incidents caused 244, about 23.6%, and exposure to harmful substances or environments caused 187.

Fatal work injuries in private construction by event or exposure, 2024. Blank cells are not published by BLS.
Industry	NAICS	Total fatal injuries	Falls, slips, trips	Transportation incidents	Exposure to harmful substances or environments	Contact incidents	Violent acts	Explosions and fires
Construction	23	1,034	389	244	187	161	46	5
Construction of buildings	236	220	96	32	46	34	12
Heavy and civil engineering construction	237	158	16	69	24	41
Highway, street, and bridge construction	2373	60	8	36		11
Specialty trade contractors	238	606	253	134	106	82	27
Foundation, structure, and building exterior contractors	2381	261	153	35	34	29	8
Roofing contractors	23816	120	96	5	13	2

Source: bls.gov

The mix changes by subsector. Falls caused 96 of 120 deaths at roofing contractors, or 80%. At heavy and civil contractors, transportation incidents caused 69 of 158, and highway, street and bridge work accounts for 36 of them. For a highway contractor, that points the safety plan toward work zones and haul routes.

A worked example

The table below is an example with round numbers. A general contractor self-performs 500,000 field hours a year across five occupations. Each line multiplies the hours by the BLS 2024 rate for that occupation. The blended rate is the sum of those products divided by total hours.

Fatal injury exposure for a general contractor's self-perform hours, weighted by BLS 2024 occupation rates. Example figures.
Occupation	BLS 2024 rate	Example hours	Share of hours	Hours x rate	Share of exposure
Construction laborers	15.8	200,000	40.0%	3,160,000	54.7%
Carpenters	7.5	150,000	30.0%	1,125,000	19.5%
Construction supervisors	12.8	50,000	10.0%	640,000	11.1%
Construction equipment operators	11.7	50,000	10.0%	585,000	10.1%
Electricians	5.3	50,000	10.0%	265,000	4.6%
Total (blended rate)	11.6	500,000	100.0%	5,775,000	100.0%

Source: bls.gov

Laborers work 40% of the hours and carry 54.7% of the weighted exposure. Electricians work 10% and carry 4.6%. The blended rate of 11.6 sits above the construction industry’s 9.2, because this firm’s hours lean toward laborers and supervisors.

The same arithmetic turns the blended rate into an expected count at national rates. Divide the total of 5,775,000 by 200,000,000 and the result is 0.029 fatal injuries a year, about one in 35 years. That figure applies the national experience to this hour mix. The firm’s own controls do not enter the calculation.

Subcontracted scopes can go through the same table. Twenty thousand roofing hours at 48.7 come to 974,000, more than three and a half times the electricians’ line at 50,000 hours. Those hours sit on the roofing sub’s payroll, and adding them to the table shows how much exposure the scope brings onto the site.

How to use it on your jobs

Pull last year’s field hours from payroll by craft code, map each code to the closest BLS occupation, and build the table above. Use the margin of error column to decide how much weight a trade deserves. The iron worker rate of 37.8 has a margin of 13.35, so any value from about 24 to 51 fits the 2024 data.

Then put the shares next to where the safety budget goes. If laborers carry half the weighted exposure, check what share of site audits, job hazard analyses and training hours they get. Do the same for the event mix in your subsector, since a highway contractor and a roofer face different causes.

To start, take one active job, total its hours by craft from the last month of certified payroll, and run them through the BLS rates. The labor productivity post covers pulling hours by craft from timecards.

Limits of the rates

Occupation rates count workers in that occupation in every industry, so the laborer rate mixes building, highway and other work. CPS counts each worker by primary job, while CFOI records the job held at the time of the fatal injury. BLS notes that small counts swing from year to year, and that a single incident with several deaths can move a rate.

CFOI excludes deaths from illness unless an injury event set them off. BLS lists the 2020 to 2024 figures as revised and final. Construction and extraction occupations recorded 976 fatal injuries in 2020, a high of 1,056 in 2022 and 1,032 in 2024.

Fatal work injuries by occupation group, 2020-24, final
Year	Construction and extraction occupations	Construction trades workers	Supervisors of construction and extraction workers	All workers
2020	976	771	88	4,764
2021	951	726	117	5,190
2022	1,056	811	113	5,486
2023	1,055	809	113	5,283
2024	1,032	788	105	5,070

Source: bls.gov

Shackleton AI launches agents that draft RFIs and chase overdue submittals, with $1 billion of projects on its platform

Thu, 05 Nov 2026 06:34:37 -0500

Shackleton AI, a New York software company, came out of stealth on November 4, 2026, with a project management platform for general contractors and owners that runs AI agents on the paperwork. The company says the agents draft RFIs, follow up on overdue submittals, flag budget variances before a payment request goes for approval, and turn field notes into daily reports. It also announced a $5 million seed round led by Battery Ventures. Shackleton says the platform launched in June 2026 and now manages more than $1 billion in project value across more than 15 states.

What it does

On most jobs today, a project engineer logs RFIs and submittals in one system, the superintendent writes the daily report in another, and the project manager checks the budget in a spreadsheet or the accounting package. Shackleton’s announcement says a company commonly runs 7 to 10 such systems, and that teams spend 10 to 15 hours a week on data entry and administrative work.

Shackleton puts those records in one system. Its website lists projects, bids, budgets, RFIs, submittals, change orders and field reports in a single data model. An AI agent here is software that reads those records and prepares the next step, such as a draft RFI or a reminder on an overdue submittal, for a person to approve.

The work moves through the system in the order a job runs:

Field staff mark up sheets and record walkthroughs on the mobile app. Sheets stay readable and can be annotated offline, then sync when the crew has signal again.
A field agent turns field notes into daily reports. The homepage demo shows it turning a floor walk’s photos into punch items.
An office agent drafts RFIs and follows up on submittals that are past due.
A finance agent flags budget variances before the payment request is submitted for approval.
The project manager reviews the agents’ work. The release says review and approval workflows keep people in charge of it.

The website names seven agents in all: field, growth, planning, development, procurement, legal, and office and finance. The browser side holds the Gantt schedule and look-aheads.

Shackleton sells to midsize general contractors in multifamily, industrial and commercial work, and to owners that run rollouts across many locations. The release names Red Lobster, Dog Haus and Pepper Lunch as customers.

Evidence so far

The evidence is Shackleton’s launch announcement and its website. The three founders previously grew Ernest, a commercial general contractor in the Southeast, to $35 million in revenue. “I was spending more time moving data between systems than running my jobs at Ernest,” CEO Michael Ragheb said in the release.

These claims come from Shackleton:

Ragheb said multi-location customers have finished buildouts up to 35% ahead of schedule and as much as 18% under budget.
The website credits the growth agent with bid turnaround three times faster, and the development agent with a 29% shorter time from concept to construction start.

The 35% and 18% figures describe the best results, as the words “up to” and “as much as” indicate. The number of projects behind them, the baseline they were measured against, and any RFI or submittal turnaround times are not yet public.

How to measure it on your projects

Track RFI turnaround in calendar days, from the date a field question is first raised to the date the answer reaches the crew. Shackleton’s agents draft the RFI and chase the reply, so log three dates for each one: when the question came up, when the RFI went to the architect, and when the answer was distributed.

Metrics to capture before piloting an agent on RFIs, submittals and daily reports
Workflow	Metric	Definition	Baseline to capture
RFIs	RFI turnaround (calendar days)	Date the question is raised in the field to the date the answer reaches the crew	Median and slowest 10% from two or three recent jobs
RFIs	Draft acceptance rate	Share of agent-drafted RFIs sent with no edits	None before the pilot; count from the first week
Submittals	Overdue submittals	Count of submittals past their required-by date on the log each Monday	Weekly count from a current job
Daily reports	Same-day filing rate	Share of daily reports filed before midnight on the day of the work	Last 30 working days on one job
Pay applications	Variances caught before approval	Budget variances found before the pay request goes out for approval	Count from the last three pay apps

Capture a baseline from the RFI and submittal logs of two or three recent jobs of similar size and delivery method. Our post on measuring RFI turnaround before an AI pilot covers setting up that baseline. During the pilot, also count how many agent drafts the project engineer sent unchanged, edited, or discarded, since edited drafts still cost review time.

For daily reports, record the time between the end of the shift and the report being filed, and the share of reports filed the same day. Compare it with the voice-first approach in our post on Punch’s daily reports for superintendents.

A first step on one job: export the RFI log for your most recent closed project and add a column for the date each question was first raised in the field.

Availability and cost

Shackleton takes demo requests at shackleton.ai/demo. Prices are not listed on its website. The agents work on records stored in Shackleton’s own data model, so a contractor would move its RFI, submittal and daily report logs onto the platform to use them. The company says it will spend the seed money on more agent workflows and on sales.

How to plan winter crew hours from wind chill and the ACGIH warm-up schedule, with a steel erection example

Wed, 04 Nov 2026 10:34:03 -0500

A superintendent setting steel in January has to decide how many hours the raising gang will spend in the warming trailer. That number belongs in the lookahead schedule and in the labor budget, and it can be set before the cold arrives. Two public sources cover the calculation: the National Weather Service (NWS) wind chill formula and a work/warm-up schedule from the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) that OSHA posts on its winter weather pages.

OSHA has no specific standard for working in the cold. Its cold stress page says employers still have a duty under the OSH Act of 1970 to protect workers from recognized hazards, cold stress among them. The same page tells employers to know the wind chill so they can gauge exposure and plan the work, and it recommends frequent short breaks in warm, dry areas.

Compute the wind chill

Wind chill is the temperature exposed skin feels once wind is added to the air temperature. The NWS publishes the formula, with T as air temperature in degrees Fahrenheit and V as wind speed in miles per hour:

Wind chill (°F) = 35.74 + 0.6215T - 35.75(V^0.16) + 0.4275T(V^0.16)

The formula holds only at or below 50°F and for wind above 3 mph. The NWS bases it on a model of a human face, adjusts the wind reading from the 33-foot anemometer height down to 5 feet, and assumes no sun. Bright sunshine can raise the wind chill by 10°F to 18°F, according to the agency.

Two published examples check the arithmetic. The NWS gives 0°F with a 15 mph wind as a wind chill of -19°F, where exposed skin can freeze in 30 minutes. OSHA gives 40°F with a 35 mph wind as 28°F. In Excel, with air temperature in A2 and wind in B2, the formula is =35.74+0.6215*A2-35.75*B2^0.16+0.4275*A2*B2^0.16.

Wind chill applies to people and animals. The NWS notes that a radiator or a water pipe cools to the air temperature faster in wind but never below it. Frostbite also requires an air temperature below freezing. Freeze protection for concrete and piping is planned from the air temperature, and crew exposure from the air temperature and the wind together.

Read the warm-up schedule

The ACGIH schedule is keyed to air temperature and wind speed, and it starts at -15°F. For each combination it gives a maximum continuous work period and a number of 10-minute breaks in a warm location within a 4-hour period. It assumes moderate to heavy work and an extended warm break, such as lunch, at the end of each 4-hour period. Cells at the cold, windy corner of the table read “non-emergency work should cease.” That point arrives at -25°F with a 20 mph wind, or -45°F with no noticeable wind.

A copy of the table in a U.S. Army site health and safety plan carries four ACGIH notes that OSHA’s one-page version leaves off.

Light work with little physical movement takes the schedule one step colder. An equipment operator or a signal person at -20°F with a 10 mph wind would get the 40-minute, 4-break row instead of the 55-minute, 3-break row.
Without a wind reading, a light flag that moves means about 5 mph, a fully extended flag about 10 mph, a newspaper sheet lifted about 15 mph, and blowing and drifting snow about 20 mph.
The schedule slightly under-compensates for wind at the warmer temperatures and slightly over-compensates at the coldest ones.
The limits apply only to workers in dry clothing.

The table marks its mildest rows “normal breaks” with a count of one. This example reads that row as the usual mid-period break, so the added warm-up time is the break count minus one, times 10 minutes. An 8-hour shift has two 4-hour periods.

A worked example

The first table is an example. It runs seven forecast conditions through the NWS formula, rounds to whole degrees and looks each one up in the ACGIH schedule.

Wind chill and ACGIH warm-up requirement for seven example forecasts, moderate to heavy work. Example calculations.
Air temperature (°F)	Wind (mph)	Wind chill (°F)	Maximum work period	Breaks per 4 hours	Added warm-up minutes per 8-hour shift
30	10	21	Normal breaks	1	0
10	15	-7	Normal breaks	1	0
-15	10	-35	75 min	2	20
-20	10	-41	55 min	3	40
-30	5	-46	40 min	4	60
-20	20	-48	30 min	5	80
-25	15	-51	30 min	5	80

Source: osha.gov

Wind chill alone does not pick the row. Air at -30°F with a 5 mph wind has a wind chill of -46°F and calls for 4 breaks. Air at -20°F with a 20 mph wind has a slightly warmer wind chill of -48°F and calls for 5. Read the schedule from the air temperature and the wind, and use the wind chill for the frostbite risk and for the NWS cold weather advisories in the area.

The second table is also an example, with round numbers. A six-person ironworker crew erects steel through a three-day cold snap on a job near Duluth. The estimator carries a loaded labor rate of $100 per hour.

Added warm-up time for a six-person crew over three cold days, 8-hour shifts. Example figures.
Day	Forecast	Breaks per 4 hours	Added warm-up minutes per worker	Crew size	Crew hours of warm-up	Labor cost at $100 per hour
Mon	-15°F and 10 mph	2	20	6	2.0	$200
Tue	-20°F and 10 mph	3	40	6	4.0	$400
Wed	-20°F and 20 mph	5	80	6	8.0	$800
Total			140		14.0	$1,400

Source: osha.gov

The crew spends 14 hours in warm-up breaks over the three days, $1,400 of labor that produces no steel. Wednesday alone accounts for 8 of those hours because the wind rose to 20 mph at the same air temperature as Tuesday. The labor burden post shows how to build the loaded rate this example rounds to $100.

New or returning workers add a second cost. New York’s Department of Labor recommends starting a worker on an 8-hour shift at two hours of full-intensity work on the first day, then four, six and eight. A new hire on a cold Monday works 12 fewer full-intensity hours across the first three days.

How to use it on your jobs

Add the warm-up hours to the weather allowance in the baseline schedule for winter work. The weather delay days post builds the allowance for lost days from NOAA climate normals. The warm-up schedule adds the shorter work periods on days the crew stays on site.

Then record it. Each morning the superintendent logs the air temperature, the wind speed and the schedule row in the daily log, along with the warm-up breaks the crew took. After a winter of entries, the hours compare directly with units installed, and the labor productivity post shows how to divide one by the other.

To start, pick one job with outdoor work scheduled for December through February. Put the Excel formula and the ACGIH table on one sheet, enter the next 10-day forecast, and price the added warm-up minutes for each crew on the lookahead.

AI cross-check of structural calculations against rebar schedules found 253 errors, 29 of them critical, on a 19-story Seoul apartment building

Wed, 04 Nov 2026 06:34:44 -0500

A research team led by Jaewook Jeong, an associate professor at Seoul National University of Science and Technology, has published an AI pipeline that reads a building’s structural calculation package and its structural drawings, matches every beam and column across the two, and flags where they disagree. The paper, by Minsang Gu, Jaewook Jeong and Louis Kumi, went online in Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence on October 13, 2026, and the university announced it on November 3. On a 19-story reinforced concrete apartment building in Seoul, the system found 253 discrepancies, and the authors class 29 of them as critical to structural stability. The workflow it targets is structural document review, the check of rebar sizes, bar counts, stirrup spacing and member dimensions between what the engineer calculated and what the drawings tell the field to build.

What it does

Two documents go in. The calculation package comes out of analysis and design software (MIDAS ADS and MIDAS SDS on the case project) and lists each member’s loads, reinforcement and layout. The structural drawings are the schedule-type sheets a drafter builds from that package in CAD. The paper’s premise is that this hand transfer between two formats, often by different people, is where omissions and typos get in.

The pipeline then runs in three stages:

It collects the documents and drops low-quality pages.
It pulls member data out of each document. On the calculation pages, a layout model called DocLayNet-YOLO finds the regions that hold member information, and Surya-OCR, an optical character recognition model that turns a page image into text, reads them. On the drawings, the software finds the member codes first, then uses OCR with edge and line detection to locate the schedule tables, whose rows and columns vary in width.
It matches each member across the two documents by member code and direction, compares reinforcement and dimensions, and sorts every disagreement by type.

Results come out in a web application the team built. The method works from the documents alone, with no BIM model, and the authors aim it at small and mid-size projects that do not build one. They name structural engineers, design consultants, contractors and construction supervision teams as the people who would use it. The paper also notes that US practice splits structural documents among architects, structural engineers and CAD technicians, which is the kind of divided authorship the check is built for.

Evidence so far

The evidence is one case study the authors ran on the Seoul project, reported in the paper’s abstract and the preview ScienceDirect shows of the full text. The authors declare no competing interests, and a Korean government grant for commercializing research outcomes funded the work.

Extraction accuracy, the share of fields the software read correctly, was 95.56% on the calculation package and 90.47% on the drawings. The 253 discrepancies were all in beams and columns.

Discrepancies between the calculation package and the structural drawings, by type
Discrepancy type	Count
Missing entries	224
Main reinforcement mismatches	15
Dimension mismatches	8
Stirrup mismatches	3
Duplicate entries	3
Total	253

Source: techxplore.com

So the 29 critical errors are the 253 minus the 224 missing entries. Every mismatch in bar size, bar count, stirrup spacing or member height, plus the three duplicates, landed in the critical group.

The 29 errors the authors class as critical to structural stability
Critical error	Count
Dimension height	8
Bottom rebar diameter	6
Top rebar diameter	3
Top rebar count	3
Bottom rebar count	3
Stirrup spacing	3
Duplication	3
Total	29

Source: sciencedirect.com

The two accuracy figures matter for reading the larger number. If the software misread about one drawing field in ten, some of the 224 missing entries could be fields it failed to read and not gaps in the drawings, and the preview does not show how the authors confirmed each flag. The time the check took, and a manual review of the same documents for comparison, are not in the abstract or the preview. (The paper cites conflicting design documents as a contributing factor in the New World Hotel collapse in Singapore and an underground parking structure collapse in Incheon.)

How to measure it on your projects

The metric to borrow is confirmed discrepancies per structural sheet, counted before rebar detailing starts and sorted into the paper’s five types. Count a flag only after the engineer of record or your detailer confirms it, so OCR misreads do not inflate the total. Dividing confirmed flags by all flags gives you the tool’s precision, the share of its flags that turned out to be real errors.

You need the calculation package for this, and the engineer of record does not always issue it to the contractor. Ask for it at the start of the pilot.

Capture two baselines on a recent concrete job: the RFIs that traced back to a conflict between the calculations and the beam or column schedules, and the hours your detailer or project engineer spent checking schedules by hand. A first step on one job is to take a single floor’s beam schedule and the matching calculation pages, check them by hand, and log the hours and each discrepancy by type. Run the tool on the same floor afterward and compare both counts and both times.

Availability and cost

This is a research system. The paper describes a web application, and the abstract and preview do not mention a public code release, a commercial version or a price. The full text sits behind Elsevier’s paywall.

Earlier posts covered commercial drawing review tools, including Buildcheck, Document Crunch’s drawing review and Bluebeam Max.

Construction job openings rose 14% to 298,000 in September as quits reached 198,000, the most in 25 months

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 10:33:29 -0500

Construction employers had 298,000 job openings on the last business day of September 2026, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on November 3. The figure is seasonally adjusted and preliminary. It is 36,000 above a revised August, a gain of 13.7%, and 92,000 above September 2025, a gain of 44.7%. The construction job openings rate, which is openings as a share of employment plus openings, rose to 3.4% from 3.0%. September sits above the 12-month average of about 259,000 and ties June for third-highest of the last 25 months, behind July 2025 at 305,000 and July 2026 at 299,000.

Openings returned to their June and July level

Construction job openings, thousands, seasonally adjusted, last business day of the month

September 2026 is preliminary. August 2026 is revised. Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

Construction job openings, last 13 months
Month	Openings (000s)	MoM	YoY
Sep 2025	206	-3.3%	-16.3%
Oct 2025	196	-4.8%	-18.7%
Nov 2025	292	49.0%	25.3%
Dec 2025	245	-16.1%	81.5%
Jan 2026	230	-6.1%	-0.9%
Feb 2026	201	-12.6%	-21.2%
Mar 2026	234	16.4%	-15.8%
Apr 2026	266	13.7%	28.5%
May 2026	291	9.4%	31.1%
Jun 2026	298	2.4%	33.0%
Jul 2026	299	0.3%	-2.0%
Aug 2026	262	-12.4%	23.0%
Sep 2026	298	13.7%	44.7%

Source: bls.gov

What moved

Quits rose faster than any other construction flow in the release. Construction workers who left their jobs voluntarily numbered 198,000 in September, up 46,000 from August and 71,000 from September 2025. The quits rate rose to 2.4% from 1.8%, where it had held for June, July and August. On the FRED series, 198,000 is the highest monthly count in the 25 months shown in the chart, and the previous high in that window was 173,000 in February 2025.

Hires rose too, to 356,000 from 307,000, and the hires rate went to 4.3% from 3.7%. Layoffs and discharges rose to 138,000 from 113,000. That is still well below the 194,000 of September 2025.

Construction labor flows, seasonally adjusted
Measure	Sep 2025 (000s)	Aug 2026 (000s)	Sep 2026 (000s)	Sep 2026 rate
Job openings	206	262	298	3.4%
Hires	337	307	356	4.3%
Quits	127	152	198	2.4%
Layoffs and discharges	194	113	138	1.6%

Source: bls.gov

Put the four lines together and September looks like a month with more movement between employers. More workers quit, more were hired, and more positions were open at month’s end. That fits workers leaving for other construction jobs, and it also fits workers leaving the industry. JOLTS counts a quit as a separation from the payroll of the establishment the worker left, so the release does not show where those workers went.

For the economy as a whole, openings were little changed at 7.5 million and quits rose to 3.4 million. The release names the industries where openings, hires, quits or layoffs changed over the month, and construction is not among them. BLS conducts its analyses at a 90% confidence level, and the release does not treat construction’s September gains as significant at that level.

How to use this number

Compare your own quit rate to the industry’s. BLS divides quits during the month by employment. As an example, a contractor with 150 field and office employees and 4 voluntary departures in September has a quit rate of 4 / 150, or 2.7%, against 2.4% for construction. Run it monthly from payroll terminations coded as voluntary. If your rate runs above the industry’s for three months or more, sort the departures by trade and compare your wage rates for those trades with what competitors post.
Use openings and quits together when you price a job that starts in the spring. One reading of openings at 298,000 and quits at 198,000 is that many of the workers you would recruit already have other offers. If both stay near these levels through the winter, build a few more weeks of recruiting into the staffing plan, and check whether the labor rates in your estimate still match what you are paying new hires.

Revisions and caveats

September is preliminary. BLS will revise it on December 1, 2026, when it publishes October data. This release revised August:

BLS first published August construction openings at 251,000, in the release at the end of September.
The November 3 release revised August up to 262,000, an increase of 11,000.
Against the first-published August, September would look like a gain of 47,000. Against the revised August it is 36,000.

July and June openings were unchanged at 299,000 and 298,000. BLS says monthly revisions come from reports that arrive after the first estimate and from recalculated seasonal factors.

JOLTS is a stratified random sample of about 21,000 business and government establishments across all industries, and construction is one part of it. A job counts as open only if a specific position exists, the work could start within 30 days, and the employer is recruiting from outside the establishment. Openings are a count on the last business day of the month, while hires, quits and layoffs cover the whole month. BLS revises five years of estimates with the January data each year, using updated employment benchmarks and seasonal factors, so the history in the chart will change again early next year.

The construction series swings widely. Openings rose 96,000 from October to November 2025 and fell 29,000 from January to February 2026, and the monthly change was 30,000 or more in six of the last 12 months. The 12-month average line in the chart is a steadier guide than any single month.

Bluebeam survey of 750 US AEC firms finds 28% run AI in production and 17% credit it with less rework

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 06:34:15 -0500

Bluebeam released its 2027 AEC Technology Outlook Report on October 13, 2026. Hanover Research ran the survey online for Bluebeam in July 2026, and the US edition covers 750 decision-makers at architecture, engineering and construction firms. About 28% of those firms say AI is in production, and 7% say it runs across several core workflows. Among the 448 firms using AI in any form, 64% name greater cost predictability as a benefit and 17% name reduced rework. The questions follow AI from estimating and design through the handoff to the field, and then ask what stops firms from scaling it and whom they can hire to run it.

What it does

The survey tests no product. Respondents work full time at AEC firms, at manager level or above, with authority or influence over technology decisions. The 750 US answers come from a wider study of 1,100. Each firm placed itself on a five-point adoption scale.

Where US AEC firms stand on AI, July 2026 survey (n=750)
Adoption stage	Share of US AEC firms (%)
AI embedded across multiple core workflows	7
AI supporting a few specific workflows	21
Piloting AI in limited or experimental use cases	32
Not using AI, but exploring future use	31
Not using AI, and no plans to	10

Source: bluebeam.com

“In production” is Bluebeam’s grouping of the top two rows, 7% and 21%. Add the 32% piloting and 60% of firms have started with AI in some form. (The five rows add to 101% from rounding.)

Most figures below come from one of three groups of respondents:

All 750 firms answered the adoption question.
The 448 firms using AI, pilots included, answered the questions on where they use it, what it delivers and what blocks scaling.
The 210 firms past the pilot stage answered what got them there and what they saved.

Bluebeam says this year’s 28% cannot be compared with the 27% in its 2026 edition, because the question wording and the set of countries both changed. The report page does not split results for contractors apart from architects and engineers. It does note that 58% of respondents are aged 35 to 44 and under 1% are 55 or older.

Evidence so far

The evidence is one survey of self-reported answers, commissioned and analyzed by a software vendor. Bluebeam sells Revu and the AI tier Bluebeam Max. Bluebeam also ran its own analysis of Hanover’s respondent-level file to compare firms that scaled with firms still piloting.

Where AI sits and what it delivers

Among firms using AI, the most common uses are office and preconstruction work.

Most common uses of AI among firms using it
Where firms use AI	Share of firms using AI (%)
Cost estimation	69
Design and modeling	69
Project planning	63
Document management	60

Source: bluebeam.com

Benefits reported from AI, firms using AI (n=448)
Benefit reported from AI	Share of firms using AI (%)
Greater cost predictability	64
Earlier identification of risks and issues	58
Reduced administrative burden	55
Enhanced team coordination knowledge	53
Reduced project delays	47
Improved output quality and consistency	43
Faster workflows and internal processes	38
Easier access to information and insights	27
Stronger compliance/audit readiness	27
Improved safety outcomes	25
Reduced rework/late-stage changes	17
Reduced cognitive load for staff	14

Source: bluebeam.com

Bluebeam groups the top three benefits as ways of knowing about a problem sooner. Reduced rework ranks 11th of 12. Bluebeam’s reading is that AI sits in estimating, design and planning, while rework happens in the field, where the people who could stop it have the least access to the systems that flagged it. The report puts the direct cost of rework near 5% of total construction cost, citing Construction Industry Institute research and a 2009 study by Hwang, Thomas, Haas and Caldas, and it adds that those studies lean toward industrial capital projects. Bluebeam CEO Usman Shuja says in the report that he has watched a model flag a clash three weeks early and seen the same clash get built anyway. “Prediction is a data problem, and we have largely won it,” he says.

Barriers to scaling

Barriers to scaling AI, by adoption stage (Bluebeam analysis of respondent-level data)
Barrier to scaling AI	Still piloting (n=238) (%)	Scaled past pilot (n=210) (%)
High implementation costs	50	50
Lack of internal AI skills	34	34
Resistance to change	27	17
Security and compliance	15	22
Moving beyond pilots	16	10
Identifying right use cases	10	18
Unclear business value	11	2
Data quality issues	9	4
Difficulty accessing data	5	2
Lack of trust in outputs	3	0

Source: bluebeam.com

Cost is named by exactly half of each group, so it does not separate the firms that scaled from the ones that stalled. The press release gives different figures for some rows, 22% for resistance to change and 18% for security, because it pools both groups. The arithmetic checks out:

27% of 238 piloting firms is about 64 firms, and 17% of 210 scaled firms is about 36.
That is 100 of 448 firms, or 22%.

The same weighting turns 15% and 22% on security into 18%, and 3% and 0% on trust into the 2% the release quotes.

Trust shows up twice in the survey. Only 2% call a lack of trust in outputs a barrier, while 20% of scaled firms list trust in AI outputs as something that carried them to production. The barrier question and the success question ask about different things, so a firm can count trust as a help without ever having found it missing.

What the scaled firms credit

What carried firms from pilot to production
Factor that carried AI from pilot to production	Share of firms past the pilot stage (n=210) (%)
Integration with existing systems/tools	47
Cross-team collaboration	29
Transparency of AI results	27
High-quality data	26
Employee training	26
Ease of use for employees	22
Trust in AI outputs/recommendations	20
Ability to tailor solutions to project needs	19
High vendor expertise	17
Clear value/return on investment	12
Strong leadership support	11
Ability to validate or audit AI-generated results	11
Adequate vendor support	10
Accessible data	8

Source: bluebeam.com

Integration with existing systems leads at 47%, and a clear return on investment sits at 12%. Bluebeam itself calls this question the weakest evidence in the study, since firms describe their own success after the fact. The use pattern lines up with it: 41% of firms using AI use it mainly to connect data across tools they already own.

How firms use AI relative to their existing tools (single response)
Use of AI relative to existing tools	Share of firms using AI (n=448) (%)
To connect and coordinate data across existing tools	41
To automate tasks within individual tools	37
To replace multiple tools with a single platform	23

Source: bluebeam.com

Where project workflows break down, US respondents
Where project workflows break down	Share of US AEC firms (%)
Design to construction handoffs	41
Between office teams and field teams	41
Document management	38
Construction to operations handoffs	32
Between internal teams and external partners	32
During reviews, approvals, or sign-offs	30
Between different software tools/platforms	24
Between disciplines	20

Source: bluebeam.com

Among the 210 firms in production, 40% estimate AI savings above $500,000 and another 31% between $100,000 and $500,000. The period and the baseline behind those estimates are not part of the published report.

Self-reported savings from AI, firms in production
Self-reported AI savings	Share of firms running AI in production (n=210) (%)
More than $500,000	40
$100,000 to $500,000	31

Source: bluebeam.com

Hiring and shortages

Capabilities firms prioritize in hiring and find hardest to hire
Capability	Prioritized when hiring (%)	Hardest to find in candidates (%)
Digital tools proficiency	93	77
Project management skills	82	40
Problem-solving and adaptability	74	31
Ability to work across multiple tools and platforms	73	43
AI-related knowledge/experience	69	59
Traditional technical/design expertise	58	33
Data analysis and interpretation	46	23

Source: bluebeam.com

Digital tools proficiency is both the most sought skill, at 93%, and the hardest to find, at 77%. AI knowledge is second-hardest at 59%. Only 16% of firms report no labor or skills shortage, and 82% of all respondents say shortages limit their ability to deliver projects to some degree. (Bluebeam’s hiring chart lists field and trade experience on two rows with different values, so this table leaves that capability out.)

Effects of labor and skills shortages
Effect of labor and skills shortages	Share of firms reporting a shortage (n=631) (%)
Increased workload for existing employees	74
Delayed project timelines	49
Increased project costs	39
Limited the number of projects taken on	36
Increased reliance on subcontractors/external partners	33
Reduced quality/increased rework needed	20
Increased safety risks	15

Source: bluebeam.com

How to measure it on your projects

The rework finding points at one number a contractor can track: the flag-to-fix rate. It is the share of coordination issues flagged before installation that were resolved before the affected work went in. Flags can come from clash detection or from an AI review tool, and the rate counts only whether the fix arrived before the work went in.

Build the baseline on one active job before any pilot:

Export the last three months of the coordination issue log, including clash items and the RFIs they generated.
For each issue, record the date flagged, the date a design response or RFI answer closed it, and the date the affected scope was installed, taken from daily logs.
Count the issues whose scope is already in place, and divide the ones closed before installation by that count.

Track the same rate on jobs where an AI review tool supplies flags, and keep the baseline job’s rate beside it. Pair it with RFI turnaround in calendar days, since a late answer is the usual reason a flagged issue gets built. To start, add an installed-date column to the coordination log on one job this week.

Availability and cost

The full US report is a free page on Bluebeam’s site. This year’s study covered three countries, reported as two separate markets, and this page is the US edition. Construction Briefing covered the US findings on November 2.

Construction spending fell 1.9% in September as residential improvement spending dropped

Mon, 02 Nov 2026 10:33:36 -0500

US construction spending ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of $2,186.1 billion in September 2026, according to the preliminary estimate the Census Bureau released this morning. SAAR means the month’s spending, adjusted for normal seasonal swings and scaled up to a full year. September is 1.9% below a revised August figure of $2,227.4 billion and 2.7% below September 2025. Census also raised August by $24.2 billion from its first estimate, which turns August’s reported 0.9% gain into a 2.0% gain, and September’s $41.2 billion decline offsets most of it. September sits $12.6 billion below the 12-month average of $2,198.7 billion and ranks 22nd of the last 25 months.

September fell back below the 12-month average

Total construction spending, billions of dollars, seasonally adjusted annual rate

September 2026 is preliminary. July and August 2026 are revised. Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

Total construction spending, last 13 months
Month	Spending ($B SAAR)	MoM	YoY
Sep 2025	$2,245.8	0.2%	-0.8%
Oct 2025	$2,241.1	-0.2%	-1.0%
Nov 2025	$2,220.7	-0.9%	-1.9%
Dec 2025	$2,216.0	-0.2%	-1.9%
Jan 2026	$2,195.6	-0.9%	-2.9%
Feb 2026	$2,189.7	-0.3%	-3.4%
Mar 2026	$2,199.4	0.4%	-2.5%
Apr 2026	$2,168.2	-1.4%	-4.2%
May 2026	$2,168.4	0.0%	-3.4%
Jun 2026	$2,187.4	0.9%	-2.2%
Jul 2026	$2,184.0	-0.1%	-2.6%
Aug 2026	$2,227.4	2.0%	-0.7%
Sep 2026	$2,186.1	-1.9%	-2.7%

Source: census.gov

What moved

Private residential accounts for more than the whole decline. It fell 5.5% to $848.8 billion, a drop of $49.2 billion against a $41.2 billion drop in the total. Census reports that decline as statistically significant, meaning its 90% confidence interval of plus or minus 1.3 percentage points does not include zero.

The new-construction lines inside residential barely moved. New single-family was flat at $403.4 billion and new multifamily rose 0.1% to $115.9 billion. The rest of private residential is improvements to owner-occupied homes, which Census defines as remodeling, additions and major replacements such as furnaces and water heaters, with maintenance and repair excluded. Table 1 does not give improvements a line of its own, so subtract the two new-construction lines from the residential total. That leaves $347.7 billion in July, $378.7 billion in the revised August and $329.5 billion in September. (The subtraction is our arithmetic on Table 1.) So the improvements figure fell about $49.3 billion, or 13.0%, in one month, and the September figure is below July’s.

Private nonresidential rose 1.1% to $790.6 billion, a statistically significant gain, and is 2.3% above September 2025. Office supplied $7.5 billion of the $8.3 billion increase, rising 5.5% to $145.6 billion, 39.5% above a year earlier. Census definitions list data centers as a subcategory of office, though Table 1 does not show them separately. Private power rose 1.2% to $171.7 billion and is up 12.1% from a year ago. Private manufacturing slipped 0.3% to $167.2 billion, 17.9% below the $203.7 billion of September 2025, and commercial fell 0.3% to $115.9 billion.

Public spending fell 0.1% to $546.8 billion and is 1.0% above September 2025. Highway and street fell 0.3% to $149.2 billion, and educational held at $113.1 billion. Census marks the public total and both of those changes as not statistically significant.

How to use this number

If your work is commercial, industrial or institutional, track the private nonresidential line alongside the headline. In the current vintage it has risen four months in a row, from $749.4 billion in May to $790.6 billion in September, a 5.5% gain. Office accounts for $30.5 billion of that $41.1 billion. Set your bid log for the same months next to those lines by building type. If your office and data center bid volume grew by less than the category’s spending over those four months, you are winning a smaller share of a growing segment.
Compare your billed revenue with a three-month average of the total, which smooths out single-month swings like August’s and September’s. July through September 2026 averaged $2,199.2 billion, 2.0% below the same three months of 2025. Census adjusts these figures for seasonality and leaves out price changes, so if your material and labor costs rose over the year, physical volume fell by more than 2.0%.

Revisions and caveats

Measured against the first August estimate of $2,203.1 billion, September would be down 0.8%. The revision added the rest:

On October 1, Census put August at $2,203.1 billion, 0.9% above a July figure of $2,184.5 billion.
On November 2, it revised August to $2,227.4 billion and July to $2,184.0 billion.
August rose $24.2 billion, or 1.1%. Private residential went to $898.0 billion from $882.3 billion, and private nonresidential to $782.3 billion from $773.0 billion.

Census says the average absolute change from the preliminary estimate to the first revision is 0.65% for total construction, so August moved by close to twice the usual amount. The residential portion of that revision went into the derived improvements figure, which the first August estimate had put at $363.2 billion.

September is preliminary, and Census will revise it on December 1, 2026, when it publishes October. The 1.9% decline carries a 90% confidence interval of plus or minus 0.7 percentage point, so Census treats it as statistically significant. The release adds that it can take two months to establish an underlying trend for total construction and up to eight months for specific categories. The estimates draw on several sources and surveys and carry both sampling and nonsampling error. For comparison with last month’s figures, see the August construction spending post.

Through the first nine months of 2026, construction spending totaled $1,649.6 billion, 2.9% below the $1,698.6 billion for the same period of 2025.

Zutec launches Handover AI to sort subcontractor closeout documents and track what is still missing

Mon, 02 Nov 2026 06:34:33 -0500

Zutec, a construction software company that sells mainly to contractors and building owners in the UK and Ireland, launched Zutec Handover AI on November 2, 2026. The announcement says the product is available now and is built for main contractors. It covers closeout: collecting O&M manuals, drawings, certificates and safety files from subcontractors and assembling the record the owner receives at practical completion, the UK term for substantial completion.

What it does

On most jobs this work falls to a project engineer or document controller on the main contractor’s team. Zutec describes the current process as chasing subcontractors for files, receiving wrong or incomplete documents and keeping status in Excel trackers, which ends in a rush at practical completion.

With Handover AI, subcontractors upload documents into Zutec’s platform through guided templates or by drag and drop. According to the announcement, Zutec’s own specialist staff chase missing submissions and quality-check each upload within 48 hours. The software then classifies, names and tags each file. Classification means the AI reads a document and assigns it to a slot in the handover structure, the way a document controller would file a pump data sheet under the mechanical O&M section.

The main contractor’s team reviews, approves or returns each item in a workflow that keeps comments, tasks and an audit trail in one place. Dashboards show what has been submitted, what is outstanding and what is complete, for one project or across a portfolio. A chatbot answers questions about the documents collected so far.

The output is the building manual. Zutec lists exports for UK requirements, including Building Safety Act and Regulation 38 fire safety packages, along with an asset register and a logbook. The Irish version of the release names the Digital Safety File and BCAR documentation instead. After handover, an owner can load the record into Building AI, a separate Zutec product launched in February that answers plain-language questions with a citation to the source document.

Evidence so far

The evidence is Zutec’s announcement, which includes comments from one main contractor and one subcontractor. These claims come from Zutec:

The product draws on more than 25 years of handover work and data from over 5,000 projects.
Zutec’s own research found that main contractors repeatedly cite supply chain chasing, incomplete information, slow responses and limited visibility as handover problems.
Asset register, Regulation 38, Fire and Emergency File, BREEAM and logbook features, which were paid add-ons before, are now part of the core product without raising its cost.

Jet Maal, a senior technical coordinator at main contractor Mount Anvil, says in the release that the dashboard shows a project completion percentage, an activity log and the items waiting for review. Maal adds that consistent AI naming and tagging cuts administrative work. Thalia Rothwell, a quality engineer at subcontractor William Hare, says the subcontractor’s team knows what to submit and where, and spends less time asking for status updates.

Time saved per project, the accuracy of the AI classification and the share of uploads that pass the 48-hour check on first submission are not yet public.

How to measure it on your projects

Track closeout completeness at substantial completion. Divide the number of required closeout documents that were received and accepted by the substantial completion date by the total number the contract requires. Take the list from the closeout submittal requirements in Division 01 of the spec, and count each O&M manual, warranty, as-built set and test report as its own line item.

Capture these baselines from three to five recently closed jobs of similar size:

The completeness percentage on the substantial completion date.
Calendar days from substantial completion to the owner’s acceptance of the full closeout package.
Hours the project engineer or document controller charged to closeout in the job’s last 60 days, if your timekeeping separates them.

During a pilot, log each document the AI classified and whether a reviewer had to rename or refile it. The share that needed a correction is the tool’s error rate on your own subcontractors’ files. Closeout documents are the last submittals on a job, and our post on Buildertrend’s AI Submittals covers a tool that drafts the submittal log at the start of a job.

A first step on one job: pull the closeout log from your most recently finished project and count how many required items were still open on the substantial completion date.

Availability and cost

Zutec says Handover AI is available now. The releases carry London and Dublin datelines, and the regulatory packages they name are UK and Irish ones. Availability for US projects could not be verified. Pricing is not listed in the announcement.

How to adjust a crew wage rate to another metro with BLS OEWS data, from $26 in Houston to $42 in Chicago

Sun, 01 Nov 2026 10:33:11 -0500

A contractor bidding outside its home market has a labor rate it trusts for its own city and no payroll history in the new one. The estimator still has to put an hourly rate on every crew in the bid. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a starting point for that number, the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, known as OEWS.

OEWS reports employment and wages for about 830 occupations, for the nation, each state and each metro area. The latest set is the May 2025 estimates, which BLS released on May 15, 2026. This post shows how to scale a home-market rate to another metro with them, and where the method stops working.

What OEWS measures

BLS defines OEWS wages as straight-time gross pay, without premium pay. Base rates, piece rates, incentive pay and production bonuses count. Overtime pay, shift differentials, holiday and weekend premiums, and meal and lodging payments are left out.

That definition lines up with the base rate in an estimate. Payroll taxes, insurance and benefits go on top through the labor burden rate. Extended workweeks and travel get their own lines, covered in the posts on the overtime premium and per diem.

Each occupation and area gets a mean and five percentile wages. A percentile is a cutoff in the pay distribution: the 25th percentile is the rate that a quarter of workers earn less than, and the median is the 50th. This post uses the median because high earners raise the mean. Nationally, the May 2025 hourly mean for carpenters is $31.55 and the median is $29.12.

The wage gap between metros

The table below gives the May 2025 hourly medians for carpenters and electricians in five large metro areas. The “vs US” columns divide each metro median by the national median for that trade.

Hourly median wages, May 2025 OEWS estimates, with each metro's ratio to the US median for the same occupation
Area	Carpenters median ($)	Carpenters vs US	Electricians median ($)	Electricians vs US
United States	29.12	1.00	30.38	1.00
Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands TX	23.88	0.82	28.45	0.94
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell GA	24.37	0.84	28.20	0.93
Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler AZ	29.00	1.00	29.43	0.97
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue WA	36.74	1.26	48.93	1.61
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin IL-IN	38.68	1.33	49.21	1.62

Source: bls.gov

The ratios differ by trade within the same city. Houston carpenters sit at 0.82 of the national median and Houston electricians at 0.94. Chicago is at 1.33 for carpenters and 1.62 for electricians. A single city-wide labor factor applied to every trade would misprice at least one of them, so pull the ratio for each occupation in the bid.

A worked example

The figures below are an example. A Houston contractor pays its carpenters $26.00 an hour base and is bidding a Chicago interiors job that the schedule carries at 4,000 carpenter hours.

The quickest method scales the home rate by the ratio of the two metro medians:

Divide the destination median by the home median. For carpenters that is $38.68 / $23.88, or about 1.62.
Multiply your home rate by that ratio. $26.00 times 38.68 / 23.88 is $42.11 an hour.
Multiply by the hours. 4,000 hours at $42.11 is $168,440 in base wages, $64,440 more than the same hours at the Houston rate.

The ratio assumes your crew sits at the same relative point in both pay distributions. The table below compares the two distributions for carpenters.

Carpenter hourly wages at the 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles, May 2025 OEWS estimates
Area	25th percentile ($)	Median ($)	75th percentile ($)	25th to 75th spread ($)
Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands TX	22.40	23.88	28.94	6.54
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin IL-IN	28.26	38.68	54.79	26.53

Source: bls.gov

The middle half of Houston carpenters earn within a $6.54 band. In Chicago the same band is $26.53 wide, from $28.26 to $54.79. A rate that sits a little above the median in Houston lands much further from the median in Chicago.

A second method keeps your crew’s position in the distribution. The $26.00 Houston rate sits $2.12 above the Houston median of $23.88, which is 42% of the $5.06 gap to the Houston 75th percentile. The same share of Chicago’s $16.11 gap between median and 75th percentile, added to the $38.68 median, gives $45.43. This step assumes wages rise in a straight line between the two percentiles. BLS publishes only the cutoffs, so the result is an estimate.

Carpenter base wages for 4,000 hours on a Chicago job, from a $26.00 Houston rate. Example figures.
Method	Carpenter rate ($ per hour)	Wages for 4000 hours ($)	Change from Houston ($)
Houston rate as paid at home	26.00	$104,000	$0
Chicago by ratio of medians	42.11	$168,440	$64,440
Chicago by percentile position	45.43	$181,720	$77,720

The two methods differ by $3.32 an hour, or $13,280 across the job. When the destination spread is that wide, take both numbers to the people who will staff the job. A local subcontractor’s quote or the local union scale sheet shows where in the Chicago distribution your crew is likely to be hired.

Limits of the data

BLS builds each May estimate from six survey panels collected over three years. The May 2025 figures pool panels from November 2022 through May 2025, and BLS adjusts the older wages to the May 2025 reference date with a model. A rate taken from these tables is a May 2025 rate. A bid for work in 2027 needs your own escalation on top.

BLS also says the survey is designed for comparing areas and industries at one point in time and does not encourage using it as a time series. A Houston to Chicago comparison within the May 2025 release fits that design. For the change in a metro’s wages from one year to the next, your own payroll records or local subcontractor quotes are the better guide.

OEWS is not a prevailing wage source. The FAQ says the program cannot make classification determinations for non-statistical purposes such as prevailing wages. Work under Davis-Bacon uses the wage determination in the contract, covered in the fringe benefit credit post.

The metro series used here are cross-industry estimates, which BLS labels as covering private employers and federal, state and local government. A carpenter on a hospital’s maintenance staff counts alongside a carpenter at a framing contractor. Nationally, BLS counted 369,310 construction and extraction workers in local government, excluding schools and hospitals, in May 2025. For the trend in how many construction jobs each metro is adding, AGC’s metro analysis is summarized in the September metro employment post.

How to start on your jobs

Take your current base rate for each trade you self-perform and look up where it falls in the OEWS distribution for your home metro. Record it as a position, such as “between the median and the 75th percentile,” and store it next to the rate in your estimating database.

On the next out-of-town bid, pull the same occupations for the destination metro through the BLS data tables or the BLS Public Data API, where each figure has its own series ID. Price each trade both ways, ratio and percentile position, and put the gap in front of whoever approves the labor rates before the bid goes out.

Eastern Construction says Tyce's AI bid review cut its preconstruction time at least 40%

Sun, 01 Nov 2026 06:34:11 -0500

Tyce, a Toronto software company, announced on October 19, 2026, that it raised C$2.8 million (about US$2 million) in pre-seed funding, an early round that comes before a seed round. BDC’s Thrive Venture Fund and the MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund led it. Tyce’s software reads a bid package, flags scope gaps and risky contract terms, and drafts proposals. In the same announcement, Ontario general contractor Eastern Construction says it rolled Tyce out across its preconstruction teams and cut the time spent bidding on and managing projects by at least 40%.

What it does

On a typical pursuit, an estimator reads the drawings, specs and addenda, writes a scope sheet for each trade, and then levels the sub bids against those sheets. Tyce’s CEO and co-founder, Lylia Djait-Paulien, told The Construction Broadsheet that the product is meant to catch the item on page 400 that nobody had time to read.

The inputs are the bid documents. Tyce pulls drawings, specifications, addenda and trade bids from Procore, Autodesk Construction Cloud or a direct upload. It links them into one project model that the team can question in plain language.

The software then flags scope gaps, exclusions and risky contract terms. It supports takeoff and bid leveling, and it drafts proposals. Each flag shows the sheet, spec section or page it came from, so the estimator can open the source and confirm it. Scope sheets, bid leveling and risk summaries export to Excel.

Tyce’s website adds two functions. It compares supplemental clauses with standard contract forms and flags risks against the company’s own risk profile. It also compares a new estimate with the firm’s past estimates and points out line items outside the usual range.

Djait-Paulien said large general contractors use Tyce across estimating, preconstruction, contract review and project management. Smaller firms with one or two estimators use it to add capacity, and a drywall or formwork sub can pull out only its own trade’s scope.

Evidence so far

The evidence is Tyce’s funding announcement, a quote in it from Eastern Construction’s CEO, and Djait-Paulien’s interview with The Construction Broadsheet.

These claims come from Tyce and Eastern Construction:

Eastern Construction has rolled Tyce out across its preconstruction teams and cut the time spent bidding on and managing projects by at least 40%.
Dean Walker, Eastern’s CEO, said in the announcement: “With Tyce, tasks that took our preconstruction team five hours now take 15 minutes.”
Djait-Paulien told the Broadsheet that the largest gains come from reviewing bid packages, leveling sub bids, reviewing contracts, and summarizing reports and meeting minutes.
She also said customers are bidding more work with the same staff.

Time savings reported for Tyce at Eastern Construction
Measure	Reported by	Before Tyce	With Tyce	Change
Unnamed preconstruction tasks	Dean Walker, CEO, Eastern Construction	5 hours	15 minutes	95% less (our arithmetic)
Time spent bidding on and managing projects	Tyce announcement	Not stated	Not stated	At least 40% less

Source: tyce.ai

Walker’s five hours to 15 minutes refers to preconstruction tasks that the quote leaves unnamed, and it works out to a 95% cut for those tasks. The 40% figure covers bidding and project management time together. The method, time period and number of bids behind it are not in the announcement.

Accuracy rates are not yet public. Tyce told the Broadsheet that it benchmarks its output against customers’ own estimates and plans to publish accuracy and win-rate figures as its customer base grows. Bricks & Bytes, a construction technology newsletter, said accuracy is the first question a chief estimator should ask.

How to measure it on your projects

Track review hours per bid. Define it as the hours estimators and preconstruction staff log against one bid, from receipt of the documents to issued trade scope sheets and leveled sub bids. Split the hours by task: document review, scope sheets, bid leveling and proposal writing. That split lets you check which of Walker’s tasks moved on your own work.

Capture the baseline on your next five to ten bids before the pilot starts, and note each bid’s size and delivery method. Review hours on a small tenant improvement and a large hospital bid differ widely, so compare pilot bids with baseline bids of similar size.

Track what the review catches alongside the hours. For each pilot bid, record how many flags the tool raised and how many held up when an estimator checked the cited sheet. Then count the scope items the estimator found that the tool missed. After award, tag any change order that traces back to a scope gap at bid time. Our posts on change orders by cause and bid-hit ratio show how to set up that tag and check whether the extra bids turn into wins.

A first step on one job: on the next bid that comes in, have each estimator log hours by task in a shared sheet until the bid goes out.

Availability and cost

Tyce sells an annual subscription, tiered by company size and usage, with no per-project fee, according to the Broadsheet. Prices are not listed. Djait-Paulien said setup, including onboarding and training, usually takes a few weeks, and that past estimates and cost data are optional at the start. She also said customer data is never used to train models for other firms.

Tyce says it serves customers in Canada and the United States, and it told the Broadsheet it expects the US to become its largest market. For a European product aimed at the same bid review work, see our post on Kuro’s AI tender review.

Construction unemployment was 3.5% in September, and ABC's state estimates run from 1.7% in Maryland to 9.5% in North Dakota

Sat, 31 Oct 2026 11:33:12 -0400

The unemployment rate for construction workers was 3.5% in September 2026, not seasonally adjusted, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics household survey. That is 0.3 percentage point below September 2025 and 0.4 point above August. On October 30, Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) published state estimates for the same month, built by Markstein Advisors from BLS data. They put every state below 10%, with Maryland lowest at 1.7% and North Dakota highest at 9.5%. In the 25 months charted below, September ties for the fifth-lowest of 24 monthly readings. It sits under the 4.8% average for the last 12 months, an average of 11 readings because October 2025 has no value.

Construction unemployment was 3.5% in September, 0.3 point below a year earlier

Unemployment rate, construction industry, private wage and salary workers, percent, not seasonally adjusted

The series has no value for October 2025. Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

U.S. construction unemployment rate, last 13 months, not seasonally adjusted
Month	Rate (%)	Change from prior month (pts)	Change from a year earlier (pts)
Sep 2025	3.8%	0.6	0.1
Oct 2025
Nov 2025	4.1%		-0.5
Dec 2025	5.0%	0.9	-0.2
Jan 2026	7.1%	2.1	0.6
Feb 2026	6.9%	-0.2	-0.3
Mar 2026	6.7%	-0.2	1.3
Apr 2026	3.8%	-2.9	-1.8
May 2026	4.1%	0.3	0.6
Jun 2026	4.7%	0.6	1.3
Jul 2026	3.7%	-1.0	0.3
Aug 2026	3.1%	-0.6	-0.1
Sep 2026	3.5%	0.4	-0.3

Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

Without seasonal adjustment, the rate generally rises in the fall and winter and falls in late spring and summer, ABC’s background note explains, so the September-to-September comparison is the one to read. The 0.4-point rise from August is smaller than last year’s, when the rate went from 3.2% in August 2025 to 3.8% in September.

What moved

BLS Table A-14 counts 359,000 unemployed construction workers in September 2026, down from 404,000 a year earlier. A worker is counted as unemployed in construction if construction was the last industry they worked in and they looked for work in the prior four weeks.

ABC’s state numbers are estimates. BLS publishes a monthly construction unemployment rate only for the nation, so Markstein Advisors runs a model on state employment and unemployment data to produce one for each state.

Estimated construction unemployment rates by state, not seasonally adjusted, ranked lowest to highest for September 2026. *Delaware and Hawaii include mining and logging.
State	Census division	Sep 2019 (%)	Sep 2025 (%)	Aug 2026 (%)	Sep 2026 (%)	Change from Sep 2025 (pts)	Change from Sep 2019 (pts)
Maryland	South Atlantic	4.7%	2.1%	1.7%	1.7%	-0.4	-3.0
North Carolina	South Atlantic	1.6%	2.2%	1.6%	1.8%	-0.4	0.2
Georgia	South Atlantic	1.9%	2.0%	1.8%	2.1%	0.1	0.2
Tennessee	East South Central	2.3%	2.4%	2.0%	2.1%	-0.3	-0.2
South Carolina	South Atlantic	1.5%	2.7%	2.3%	2.2%	-0.5	0.7
Utah	Mountain	1.6%	2.6%	2.1%	2.2%	-0.4	0.6
Florida	South Atlantic	2.2%	2.4%	2.2%	2.3%	-0.1	0.1
New Hampshire	New England	2.3%	4.6%	3.4%	2.3%	-2.3	0.0
Alabama	East South Central	3.0%	2.2%	2.3%	2.7%	0.5	-0.3
Idaho	Mountain	3.1%	2.7%	1.9%	2.7%	0.0	-0.4
Indiana	East North Central	4.0%	2.7%	2.2%	2.7%	0.0	-1.3
Rhode Island	New England	7.1%	4.0%	3.3%	2.7%	-1.3	-4.4
Iowa	West North Central	4.3%	3.0%	2.5%	2.9%	-0.1	-1.4
Maine	New England	4.2%	2.8%	2.1%	2.9%	0.1	-1.3
Missouri	West North Central	2.3%	3.2%	2.6%	3.0%	-0.2	0.7
Ohio	East North Central	5.5%	3.7%	2.1%	3.0%	-0.7	-2.5
Oregon	Pacific	3.3%	4.1%	3.0%	3.0%	-1.1	-0.3
Vermont	New England	2.7%	3.5%	2.3%	3.1%	-0.4	0.4
California	Pacific	3.2%	3.6%	2.8%	3.2%	-0.4	0.0
Pennsylvania	Middle Atlantic	2.7%	4.4%	3.6%	3.3%	-1.1	0.6
Nebraska	West North Central	2.6%	4.4%	2.8%	3.5%	-0.9	0.9
Colorado	Mountain	1.9%	3.7%	3.5%	3.6%	-0.1	1.7
Nevada	Mountain	2.7%	3.9%	2.2%	3.6%	-0.3	0.9
Wisconsin	East North Central	4.0%	3.0%	2.1%	3.6%	0.6	-0.4
Kansas	West North Central	3.3%	4.0%	3.6%	3.7%	-0.3	0.4
Washington	Pacific	4.7%	4.1%	3.3%	3.7%	-0.4	-1.0
Arkansas	West South Central	2.7%	4.3%	3.2%	3.8%	-0.5	1.1
Mississippi	East South Central	4.4%	4.1%	2.6%	3.8%	-0.3	-0.6
New Jersey	Middle Atlantic	2.1%	5.1%	3.6%	3.8%	-1.3	1.7
Kentucky	East South Central	4.4%	3.7%	2.9%	3.9%	0.2	-0.5
Illinois	East North Central	2.9%	4.5%	3.8%	4.0%	-0.5	1.1
South Dakota	West North Central	2.5%	2.6%	3.2%	4.1%	1.5	1.6
Texas	West South Central	2.5%	4.2%	3.6%	4.1%	-0.1	1.6
Montana	Mountain	3.1%	4.9%	2.8%	4.2%	-0.7	1.1
Virginia	South Atlantic	3.5%	4.0%	3.3%	4.2%	0.2	0.7
Delaware*	South Atlantic	2.3%	4.8%	3.7%	4.3%	-0.5	2.0
Louisiana	West South Central	3.8%	5.6%	3.4%	4.3%	-1.3	0.5
New Mexico	Mountain	4.2%	4.3%	3.8%	4.3%	0.0	0.1
Oklahoma	West South Central	2.2%	4.2%	4.1%	4.3%	0.1	2.1
Hawaii*	Pacific	6.1%	2.7%	3.3%	4.4%	1.7	-1.7
Arizona	Mountain	4.3%	4.8%	4.2%	4.5%	-0.3	0.2
West Virginia	South Atlantic	5.3%	4.6%	4.2%	4.7%	0.1	-0.6
New York	Middle Atlantic	4.2%	5.0%	4.0%	4.8%	-0.2	0.6
Connecticut	New England	2.1%	4.1%	3.7%	5.0%	0.9	2.9
Wyoming	Mountain	4.3%	7.1%	3.7%	5.2%	-1.9	0.9
Massachusetts	New England	3.7%	5.7%	4.6%	5.5%	-0.2	1.8
Michigan	East North Central	5.4%	5.8%	5.2%	5.8%	0.0	0.4
Minnesota	West North Central	4.5%	5.8%	5.2%	6.7%	0.9	2.2
Alaska	Pacific	8.8%	6.3%	3.2%	7.5%	1.2	-1.3
North Dakota	West North Central	4.5%	3.9%	7.0%	9.5%	5.6	5.0

Source: abc.org

The low end is mostly the Southeast. After Maryland come North Carolina at 1.8%, Georgia and Tennessee at 2.1%, and South Carolina and Utah at 2.2%. ABC says Maryland’s 1.7% is its lowest September reading on record, and North Carolina and Tennessee had their second-lowest.

The high end is the Upper Midwest, plus Alaska and Massachusetts. North Dakota (9.5%), Alaska (7.5%), Minnesota (6.7%), Michigan (5.8%) and Massachusetts (5.5%) have the five highest estimates. North Dakota is the outlier in the year-over-year column too, up 5.6 points from 3.9% in September 2025. No other state rose more than 1.7 points (Hawaii, where the estimate also counts mining and logging). Alaska’s estimate more than doubled in a month, from 3.2% in August to 7.5%, though it was 6.3% in September 2025, so the year-over-year rise is 1.2 points.

Counted from ABC’s spreadsheet, 32 states had a lower estimated rate than in September 2025, 14 had a higher one and four were unchanged. The monthly count leans the other way. ABC reports that 44 states rose from August to September, four fell (New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and South Carolina) and two were flat (Maryland and Oregon).

So the comparison point matters. ABC says 39 states are below their February 2020 rates. Compared with September 2019, the same month before the pandemic, 17 states are lower, 31 are higher and California and New Hampshire are unchanged.

ABC also notes that payroll construction employment, which comes from a separate survey of employers, was 103,000 higher than in September 2025 before seasonal adjustment, and 8.4 million after it. Bernard Markstein, who ran the analysis, pointed to large projects as one cause: “Data center construction is also absorbing a significant share of available skilled labor and contributing to elevated building materials prices.” The state tables do not split the unemployed by project type, so that link is his reading of the market.

How to use this number

The state estimate is a rough measure of how many idle, experienced construction workers are in the labor pool where you hire. Two practical uses:

Before you price labor-heavy work in another state, look up its September rate and its change from a year ago. A rate near 2%, as in Maryland, the Carolinas, Georgia or Tennessee, means few experienced workers are looking. If you plan to hire locally there, budget for higher wages or for travel and per diem to bring crews in. A rate above 5% with a rising trend points to more local applicants.
Track your own time to fill field positions, in calendar days from posting to start date, by state. If your time to fill in a state stays flat while its estimated rate fell by a point over the year, your recruiting is holding up against a tighter market. If both move the wrong way, raise your wage assumptions on the next bid there.

For both uses, compare a month with the same month a year earlier.

Revisions and caveats

The national rate comes from the Current Population Survey, the monthly household survey that ABC’s background note puts at roughly 60,000 households. The prior month was not revised. August’s 3.1% was the same in the September 4 and October 2 versions of the series in ALFRED, the St. Louis Fed’s archive of past data versions. BLS introduces new population controls each January, and the A-14 table notes that 2025 data use a new industry classification and are not strictly comparable with earlier years. That limits how much weight the 2019 comparisons can carry.

The construction rate also comes from a small subset of the survey, so it has more sampling error than the overall rate. ABC’s background note says a monthly move may come from sampling error and that a sustained trend over several months is more reliable.

The state figures carry two more layers of uncertainty. They are model estimates, and Markstein Advisors updates past months when states revise their employment data, so a state’s August or September value can change next month. Delaware and Hawaii are estimated for construction, mining and logging combined. For a small state such as North Dakota or Alaska, treat a single month’s jump as a reading to confirm against October’s estimate.

NCC makes Buildots a preferred supplier after AI progress tracking lifted one project's Percent Plan Complete 2.3 times

Sat, 31 Oct 2026 07:34:22 -0400

Buildots announced on October 28, 2026, that NCC’s Building Nordics business, which builds in Denmark, Finland and Norway, has signed a master services agreement naming Buildots a preferred supplier. Buildots sells AI progress tracking. The software compares what was installed on site with the 3D model and the schedule. The agreement follows several years of NCC projects in Finland and Denmark, and it affects the weekly progress check and the trade planning meeting that depends on it.

What it does

On most jobs, a superintendent or project engineer collects progress by walking the floors and asking each trade where it stands. Before Buildots, NCC says in its case study, project managers judged progress from manual, subjective reports collected from third parties.

With Buildots, a site team member walks the job wearing a 360-degree camera. Computer vision, software that recognizes objects in images, matches each captured element to the 3D model. Buildots then compares that status with the schedule and reports progress by trade and by area. NCC’s teams used a matrix view that showed, floor by floor and zone by zone, the percent complete for activities such as HVAC pipes, cable tray and first-fix plumbing.

The output goes into the weekly trade meeting. In one example from the case study, Buildots counted 45 climate beam units still uninstalled out of 150 expected by that date, while the trade’s own report said only a few were left. On another NCC job, the data showed HVAC work running slower than planned, and the project manager and HVAC subcontractor agreed to add labor.

Evidence so far

The evidence is Buildots’ press release, two Buildots case studies, a Buildots blog post, and comments from NCC staff quoted in those documents. Bricks & Bytes, a construction technology newsletter, labels the headline figure company-reported and not independently verified.

These claims come from Buildots and NCC:

NCC piloted Buildots on an 8,000-square-meter residential project in Helsinki. It then added three more projects, among them the 9,000-square-meter Fredriksberg D project and a hospital, for 68,500 square meters (737,000 square feet) tracked.
Tasks finished on time, measured by PPC, rose 2.3 times. The blog post puts it as a rise from a 30% baseline on past projects to almost 70%.
Time spent on manual reporting fell 70%.
A later case study covers six Finnish projects with 172,000 square meters of construction area, and says weekly PPC ratios improved over time.

The release describes the PPC gain on one project as a 230% increase. The case study figures, 30% to almost 70%, work out to a ratio of 2.3, which is an increase of about 130%. The table below shows PPC readings at points through the job, as Buildots charts them in the case study.

PPC on the NCC Buildots project compared with NCC's traditionally managed projects, by share of project complete
Share of project complete	PPC managed traditionally (%)	PPC managed with Buildots (%)
35%	27	52
40%	27	57
45%	27	71
50%	27	37
55%	27	32
60%	31	57
65%	22	72
70%	27	81
75%	27	90
80%	22	96

Source: pages.buildots.com

The Buildots line falls to 37% and 32% at the 50% and 55% marks, then rises to 96%. The cause of the dip and the number of projects behind the traditional line are not stated in the case study. NCC compared Buildots with three alternatives before choosing it, according to the case study.

Kati Tauriainen, who heads NCC’s Building Finland division, said in the release: “Our experience using Buildots on live projects gave us the evidence we needed.” NCC service manager Nithesh Frei Nadarajah says in the case study that his team spends less time in meetings and arguing with subcontractors.

How to measure it on your projects

Track weekly PPC by trade. Divide the number of tasks finished as committed by the number each foreman committed to in the weekly work plan. A task that is 90% done counts as not done. Record the reason for every miss, such as an open RFI, a late delivery or a predecessor trade that has not released the area.

Capture at least six weeks of baseline before the pilot starts, on the same job if you can. Log two other figures alongside it. The first is the hours the superintendent and project engineers spend each week collecting and writing up progress. The second is the number of times a trade’s reported percent complete differed from what a walk found. Score PPC by the same rule during the pilot, so any change can be traced to the tool. Our post on tracking total float across schedule updates covers the next step, since float shows how many days the misses cost.

A first step on one job: have the superintendent score last week’s lookahead commitments as done or not done, and keep that sheet every Friday.

Availability and cost

The agreement covers NCC Building Nordics operations in Denmark, Finland and Norway. Buildots says its other customers include HOCHTIEF, Bouygues, Intel and VINCI Construction. Prices are not listed in the release, and Buildots’ case study pages send buyers to a demo request. For a competitor that publishes per-square-foot pricing, see our post on Track3D’s progress tracking.

How to compute average annual receipts for the SBA size standard, with a $45 million general contractor example

Fri, 30 Oct 2026 11:34:03 -0400

Before a contractor bids a federal small business set-aside, someone in the office certifies that the company is small. That person is usually the CFO or controller, and the test is a single figure called average annual receipts, compared against a dollar limit the Small Business Administration (SBA) sets for each industry code.

The rules are in Title 13 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which the eCFR shows as current through October 28, 2026. Section 121.104 defines receipts and the averaging period. Section 121.201 lists the limits, and section 121.404 sets the date the test applies. This post walks through each and then runs the numbers for a growing general contractor.

The limits for construction

SBA assigns a size standard to every six-digit NAICS code, the federal industry classification. For construction it is a ceiling on average annual receipts. The general contracting and heavy civil codes share one figure, and most specialty trades share a lower one.

Selected SBA size standards for NAICS Sector 23, Construction, as listed in 13 CFR 121.201.
NAICS code	Industry	Size standard ($ millions)
236115 to 236118	New housing construction and residential remodelers	45.0
236210	Industrial Building Construction	45.0
236220	Commercial and Institutional Building Construction	45.0
237110	Water and Sewer Line and Related Structures Construction	45.0
237130	Power and Communication Line and Related Structures Construction	45.0
237310	Highway, Street, and Bridge Construction	45.0
237990	Other Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction	45.0
237210	Land Subdivision	34.0
238210	Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring Installation Contractors	19.0
238220	Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors	19.0
238290	Other Building Equipment Contractors	22.0
238910	Site Preparation Contractors	19.0

Source: ecfr.gov

The code that counts is the one the contracting officer puts on the solicitation. Section 121.404 says the company, with its affiliates, must qualify under the NAICS code assigned to the contract. For example, an electrical contractor that averages $30 million is over the $19.0 million limit for 238210, and it is still under the $45.0 million limit when a solicitation carries 236220.

What counts as receipts

Section 121.104 defines receipts as all revenue from any source, less returns and allowances. SBA generally reads them from the federal income tax return as “total income” plus “cost of goods sold,” and it relies on the return and any amendments filed by the date of self-certification.

The rule names a short list of exclusions: net capital gains or losses, sales taxes collected and remitted, transactions with affiliates, and pass-through amounts for a few agent industries. It then names items that stay in, and subcontractor costs are first on that list, along with reimbursed purchases, investment income and payroll taxes.

That matters most to a general contractor. For example, a GC that bills $57 million in a year and pays $38 million of it to subs reports $57 million of receipts for this test.

The averaging period

For federal contracting, a company with five or more completed fiscal years divides its total receipts over the most recent five by five. Section 121.104 sets out three other cases:

A company with fewer than five completed fiscal years divides its total receipts by the number of weeks in business and multiplies by 52. A firm with $60 million of receipts over 156 weeks averages $20.0 million.
A company with a short year inside the five-year window adds the short year to the four full years, divides by the total weeks and multiplies by 52.
For SBA’s Business Loan, Disaster Loan, Surety Bond Guarantee and SBIC programs, a company with three or more completed years may choose a three-year or a five-year average.

If the company has affiliates, section 121.104(d) adds each affiliate’s average annual receipts to its own. A company that acquires an affiliate during the window counts the acquired company’s receipts for the whole window.

When the test applies

Section 121.404 fixes the date. The company must qualify as of the day it submits its written self-certification with its initial offer that includes price. Once it wins a contract as a small business, the regulation says it is generally considered small for the life of that contract.

So the five-year window moves when a fiscal year closes. For a company on a calendar fiscal year, an offer priced in December 2026 uses 2021 through 2025. An offer priced in January 2027 uses 2022 through 2026. If the 2026 tax return is not filed yet, section 121.104 has SBA use the company’s books, audited statements or an affidavit for that year.

A worked example

The figures below are an example. A commercial general contractor on a calendar fiscal year bids federal work under NAICS 236220, where the limit is $45.0 million. It has no affiliates, and its receipts have grown each year.

Average annual receipts for an example general contractor under NAICS 236220. Example figures.
Fiscal year	Receipts ($ millions)	Offer priced in 2026	Offer priced in 2027
2021	30.0	Counted	Dropped
2022	36.0	Counted	Counted
2023	42.0	Counted	Counted
2024	50.0	Counted	Counted
2025	57.0	Counted	Counted
2026	64.0	Not yet complete	Counted
Total of the five counted years		215.0	249.0
Average annual receipts		43.0	49.8
Size standard for 236220		45.0	45.0

Source: ecfr.gov

Through 2026, the window runs from 2021 to 2025. Those five years total $215 million, the average is $43.0 million, and the company is small for 236220 by $2.0 million.

When 2026 closes, the $30 million from 2021 drops out and the $64 million from 2026 comes in. The five-year total rises to $249 million and the average to $49.8 million, which is over the limit for any offer priced after December 31, 2026.

For the 2022 to 2026 average to stay at $45.0 million, the five-year total could be no more than $225 million. The four years from 2022 to 2025 already hold $185 million, so 2026 receipts would have had to stay at $40 million or less, which is $17 million below 2025.

An affiliate changes the result as well. If the same company had a sister firm averaging $4.0 million, its average for offers priced in 2026 would be $47.0 million, over the limit a year earlier.

Subcontracting limits after award

A small business that wins a set-aside above the simplified acquisition threshold also agrees to limits on how much of the work it passes to firms that are not similarly situated. Under 13 CFR 125.6, a general construction prime may pay those firms no more than 85% of the amount the government pays it. A special trade prime may pay them no more than 75%. Cost of materials is excluded in both cases and does not count as subcontracted.

How to track this in your books

Keep a five-year receipts schedule with one row per fiscal year, taken from the tax return, and a row for each affiliate. Add the current year’s receipts to date from the general ledger, so the controller can see the next window before the year closes. The backlog in months post and the work-in-progress schedule already hold the revenue forecast that feeds that row.

Then list the federal bids expected in the next six months with the NAICS code on each solicitation and the date pricing is due. Flag any bid due after fiscal year end whose code’s limit is within reach of the projected average. The bid-hit ratio post covers how to tag bids by client type, and a federal set-aside flag fits in the same log. As a first step, pull the last five tax returns and compute this year’s average against the code you bid most often.

Bobyard adds AI submittals that build product data packages from a trade contractor's takeoff

Fri, 30 Oct 2026 07:35:30 -0400

Bobyard, a San Francisco company that sells AI takeoff and estimating software to trade contractors, announced AI-prepared submittals on October 29, 2026. The tool matches the materials in a contractor’s takeoff to manufacturer cut sheets and assembles a product data submittal package for the general contractor. The same release ties Bobyard’s takeoff, cost database, estimate table and proposal generator into one workflow, and adds drywall, insulation, doors and windows to the trades it covers.

What it does

On a subcontractor’s side, the product data submittal usually falls to the estimator or project manager who won the bid. They take the material list, find each product’s cut sheet on a vendor site or in a catalog PDF, mark up the right model on each page, and format a cover sheet by hand. Bobyard’s blog post describes that work as hours of screenshots and cross-referencing.

The tool follows the order of that work. A team uploads its manufacturer catalogs once, and Bobyard splits each catalog into individual products tagged with manufacturer, model and size. The library is shared across the company, so a catalog one estimator uploads is there for every later job.

For each job, the user uploads the spec or the submittal requirements. Bobyard’s product page says the AI then lists the required packages, such as product data, warranties and test reports, with spec references. Materials come in from the Bobyard takeoff with descriptions filled from the legend. Teams that did their takeoff elsewhere can paste in a list instead.

Bobyard’s AI assistant, Bob GPT, then searches the library and the web for each item. It returns candidate cut sheets ranked by a confidence score, which is the model’s own estimate of how likely a match is correct. It also highlights the model number on the page. The user confirms every product and every page before it goes into the package. Bobyard’s FAQ says the AI does not choose the product.

How Bobyard describes the submittal workflow, step by step
Step	What goes in	What Bobyard does	Who checks it
Build the product library	Manufacturer catalogs uploaded once	Splits each catalog into products and tags manufacturer and model and size	Anyone on the team who uploads
Set up the packages	The spec or the submittal requirements	Lists the required packages such as product data and warranties and test reports with spec references	Project manager or estimator
Load the items	Materials from a Bobyard takeoff or a pasted list	Creates submittal items and fills descriptions from the takeoff legend	Estimator
Match product data	Each submittal item	Searches the library and the web and ranks candidate cut sheets with confidence scores	The user confirms every product and page
Package and send	Confirmed cut sheets	Builds a branded cover page and table of contents and exports one PDF	Project manager before sending to the GC
Resubmit	GC review marks per item	Builds a resubmittal with only the items marked Resubmission Required	Project manager

Source: bobyard.com

The output is one PDF with a branded cover page, a table of contents and the marked-up spec sheets. Each item can then be marked Approved, Approved as Noted, or Resubmission Required. A resubmittal package includes only the flagged items. For plants and other organic materials, which have no manufacturer cut sheet, the tool generates a product data page with an image and cited sources for the user to check.

Bobyard describes the tool for product data packages, and its pages do not cover shop drawings or samples.

Evidence so far

The evidence so far is Bobyard’s announcement, its product pages, and comments from unnamed participants in its beta program. Bobyard identifies the quoted participants as landscaping contractors.

These claims come from Bobyard:

In a survey of beta participants, most said a single submittal took 2 to 5 hours to prepare, and some put it at 10 hours or more.
The tool cuts submittal prep time in half.
Customers cut takeoff time by an average of 65% and submit three to five times more bids per estimator, according to the release.
Building the submittals feature took one engineer about two months, according to founder and CEO Michael Ding.

One landscaping contractor in the beta said the tool was about twice as fast as the old method for irrigation and soil submittals. Another wrote, “Search accuracy on our irrigation catalogs was flawless, and setting up the package and items was straightforward.” Both comments come from irrigation and soil work, where the catalogs are narrow. Match rates on drywall, doors or MEP equipment, and the size of the beta survey, are not yet public.

How to measure it on your projects

Track prep hours per product data package. Start the clock when someone opens the material list for the package and stop it when the PDF goes to the GC. Log rework hours on a resubmittal separately.

Capture the baseline before the pilot:

Pick three to five recent product data packages from one trade, with a similar item count.
Ask the person who built each one for the hours it took, and count the line items in each.
Record whether each package came back Approved, Approved as Noted, or Resubmission Required.

On the pilot job, log the same three figures for each package built in Bobyard. Count the line items where the top-ranked match was wrong and the user had to pick another or search again. That count tells you how much of the saved time goes to checking. The first package will also include catalog uploads, so log those hours as setup.

A first step you can take on one job is to pull the last approved product data package and its resubmittal from the project file and count the line items the GC sent back.

Availability and cost

Bobyard’s blog post on the feature is dated October 1, 2026, and tells existing customers to ask their customer success manager to add submittals to their plan. New customers book a demo, and Bobyard prices through that demo request. Teams can use submittals without Bobyard’s takeoff. The company’s earlier releases on Business Wire include a $35 million Series A led by 8VC.

Construction employment rose in 180 of 360 metro areas in the year to September 2026, with Baton Rouge up 27%

Thu, 29 Oct 2026 11:33:46 -0400

Construction employment rose in 180 of 360 metro areas and metro divisions between September 2025 and September 2026, fell in 118 and held flat in 62, according to a ranking the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) built from the Bureau of Labor Statistics metro release of October 28. The metro figures are preliminary and not seasonally adjusted, which is why AGC compares September with September. Nationally, BLS counts 8,364,000 construction jobs in September 2026, seasonally adjusted and preliminary. That is 11,000 more than August and 109,000 more than September 2025, a gain of 1.3%. It is the highest count in the 25 months charted below and about 54,000 above the 12-month average of roughly 8,310,000.

National construction employment reached its highest count in 25 months

All employees, construction, thousands, seasonally adjusted

September 2026 is preliminary. Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

U.S. construction employment, last 13 months
Month	Employment (000s)	MoM change (000s)	YoY
Sep 2025	8,255	16	0.0%
Oct 2025	8,243	-12	-0.2%
Nov 2025	8,279	36	0.1%
Dec 2025	8,272	-7	-0.1%
Jan 2026	8,317	45	0.6%
Feb 2026	8,296	-21	0.3%
Mar 2026	8,311	15	0.5%
Apr 2026	8,314	3	0.5%
May 2026	8,316	2	0.6%
Jun 2026	8,319	3	0.6%
Jul 2026	8,337	18	0.9%
Aug 2026	8,353	16	1.4%
Sep 2026	8,364	11	1.3%

Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

What moved

The same four metros led the count for a second month. Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands added 13,800 construction jobs over the year, a 5% increase to 269,300. Baton Rouge added 12,300 and again had the largest percentage gain, 27%, taking it from 46,400 to 58,700 jobs. St. Louis and Columbus, Ohio each added 10,700, for gains of 13% and 17%. Minneapolis-St. Paul (7,600) and Phoenix (5,900) came next.

Louisiana shows up more often in the percentage list than any other state. Lafayette (15%), Shreveport-Bossier City (14%), Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux (11%) and New Orleans-Metairie (10%) all sit in AGC’s top group alongside Baton Rouge.

Largest over-the-year changes in construction employment, September 2025 to September 2026, not seasonally adjusted
Metro area or division	BLS series	Sep 2025	Sep 2026	Change	Change (%)
Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands TX	Construction	255,500	269,300	13,800	5%
Baton Rouge LA	Construction	46,400	58,700	12,300	27%
St. Louis MO-IL	Mining, logging and construction	80,300	91,000	10,700	13%
Columbus OH	Mining, logging and construction	62,400	73,100	10,700	17%
Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington MN-WI	Mining, logging and construction	99,700	107,300	7,600	8%
Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler AZ	Construction	178,000	183,900	5,900	3%
Pittsburgh PA	Construction	61,400	58,000	-3,400	-6%
Lakewood-New Brunswick NJ (div.)	Mining, logging and construction	55,500	51,900	-3,600	-6%
Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario CA	Construction	109,600	105,700	-3,900	-4%
Oakland-Fremont-Berkeley CA (div.)	Construction	72,000	67,600	-4,400	-6%
Jersey City-White Plains NY-NJ	Mining, logging and construction	71,200	66,700	-4,500	-6%
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell GA (div.)	Construction	109,800	104,700	-5,100	-5%

Source: agc.org

On the loss side, the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell metro division dropped 5,100 jobs, or 5%. Jersey City-White Plains lost 4,500, the Oakland-Fremont-Berkeley division lost 4,400 and Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario lost 3,900. Anchorage had the steepest percentage loss at 10%, a drop of 1,400 jobs to 12,000.

So the count improved slightly from a month ago. AGC’s August ranking counted 177 metros with gains and 126 with losses, which makes September’s count three higher on gains and eight lower on losses. The leaders’ annual gains narrowed a little: Houston went from 14,100 to 13,800 and Baton Rouge from 29% to 27%.

AGC reads the split by project type. Chief economist Ken Simonson said there is often “a correlation between where data centers or large power and manufacturing facilities are getting built and which metro areas are adding new construction jobs.” AGC attributes the weakness elsewhere to materials prices and interest rates. The release does not tie any single metro’s gain to a named project, so that link is AGC’s general reading of the map.

The BLS release shows Washington-Arlington-Alexandria losing 61,000 nonfarm jobs over the year, the largest decline of any metro, while construction in its Arlington-Alexandria-Reston division fell 2,100, or 2%.

How to use this number

Metro construction employment is the nearest public count of the labor pool your crews and subcontractors draw from. Both uses below rely on the year-over-year change, because the metro figures are not seasonally adjusted.

Compare the change in your own field headcount from September 2025 to September 2026 with your metro’s change. If your metro grew 13% and your self-performed headcount is flat, you are recruiting against local competitors who added crews over the year, and your wage assumptions should account for that. If your metro lost jobs and you held headcount, you now employ a larger share of a smaller local workforce.
Before you bid labor-heavy work in an unfamiliar metro, look it up in AGC’s alphabetical list. A 27% gain like Baton Rouge’s means the local workforce grew by more than a quarter in a year. Build that into your wage assumptions and into the number of subs you expect to bid.

Revisions and caveats

The September metro figures are preliminary. The BLS technical note says employment estimates are benchmarked once a year to a full count of jobs from unemployment insurance tax records, and that benchmark can move a metro’s level for past months.

The national figure was revised too. BLS first reported August construction employment at 8,359,000. The September release lowered August to 8,353,000, so the August monthly gain is now 16,000.

Three details in AGC’s method matter when you read the ranking:

In most metros BLS publishes construction only inside a combined mining, logging and construction series, because samples are small. AGC counts all of it as construction. St. Louis, Columbus and Minneapolis-St. Paul are in that group, so part of their totals may be mining or logging jobs.
BLS rounds metro employment to the nearest 100. AGC ranks percentage changes to the nearest whole percent, so many metros tie. Hanford-Corcoran, Calif. ranks third for percentage loss at 8%, a change of 100 jobs.
The ranking counts metro divisions separately and leaves out the parent metro totals to avoid double counting. The Atlanta figure covers only the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell division.

BLS cites metro job changes only when they are statistically significant at the 90% confidence level, meaning large enough that sampling chance is an unlikely explanation. It publishes sampling error for detailed series such as construction only on request (it lists 373 of 387 metros as essentially unchanged in total nonfarm jobs), so a swing of a few hundred construction jobs in a small metro could be survey noise. The national series in the chart is seasonally adjusted and comes from a different estimate, so compare it with the metro figures only year over year.

Bluebeam Max puts AI drawing checks and a Claude connection inside Revu for $590 per user a year

Thu, 29 Oct 2026 07:34:57 -0400

On October 29, 2026, the Nemetschek Group grouped its AI products for architecture, engineering and construction under one name, Max. The construction member is Bluebeam Max, a premium plan for Bluebeam Revu that has been on sale worldwide since May 19. It adds AI checks of drawing sets, AI comparison of revisions, and a connection that lets an AI assistant such as Anthropic’s Claude carry out markup and reporting tasks in Revu. The work it touches is drawing review, revision comparison and takeoff markup. Bluebeam says more than 4 million professionals use its software.

The three Max products Nemetschek announced on October 29, 2026
Product	Discipline	Status on October 29 2026
Bluebeam Max	Construction	Available globally since May 2026
Allplan Max 2027	Engineering	Available globally, launched the week of October 26
Archicad Max	Architecture	Available with Archicad 30, rolling out by region

Source: nemetschek.com

What it does

Start with the preconstruction manager who gets a reissued drawing set before bid day. Today that person overlays the old and new sheets, scans for clouds that were missed, and checks that tags and gridlines still line up before pricing the changes. Bluebeam Max puts AI into three steps of that review.

Smart Review scans a set for problems that Bluebeam lists by name: missing sheets, missing door tags, missing plumbing fixture tags and gridline inconsistencies. It uses computer vision, software that recognizes shapes and symbols in an image, and returns its findings as markups on the sheets, a dashboard and trackable issues. Bluebeam says Smart Review is in preview and is optimized for US vertical commercial construction.

What Bluebeam says Smart Review looks for
Item Smart Review checks	Where Bluebeam lists it
Missing sheets	Bluebeam Max page and pricing page
Missing door tags	Bluebeam Max page and pricing page
Missing plumbing fixture tags	Bluebeam Max page and pricing page
Gridline inconsistencies	Bluebeam Max page and pricing page
Design discrepancies, scope gaps and missing information	May 19 launch release and October 29 Nemetschek release

Source: bluebeam.com

Smart Overlay compares sheet sets across disciplines and drawing scales and reports what changed. It produces visual overlays, reports and trackable comparisons. It is also in preview.

The third piece connects Revu to an outside AI assistant through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard that lets an assistant call another program’s functions. A user with the Claude desktop app can type a request, and Claude reads the open PDF’s text and markup data and then creates or edits markups, creates custom columns or builds a report. The Bluebeam University course on the feature walks through four examples:

Changing the subject on a group of markups.
Building an Excel summary of markups, filtered by page label and author.
Writing a narrative of changes from an existing drawing overlay.
Checking title block information against the ISO 7200 standard with a saved Claude project.

Nemetschek’s release says Bluebeam Max also works with GitHub Copilot CLI and AnythingLLM. Bluebeam’s own FAQ says the plan connects to Claude first and is built to connect to other assistants as they add MCP support to their desktop apps.

The other Max features handle sheet layout and markup work. Stitching, which Bluebeam also labels as AI, joins sheets from different parts of a project into one continuous view, and Bluebeam pitches it for large and linear infrastructure projects. Magic Markups duplicates a markup as another type, converts a shape into a measurement, or offsets a markup a set distance. Connected Studio Sessions link a Bluebeam markup to the matching spot in a Revit sheet or 3D view.

Bluebeam Max features, where their data goes, and whether an admin can turn them off
Feature	What it does	Where the data is processed	Admin can turn it off
Smart Review	Checks pages, gridlines, doors and similar items and builds a dashboard of marked issues	Uploaded PDFs processed on AWS servers in the UK	Yes
Smart Overlay	Finds design changes and discrepancies across drawing sets and disciplines	Uploaded PDFs processed on AWS servers in the UK	Yes
AI connection through MCP	Lets an AI assistant such as Claude run Revu tasks from typed prompts	With user permission, prompts, PDF text, markup data and Studio file metadata go to the AI client	Yes
Stitching	Combines multiple drawing sheets into one navigable view	On the user's machine	No
Magic Markups	Duplicates, converts or offsets existing markups	Not listed on the AI transparency page	Not listed

Source: bluebeam.com

Evidence so far

The evidence is Bluebeam’s May launch release, Nemetschek’s October 29 release, and comments from two beta customers. Both releases come from the company selling the product.

These claims come from Bluebeam and Nemetschek:

More than 2,000 people took part in the Bluebeam Max beta, and Nemetschek says those early adopters reported significant productivity gains in preconstruction, design coordination and construction management.
Martin-Harris Construction, a Las Vegas construction manager, uses Smart Overlay and Smart Review to compare revisions for pricing and impact analysis during design and construction. James Miranda, its director of preconstruction, said, “Features like Smart Overlay help us instantly see what’s changed and where to focus, which is critical when you’re managing complex projects at scale.”
At KPFF’s Los Angeles civil office, an associate said the offset tool cuts down on trips back to CAD for parallel utilities and curved geometry.

Nemetschek’s October release gives one percentage, and it covers a different product. The company says early beta users of Allplan Max, its engineering offering, finished selected tasks up to 36 percent faster. Detection rates for Smart Review and Smart Overlay, and measured time savings for Bluebeam Max, are not yet public.

Bluebeam’s training material sets limits on the Claude connection. The course says results depend on the document text and markup data that MCP exposes, that users should review generated reports rather than treat them as a guarantee of accuracy or compliance, and that AI provider usage limits and company network controls can affect the workflow.

How to measure it on your projects

Track reissue review hours: the staff hours from receipt of a revised drawing set to the point where the changes are logged and priced. Pair it with a count of drawing discrepancies found at review, so faster reviews cannot hide misses.

Capture the baseline before turning on Smart Review or Smart Overlay:

Pull the last three reissued sets on a comparable job and record the review hours your preconstruction or project team logged for each.
Count the discrepancies your reviewers flagged on each set, such as missing tags, mismatched gridlines and unclouded changes.
Count RFIs from the following 60 days that trace back to a drawing problem in those sets, since each one marks something the review missed.

During the pilot, have the reviewer mark each AI flag as a real problem, a false flag or something already found. The share of flags that turn out to be real problems is the tool’s precision. The share of your reviewer’s own findings that the tool also flagged is its recall. A first step on one job is to run Smart Review on a set your team has already reviewed and compare the two lists, using a trial seat.

Earlier posts covered Document Crunch’s drawing review against contracts and specs, BuildCheck’s funding for AI drawing review and EarthCam’s connectors to ChatGPT and Claude.

Availability and cost

Bluebeam Max is available globally and sold per user on annual billing. The introductory price is $590 per user per year, $150 more than the Complete plan. Buyers at that price keep it through their 2027 renewal, and Bluebeam will announce the standard list price for later renewals. Existing users can start a trial through Org Admin, and since September 2026 the plan is free for eligible students and educators.

Bluebeam plan prices per user per year, October 2026
Plan	Price per user per year (USD)	What the plan adds
Basics	$260	PDF markups, length and area measurement, joining Studio sessions
Core	$330	Perimeter, count, angle and volume measurement; overlay and compare; hosting Studio sessions
Complete	$440	Dynamic Fill, Quantity Link to Excel, markup reporting, batch hyperlinks and slip sheets, scripting
Max (introductory)	$590	AI drawing review and comparison, AI connection through MCP, Stitching, Magic Markups, Connected Studio Sessions with Revit

Source: bluebeam.com

Plans can be mixed, so a firm can put Max on its estimators and preconstruction staff and leave field users on a lower plan. Revu runs on Windows. Revu 20 reached end of support on July 31, 2026, and reaches end of life on December 31, 2026, so firms still on that version will pick a subscription plan before year-end.

How to compute unabsorbed home office overhead with the Eichleay formula, with a 60-day suspension example

Wed, 28 Oct 2026 11:33:51 -0400

When a federal contracting officer stops work on a job for an open-ended period, the home office keeps paying its salaries and rent. The suspended job stops carrying its share of those costs, because it is billing little or nothing. Contractors call the stranded share unabsorbed home office overhead.

On federal construction, the courts price it with the Eichleay formula, a three-step allocation by billings. The Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) lays the formula out in Chapter 12 of its Contract Audit Manual, the guide its auditors use on delay claims, in a revision dated September 18, 2026. The liquidated damages post priced the field cost of a late finish. This post covers who can recover the home office cost and then works the formula on an example job.

Where the formula comes from

DCAA says the formula comes from a 1960 decision of the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals and that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has widely relied on it as the legal standard for unabsorbed overhead on construction contracts.

The usual route to recovery on a fixed-price federal job is FAR 52.242-14, the Suspension of Work clause. If the contracting officer’s act, or failure to act, suspends or delays the work for an unreasonable period, the clause calls for an adjustment for the added cost of performance, excluding profit. Two deadlines apply. Costs incurred more than 20 days before the contractor gives written notice are not allowed, though that limit does not apply to a claim from a written suspension order. The claim itself must be in writing, with an amount, no later than final payment.

Who qualifies

The Federal Circuit set out the tests in P.J. Dick Inc. v. Principi, decided April 7, 2003, and DCAA’s manual follows them. The tests run in this order:

The government caused the delay, and no other delay ran concurrently with it.
The delay extended the contract’s time of performance. A contractor that finished on time can still qualify if it planned from the start to finish early, had the capacity to, and would have finished early without the government’s actions.
The contractor was on standby. A written order that suspends all the work for an uncertain duration and requires the contractor to stay ready to resume settles this. Without one, the contractor must show the delay had no set end, that it had to be ready to return immediately at full speed, and that it could not bill substantial work on the contract during the delay.
Once those are proven, the government has to show it was practical for the contractor to take on replacement work. If it does, the contractor must prove it could not find enough.

The court wrote, “Only where the above exacting requirements can be satisfied will a contractor be entitled to Eichleay damages.” P.J. Dick lost on standby. Its billings during one suspension period were 47% of prior months, and the court agreed with the board that it kept performing substantial work on the contract. It still recovered home office overhead, because the parties had stipulated daily rates for field and home office overhead on any day that qualified under the Suspension of Work clause.

The three steps

The formula assigns fixed home office cost to the job by its share of company revenue, then turns that amount into a daily rate:

Overhead allocable to the contract equals the contract’s billings divided by total company billings for the same period, multiplied by total fixed overhead for that period. The billings fraction is called the allocation ratio.
The daily contract overhead rate equals the allocable overhead divided by the days of performance.
Unabsorbed overhead equals the daily rate multiplied by the delay days.

DCAA adds rules for each input. Every figure covers the same interval, the contract’s actual performance period from start to completion, extension included. “Billings” means recognized revenue, cost plus profit, under one consistent method, percentage-of-completion or completed-contract. If the claim goes in before the job finishes, prospective figures are allowed when they can be reasonably estimated, and every input then runs to expected substantial completion. Any unabsorbed overhead already estimated comes out of contract billings, since leaving it in counts it twice.

The overhead pool holds only fixed home office costs that benefit all jobs. Job site overhead charged directly to the contract stays out. DCAA’s examples of variable costs to exclude include small tools and shop supplies, and it splits semi-variable costs, so electricity’s line charge stays in and its usage charge comes out.

Counting delay days

Delay days are the days the government delay added past the original or revised completion date. The DCAA manual gives these cases:

Delay days under the Eichleay formula, from examples in DCAA Contract Audit Manual section 12-609.4.
Case in the DCAA manual	Delay days counted
70-day contract, a 20-day government delay after day 50, work finished on day 85	15
Finished 20 days late, 15 days from a government delay and 5 from contractor inefficiency	15
Finished within the original or revised performance period	0

Source: dcaa.mil

The zero case has the same early-completion exception as the second test above.

A worked example

The figures below are an example. A general contractor holds a 300-day federal contract for a clinic. On day 120 the contracting officer issues a written order suspending all work for an uncertain period and requiring the crew to be ready to return on short notice. The order is lifted 60 days later, and the job finishes on day 360. Under P.J. Dick, the written order settles standby.

Start with the home office ledger for those 360 days and sort each cost as fixed or variable.

Home office costs for the 360-day performance period. Example figures.
Home office cost	Cost over the 360 days ($)	In the Eichleay pool
Executive and officer salaries	$1,500,000	Yes (fixed)
Accounting and IT staff salaries	$1,000,000	Yes (fixed)
Office rent and the fixed line charge for utilities	$600,000	Yes (fixed)
Business insurance and property taxes	$300,000	Yes (fixed)
Depreciation on office equipment	$200,000	Yes (fixed)
Small tools and shop supplies that track field labor	$250,000	No (variable)
Usage portion of the yard's electricity bill	$50,000	No (variable)
Fixed home office overhead used in the formula	$3,600,000

Then run the three steps with revenue recognized over the same 360 days.

Eichleay calculation for the example clinic contract. Example figures.
Line	Value
Revenue recognized on the clinic contract during the 360 days	$9,000,000
Revenue recognized on all company contracts during the same 360 days	$45,000,000
Allocation ratio	20%
Fixed home office overhead during the 360 days	$3,600,000
Step 1: overhead allocable to the clinic contract	$720,000
Days of performance	360
Step 2: daily contract overhead rate	$2,000
Delay days	60
Step 3: unabsorbed home office overhead	$120,000

The clinic carried 20% of company revenue during its performance period, so 20% of the $3.6 million pool, or $720,000, belongs to it. Spread over 360 days, that is $2,000 a day, and the 60 delay days come to $120,000. With the same pool and $60 million of company revenue, the allocation ratio drops to 15%, the daily rate to $1,500, and the claim to $90,000.

The superintendent and the field office for those 60 days are a separate line, because DCAA keeps job site overhead out of this pool. The field cost table in the liquidated damages post shows how to price them per calendar day. Profit stays out of both, under FAR 52.242-14.

Private contracts

On private work, the contract language governs recovery. In the AIA A201-2017 general conditions, section 15.1.7 is a mutual waiver of consequential damages, and its list of the contractor’s waived damages includes principal office expenses and the pay of personnel stationed there. Check that section before building a home office overhead claim on an A201 job.

How to start on your jobs

Once a year, sort the general and administrative ledger with the controller into fixed and variable costs, using DCAA’s tests above. Keep the split next to the work-in-progress schedule, which already holds revenue recognized by job.

On the next federal job, log every suspension the day it starts. Record whether a written order covers all the work, whether the crew had to stay ready, what the job billed that month against the month before, and the date of written notice, so that no cost falls outside the 20-day limit in FAR 52.242-14. The total float post shows how to track whether the suspension moved the completion date.

Bedrock Robotics raises $600 million after its retrofitted excavators began paid, operator-free earthwork in August

Wed, 28 Oct 2026 07:35:03 -0400

Bedrock Robotics announced on October 26, 2026, that it has raised a $600 million Series C at a $4.1 billion post-money valuation, co-led by CapitalG and Emergence Capital. The San Francisco company sells a retrofit kit that lets an existing excavator dig with nobody in the cab. Bedrock says those machines have done paid work on live commercial sites since mid-August, and the new money goes toward putting more of them on earthwork and sitework jobs.

What it does

The product is called the Bedrock Operator. According to Bedrock’s August announcement, a crew installs a sensor and compute package on an excavator the contractor already owns, in one day and with no permanent changes to the machine. A site manager sets the initial plan. From there, a single machine learning model perceives the surroundings, plans its motion, and carries out the digging. Bedrock says the model was trained across tens of thousands of field hours.

On safety, Bedrock says its excavators work next to other equipment in normal site conditions without barriers. If a person or an unauthorized object comes too close, the machine stops until the area is clear.

So on a contractor’s job, the superintendent and the grade foreman would work with it most, since they set the dig plan and run the trucks and support equipment around it. The equipment manager decides which machines get the kit. Bedrock picked excavators first because, it says, they often make up 25% of a contractor’s fleet and take five years or more to learn to run well. Dump trucks, dozers and loaders are on its list for later.

Evidence so far

The evidence is Bedrock’s two press releases, comments from customers and investors in them, and a reading of the news by the construction technology newsletter Bricks & Bytes. Here is what Bedrock reports:

Operator-free excavators began paid work on commercial sites in mid-August 2026, after a year of testing under human supervision.
It has more than doubled its total customer volume since 2025. The release gives this as a ratio, without a customer count.
In August, it counted 15 general contractor partners operating across 23 states.

The named jobs and new contracts are below.

Contractors Bedrock names in its August and October announcements
Contractor	Where	Work Bedrock describes	Announced
Sundt Construction	Nevada	Excavation at a water treatment facility	August 17, 2026
Champion Site Prep	Texas	Multi-million-cubic-yard earthwork site	August 17, 2026
Zachry Construction	Not stated	Civil sitework project of 1.2 million cubic yards	August 17, 2026
Haydon	Texas (remote site)	Autonomous earthwork, with trench work and larger machines to be tested	October 26, 2026
Wagner Construction	Minnesota	New customer contract	October 26, 2026
Smith Trucking Company	Florida	New customer contract	October 26, 2026
B&S Site Development	Virginia	New customer contract	October 26, 2026
Native Excavating	Colorado	New customer contract	October 26, 2026
Clarkson Construction	Missouri	New customer contract	October 26, 2026
C.W. Matthews	Georgia	New customer contract	October 26, 2026
ArchKey Solutions	Arkansas	Selected projects	October 26, 2026

Source: globenewswire.com

Read the yardage carefully. Bricks & Bytes points out that 1.2 million cubic yards is the size of Zachry’s sitework project. The volume the autonomous machine dug on that job is a separate figure. The newsletter’s editors list the questions that come next: uptime, cost per cubic yard, hours between human interventions, and whether customers order more machines. Production rates, intervention rates and pricing for the Bedrock Operator are not yet public.

Katie Haydon is CEO and chair of Haydon, an employee-owned general contractor in Tempe, Arizona. Katie Haydon said in the October release: “For us, the biggest win is a safer, more predictable job site.” Haydon is deploying the system on a remote Texas site and plans to test trench work and larger machines later.

US Innovative Technology Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners and Temasek joined the round as new investors, alongside existing backers such as NVIDIA and 8VC. Total funding is now close to $1 billion (in August, Bedrock put the figure at $350 million). Bedrock also hired Amy Jones Satrom, formerly of Amazon, Nuro and Uber, as VP of operations, and Lando Juarez, who led legal for Uber’s autonomous mobility and delivery business, as general counsel. Bedrock says the hires support its growing footprint on customer sites.

How to measure it on your projects

Track cost per bank cubic yard (earth measured in place, before it swells) for each excavator on a mass excavation scope. Add the machine’s hourly owning and operating cost to the operator’s burdened hourly wage, multiply by hours worked, and divide by bank cubic yards moved. Our post on computing an equipment hourly rate with the Corps of Engineers method covers the first term.

If you get a pilot, capture the baseline first on a crewed machine in similar material:

Engine hours and idle hours per shift from telematics.
Bank cubic yards per shift, taken from survey or grade-check quantities rather than truck counts.
Operator hours and the burdened wage rate.
Trucks loaded per hour, since a slow loading cycle holds up the haul fleet too.

During the pilot, log the same four items for the autonomous machine. Add every automatic stop and every time someone took control, with the minutes lost. Count the hours of the person setting dig plans and watching the machine in its cost column. Leaving that time out makes the robot look cheaper than it is. The labor productivity method from daily logs and timecards works for the crew side of the comparison.

A first step on one job: have the grade foreman record bank cubic yards and engine hours for one excavator every shift for two weeks.

Availability and cost

Bedrock describes its model as co-developing autonomy with general contractors on their own machines. The new contracts in the October release take the machines beyond the West and Central South into the Midwest and South Atlantic. Pricing is not public, and the release lists press@bedrockrobotics.com as its contact. For another robot that works next to a crew, see our post on Origin’s OG-1 drywall finishing robot.

How to set monthly weather delay days from NOAA climate normals, with a Chicago O'Hare example

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 11:40:19 -0400

A scheduler building the baseline for a job that starts in spring has to decide how many days the crew will lose to weather each month. Three authors at PMA Consultants write that US contracts commonly leave normal adverse weather with the contractor and grant time only for weather worse than normal. That makes the scheduler’s monthly number the baseline both parties measure against later.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers writes that baseline into its contracts as a table of anticipated weather delay days for each month, built from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or similar data. NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) publishes the counts that make the table quick to build. Its 1991-2020 U.S. Climate Normals, which are 30-year averages first released in May 2021, give the average number of days per month with 0.10 inch or more of precipitation at more than 15,000 stations.

May averages the most rain days at Chicago O'Hare

Average days per month with 0.10 inch or more of precipitation, 1991-2020 normals

Station USW00094846. Precipitation includes the liquid equivalent of snow. Source: ncei.noaa.gov

How the Corps clause works

The Corps sets its method out in Engineer Regulation 415-1-15, Construction Time Extensions for Weather, dated October 31, 1989. It defines adverse weather as conditions at a definite time and place that are unfavorable to construction. Unusually severe weather is weather more severe than the adverse weather anticipated for the season or location.

The contract clause carries a 12-month table of anticipated adverse weather delay work days, based on a five-day week. The contractor’s progress schedule has to carry those days in every weather-dependent activity. During the job, the contractor records adverse weather and its effect on the daily quality control report. A day counts as an actual weather delay day when weather stops work on critical activities for 50 percent or more of the scheduled work day.

When a month’s actual delay days exceed the table, the month had unusually severe weather. The regulation says in capital letters that this finding does not by itself earn a time extension for the difference. The contracting officer first checks the progress schedule to see whether the weather delayed work critical to completion, then converts qualifying delays to calendar days and issues a modification at least quarterly.

Pick the threshold

Appendix B of the regulation starts from the scope. The scheduler chooses the weather that could stop the work, such as temperature, precipitation or wind, and takes a numerical limit for each from the specifications. When two phases share a parameter, the regulation uses the less severe limit. Its example is roofing that stops below 40 degrees and concrete that stops below 32, where the threshold becomes 40 unless roofing is minor to the schedule.

For rain, the PMA authors report general agreement among practitioners that 0.1 inch or more during a work day interrupts outdoor work. They add that 1 inch or more is likely to cost the following work day for drying, snow removal or dewatering. They cite the Federal Highway Administration’s Eastern Federal Lands specification, which defines a rain day at 0.10 inch and a drying day as the work day after 1.00 inch or more. NOAA’s monthly normals report both counts directly, in tenths of a day.

Freezing temperature behaves differently. At O’Hare the low reaches 32°F or below on 28.1 days of an average January, according to NOAA. A limit that is met on nearly every day of a month points to winter protection or a different sequence, and it makes a poor delay allowance. The PMA authors also warn against counting one lost day twice, so a day with both rain and high wind counts once.

A worked example

The figures below are an example built on NOAA’s normals for Chicago O’Hare International Airport. A general contractor is scheduling a sitework and foundation package near Chicago on a five-day week. The scheduler defines a lost day as one with 0.10 inch or more of precipitation and adds a drying day for each day with 1.00 inch or more.

Download the station’s monthly normals file from NCEI and read two columns: MLY-PRCP-AVGNDS-GE010HI, the days with 0.10 inch or more, and MLY-PRCP-AVGNDS-GE100HI, the days with 1.00 inch or more.
Add them to get calendar days lost.
Multiply by 5/7 to convert to work days. The PMA authors describe this weekly factor for a five-day schedule.
Round to whole days, with halves rounded up, because the Corps table uses whole days.

Anticipated weather delay days at Chicago O'Hare, five-day week. Example method applied to NOAA 1991-2020 monthly normals.
Month	Rain days (0.10 in. or more)	Drying days (1.00 in. or more)	Calendar days lost	Work days lost (x 5/7)	Work days in the schedule
Jan	5.2	0.1	5.3	3.8	4
Feb	4.7	0.3	5.0	3.6	4
Mar	5.5	0.4	5.9	4.2	4
Apr	7.1	0.8	7.9	5.6	6
May	8.1	1.1	9.2	6.6	7
Jun	6.7	1.2	7.9	5.6	6
Jul	5.8	0.9	6.7	4.8	5
Aug	6.5	1.2	7.7	5.5	6
Sep	5.6	0.8	6.4	4.6	5
Oct	6.3	0.7	7.0	5.0	5
Nov	5.3	0.5	5.8	4.1	4
Dec	4.8	0.3	5.1	3.6	4
Year	71.6	8.3	79.9	57.1	60

Source: ncei.noaa.gov

O’Hare averages 79.9 calendar days a year that meet this definition. That comes to 57.1 work days before rounding and 60 after, since rounding each month adds a little. May carries the largest allowance at 7 work days. January and February carry 4 each, because O’Hare’s normal precipitation in those months is under 2 inches, compared with 4.49 inches in May.

The regulation asks for the last 10 consecutive years of data where possible and an annual review of the baseline. Normals are 30-year averages that end in 2020. NCEI also publishes 15-year normals for 2006-2020, and it reports that the eastern two-thirds of the contiguous U.S. was wetter in 1991-2020 than in 1981-2010. Where a contract names the data period or the station, the contract governs, and the normals serve as a check at bid time.

Track it month by month

The second table is also an example. The same package runs from April through July with an allowance of 24 work days. The superintendent’s daily logs record 27 lost days.

Monthly comparison of anticipated and actual weather days. Example figures.
Month	Anticipated work days lost	Actual work days lost (example)	Days above the allowance
Apr	6	5	0
May	7	11	4
Jun	6	4	0
Jul	5	7	2
Total	24	27	6

Source: publications.usace.army.mil

The regulation tests each month on its own, so April and June’s unused days do not cover May. The excess is 4 days in May and 2 in July, a total of 6 work days. Those 6 days support a request for time only where the schedule shows the weather held up critical work. The PMA authors note that the usual practice takes no deduction from the contractor when a month’s weather comes in better than the allowance.

Every excused day has a dollar value on a job with liquidated damages, which the liquidated damages post covers. The float post shows how to watch the critical path across updates, which is the test the Corps applies before it grants weather time.

How to start on your jobs

Pick one active job with weather-sensitive work on the critical path. Find the nearest NOAA station whose normals carry the S completeness flag, which NCEI uses for records with 24 or more years of data. Build the 12-month table from its two precipitation columns and compare it with the weather allowance in the contract or the baseline schedule.

Then add one field to the daily log. Each day the superintendent records whether weather stopped critical work for half the scheduled day or more, so the monthly count matches the definition in the contract.

NetSuite plans AI agents that turn estimates into job budgets and draft pay applications

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 07:40:43 -0400

Oracle NetSuite announced on October 26, 2026, at its SuiteWorld conference in Las Vegas, that it plans a construction accounting product called NetSuite for Construction Businesses. The product includes two AI agents. One sets up a new job from the estimate, and the other prepares the monthly payment application. Both work on the handoff between estimating, project management and billing at general contractors, subcontractors and specialty-trade firms, the three groups NetSuite names as users.

What it does

Job setup after award usually falls to a project accountant or a project manager. They take the final estimate, build the schedule of values for the owner contract, and load a budget by cost code into the accounting system. NetSuite says its Estimate Import Agent converts an estimate into the contract, the schedule of values and a cost-coded job budget. Each imported line traces back to the estimate, so a reviewer can check it against the source.

An AI agent here means software that carries out a sequence of steps, such as reading an estimate and creating the records it implies, and then hands the result to a person for review. NetSuite says users reach both agents through Ask Oracle, its chat assistant, by typing requests in plain language.

The Payment Application Agent works on the monthly billing cycle. According to the announcement, it prepares a pay app from verified progress, approved change orders and retainage terms. The project manager confirms percent complete, and the billing team reviews and approves the application before it posts.

The rest of the planned product supports those two agents. NetSuite lists:

A Construction Workbench showing budget, committed cost, actual cost, billed to date and estimated cost to complete for each job.
Change orders that carry into the schedule of values and later pay apps.
AIA-style payment applications built from the schedule of values, including stored materials.
WIP accounting that compares earned and billed revenue, adjusts for over- and underbilling, and tracks retainage through final collection.
Construction payroll with certified payroll, wage determinations, multi-rate overtime and garnishments.

A contractor that keeps its WIP schedule in Excel will recognize those workbench columns from our work-in-progress schedule walkthrough.

Evidence so far

The evidence so far is NetSuite’s press release and its construction product page. These claims come from NetSuite:

The Estimate Import Agent automates job setup and gives each job a consistent financial baseline.
The Payment Application Agent cuts manual work and speeds up billing.
The Construction Workbench helps project managers and controllers spot margin problems earlier.

Evan Goldberg, NetSuite’s founder, says in the release that small gaps between project activity and financial records can quickly hurt profit and cash flow. The release describes planned capabilities and carries Oracle’s future-product disclaimer, which says features, timing and pricing may change. Customer results for the construction agents, such as the accuracy of the estimate conversion or the time saved per pay app, are not yet public.

How to measure it on your projects

Track pay application cycle time: the calendar days from the end of the billing period to the day the pay app goes to the owner or the GC. Record it per job, per month. A pay app that goes out later gets paid later, and our DSO post shows how that lag feeds days sales outstanding.

Before a pilot, pull the last six billing cycles for five to ten active jobs. For each pay app, record:

The billing period end date and the submission date.
Whether the owner or architect returned it for corrections, and how many days the resubmission took.
Hours the project manager and billing staff spent on it, if your timesheets break that out.

During the pilot, log the same items. Also log every line where the agent’s draft differed from what the project manager approved. The share of lines changed is the error rate that matters on your jobs. Job setup can be measured the same way, as hours from award to a loaded budget and the count of budget lines corrected in the first month.

A first step on one job: pick the job with the most change orders this year and write down the submission dates of its last six pay apps.

Availability and cost

NetSuite says the product will start with a limited US rollout, with broader availability expected later. The construction page says NetSuite sells an annual subscription made up of the core platform, optional modules and user count, plus a one-time implementation fee. Launch dates and pricing for the construction product and its agents are not in the release. NetSuite says it has more than 44,000 customers in 220 countries and dependent territories, and its construction page notes that some capabilities described there require partner integrations.

How to tie a fuel price adjustment to EIA diesel prices, with a 160,000-cubic-yard earthwork example

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 11:49:44 -0400

An estimator pricing mass excavation carries diesel inside the equipment rate, so the bid never shows a line for fuel. When the price at the pump moves between bid day and the last load of dirt, the sitework contractor absorbs the whole change. A fuel price adjustment clause moves part of that risk to the owner with a formula: estimated gallons times the change in a published diesel price.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that U.S. on-highway diesel averaged $6.291 a gallon in September 2026, up from $3.722 in February. That is the highest monthly average in EIA’s series, which begins in 1994 and is not adjusted for inflation. In the week of October 19, EIA’s average was $6.276, which is $2.656 above a year earlier.

Diesel averaged $6.29 a gallon in September 2026

U.S. on-highway No. 2 diesel retail price, monthly average, dollars per gallon, all taxes included

Nominal dollars. EIA release of October 20, 2026. Source: eia.gov

How the clause works

The Federal Highway Administration set out how highway agencies can write these clauses in Technical Advisory T 5080.3, dated December 10, 1980. It explains why fuel needs its own method. Fuel is usually incidental to the project and is not paid for directly, so the owner needs an agreed estimate of how much fuel the work burns.

The advisory describes four ways to get that estimate:

Fuel usage per unit. Each unit of completed work, such as a cubic yard of excavation or a ton of asphalt, carries a fixed number of gallons.
Specified total fuel. The owner puts its estimate of total gallons in the bid documents and releases it against a schedule tied to percent complete.
Bid item. The bidder enters a lump sum for fuel, capped by the owner, and it is paid out on the same schedule.
Percent of cost. Fuel is a set share of the dollar value of work on each progress estimate, such as 13% to 15% for grade and drain work.

FHWA says these methods are not designed to estimate the fuel a contractor burns. They give both parties a reasonable basis for average conditions. FHWA also advises against paying from contractor fuel invoices, citing the audit work and the room for manipulation.

The per-unit factors come from a July 1974 survey published by the Highway Research Board, now the Transportation Research Board, and attached to the advisory. These are the diesel figures.

Diesel usage factors for highway work, gallons per unit, from FHWA T 5080.3 Attachment 1
Item of work	Units	Diesel low	Diesel average	Diesel high
Earth excavation	gal per cubic yard	0.27	0.29	0.30
Rock excavation	gal per cubic yard	0.37	0.39	0.42
Other excavation	gal per cubic yard	0.33	0.35	0.38
Aggregate onsite production	gal per ton	0.25	0.28	0.36
Aggregate base 0-10 mile haul	gal per ton	0.24	0.27	0.33
Aggregate base 10-20 mile haul	gal per ton	0.35	0.42	0.54
Asphalt concrete production	gal per ton	1.75	2.43	3.50
Asphalt concrete hauling 0-10 miles	gal per ton	0.28	0.33	0.34
Asphalt concrete hauling 10-20 miles	gal per ton	0.30	0.49	0.56
Asphalt concrete placement	gal per ton	0.06	0.14	0.20
PCC pavement production	gal per cubic yard	0.15	0.28	0.45
PCC pavement hauling	gal per cubic yard	0.33	0.48	0.67
PCC pavement placement	gal per cubic yard	0.13	0.22	0.31
Structures	gal per $1000 of work	10.00	19.00	25.00
Miscellaneous	gal per $1000 of work	10.00	19.00	30.00

Source: fhwa.dot.gov

The earth excavation factor covers mobilization, clearing and grubbing, excavating, hauling, compacting and subgrade preparation, for hauls up to about 5,000 feet. FHWA notes that urban jobs that haul by truck may burn more than the table shows. Gasoline has its own factors in FHWA’s table.

Pick the index

FHWA asks for an index that contractors and suppliers cannot manipulate, either built by the owner or taken from government price data. EIA says many shippers, carriers and truckers use its weekly retail diesel price in their fuel pricing formulas. EIA collects the cash self-serve pump price, including taxes, at 8:00 a.m. local time each Monday from a sample of 590 truck stops and service stations, and publishes it around 10:00 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday. EIA’s FAQ says the agency does not calculate fuel surcharges and does not endorse any method.

The clause should also name the geography, because regions moved by different amounts over the past year.

EIA on-highway diesel price by region, week of October 19, 2026, and change from a year earlier
Region	Price week of Oct. 19 2026 ($/gal)	Change from year ago ($/gal)	Change from year ago (%)
U.S.	6.28	2.66	73.4%
East Coast (PADD 1)	5.98	2.31	62.8%
New England (PADD 1A)	6.47	2.53	64.1%
Central Atlantic (PADD 1B)	6.51	2.63	67.8%
Lower Atlantic (PADD 1C)	5.74	2.16	60.4%
Midwest (PADD 2)	6.35	2.79	78.2%
Gulf Coast (PADD 3)	5.90	2.65	81.3%
Rocky Mountain (PADD 4)	6.42	2.84	79.1%
West Coast (PADD 5)	7.39	2.97	67.2%
West Coast less California	6.66	2.65	66.1%
California	8.24	3.34	68.3%

Source: eia.gov

The Gulf Coast price rose 81.3% from a year earlier and the Lower Atlantic price rose 60.4%. With a base one year back, a clause tied to the Gulf Coast index would pay $2.647 a gallon, and one tied to the Lower Atlantic index would pay $2.162 on the same gallons.

Some state DOTs build their own index. New York State DOT posts an average price for fuel each month, on or about the 25th, for its Fuel Price Adjustment item. Its September 2026 price was $3.85, which is 86.0% above its February price of $2.07. EIA’s national retail average rose 69.0% over the same months. The two series measure different prices, and NYSDOT’s page refers readers to its standard specifications for how the payment is calculated. On a state contract the specification names the index. On a private subcontract, name the EIA series and the region in writing.

Set the trigger, the cap and the dates

FHWA recommends the following:

A trigger between 3% and 10%, so small moves pay nothing. AASHTO suggested 5% in a 1974 guide.
A ceiling on upward adjustment, written as a percentage, in the range of 25% to 100%, and a floor on downward adjustment.
Adjustment in both directions, so the owner takes a credit when prices fall.
Monthly computation, paid automatically on the progress estimate, so the contractor has no option to accept or reject it.
During an unapproved time overrun, either hold upward adjustment at the last index within the contract time plus extensions or stop adjusting.

Take February 2025 as a base month. EIA’s monthly average then stayed between 4.8% below and 4.0% above that base through February 2026, so a 5% trigger would have paid nothing for a year. In March 2026 the price was 33.9% above the base.

A worked example

The figures below are an example. A sitework subcontractor bids 160,000 cubic yards of earth excavation in February 2026 and works it from March through September. The subcontract uses the per-unit method with FHWA’s average diesel factor of 0.29 gallons per cubic yard, EIA’s U.S. monthly average, a February 2026 base of $3.722, a 5% trigger and a 50% cap.

Each month the project manager multiplies the cubic yards on the pay application by 0.29 to get gallons. The adjustment per gallon is the month’s EIA price minus the base. The 50% cap limits the recognized price to $5.583, which is 1.5 times the base.

Fuel price adjustment on 160,000 cubic yards of earth excavation, base month February 2026. Example quantities with EIA prices.
Month	Earth excavation (cu yd)	Diesel (gal)	EIA diesel ($/gal)	Change from February base (%)	Adjustment per gallon ($)	Adjustment ($)	Adjustment with 50% cap ($)
March 2026	20,000	5,800	4.92	32.2%	1.20	6,954.20	6,954.20
April 2026	30,000	8,700	5.50	47.8%	1.78	15,477.30	15,477.30
May 2026	30,000	8,700	5.60	50.5%	1.88	16,338.60	16,190.70
June 2026	30,000	8,700	5.02	35.0%	1.30	11,327.40	11,327.40
July 2026	20,000	5,800	4.96	33.1%	1.23	7,151.40	7,151.40
August 2026	20,000	5,800	5.46	46.7%	1.74	10,092.00	10,092.00
September 2026	10,000	2,900	6.29	69.0%	2.57	7,450.10	5,396.90
Total	160,000	46,400				74,791.00	72,589.90

Source: eia.gov

The job burns an estimated 46,400 gallons, which cost $172,701 at the February price. Every month cleared the 5% trigger. Without a cap, the clause pays $74,791. The cap binds in May and September and brings the total to $72,590.

The fuel factor sets the gallons the clause covers. A crew that burns 0.35 gallons a yard on a long or wet haul still gets paid for 0.29, and the job’s equipment fuel logs show the difference. The equipment rate post shows where fuel sits inside an hourly rate. The steel escalation post applies a trigger and a cap to a BLS index. The September input price post covers BLS’s producer price index for diesel.

How to start on your jobs

List every open job with earthwork, paving or hauling still to place, and check each contract for a fuel adjustment clause. Where one exists, write down the index, the region, the base month, the trigger and the cap, and check that the monthly adjustment shows up on the pay estimate.

For bids going out now, pull fuel gallons per unit from your own equipment logs for the last three closed jobs of the same type. Compare them with the FHWA factor before you propose a clause or accept the owner’s.

Document Crunch, now part of Trimble, adds drawing sets to its AI review of contracts and specs

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 07:43:17 -0400

Document Crunch, the contract review software Trimble agreed to buy in April, announced on October 21, 2026, that its AI can now read construction drawing sets alongside contracts and specifications. The announcement says the feature is available to all Document Crunch users. It affects the preconstruction document review, the stage where an estimator or project manager reads the bid set for scope gaps and conflicting requirements before the price goes in.

What it does

Today that review means someone reads the contract, then the spec book, then pages through the drawings and tries to connect a general note on one sheet to a requirement in the specs. Josh Levy, a Document Crunch co-founder who is now Trimble’s vice president of risk and compliance solutions, says in the announcement that teams work across hundreds of drawing sheets on a project.

The new feature starts with the drawing set. Document Crunch says its CrunchAI engine extracts and indexes the text on each sheet, including notes, allowances and the language that defines scope. Indexing here means the software builds a searchable record of every word and where it sits, the way a spec book’s table of contents points to a section. The announcement describes text extraction only.

Once the set is indexed, a user asks questions in a chat window across drawings, contracts and specs together. Each answer links back to the source page so a reviewer can open the sheet and check it. Document Crunch lists these checks:

Verify the sheet index and flag missing sheets or spec sections.
Flag discrepancies between disciplines.
Find requirements that conflict between drawings, contracts and specs, along with scope gaps and unclear responsibilities.
Run the same company checklist on every drawing set.

Findings can be turned into review items, assigned to a person and tracked inside the project. The users are the preconstruction group, the estimators pricing a package and the project manager who inherits the job after award.

Evidence so far

The evidence is Document Crunch’s announcement and one customer comment inside it. These claims come from Document Crunch:

General-purpose AI models have trouble with large, text-dense drawing sheets and lack the project context to connect requirements across documents.
The drawing review finds conflicts and scope gaps early enough for a team to clarify, price or resolve them before they turn into rework or disputes.

Kristen Ortiz, vice president of project controls at Hill & Wilkinson, describes a renovation where the team had to redo plumbing and the drawings did not show the concrete cutting and backfill that work would require. “Document Crunch caught those additional requirements, helping our team identify work that might otherwise have been overlooked,” she said in the announcement.

Earlier figures cover the contract side of the product. In its June platform release, Document Crunch said it had been deployed on more than 10,000 customer projects that served more than $350 billion in annual construction volume. In the same release, a Ben Hur Construction vice president estimated that contract and scope review time fell 80%. That figure predates the drawing feature. Accuracy figures for the drawing review, such as the share of real scope conflicts it flags, are not yet public.

How to measure it on your projects

Track scope-gap change orders as a percent of original contract value. Count only the change orders your team coded to a scope gap or a conflict between documents, the items a pre-bid review is meant to catch. Our change order rate post walks through coding a log by cause.

Capture two baselines before the pilot:

From five to ten closed jobs of similar type, total the scope-gap and document-conflict change orders and divide by the original contract value.
On your next two or three bids, have the estimator log hours spent on document review and the number of clarifications or exclusions written from it.

During the pilot, run the tool on new bid sets and log every item it flags. Mark each one as a real issue, a duplicate of something your team already caught or a false alarm. The share marked real is the tool’s precision on your documents, the fraction of its flags worth an estimator’s time. The change order percentage will take months to show up, so review hours and the flag log are the early read.

A first step on one job: pick a recently awarded project, run its bid set through the tool and compare the flags with the change orders that job has already logged.

Availability and cost

The announcement says drawing review is available now to all Document Crunch users, inside their existing workflows. The June release said the project-level platform is available in the United States and Canada. Trimble announced its agreement to acquire Document Crunch on April 2, 2026, and Document Crunch now calls itself a Trimble company. The April release said Trimble plans to bring Document Crunch’s contract rules into Trimble Construction One project management and ERP workflows. Pricing is not listed in the announcements.

How to price delay cost from the liquidated damages daily rate and your own field overhead

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 11:35:06 -0400

A project manager who sees the completion date slipping on the schedule update has to put a dollar figure on the slip. The contract supplies part of that figure as a liquidated damages rate, a fixed amount per day that the owner deducts from payment for each day the work runs past the contract time. The contractor’s own cost of staying on site longer is the other part, and it never appears in the contract.

This post covers how public owners set the rate under federal rules, then prices a late job with example figures and tests a plan to recover the schedule.

How owners set the rate

On federal construction, the clause is FAR 52.211-12. It says the contractor pays the amount the contracting officer inserts “for each calendar day of delay until the work is completed or accepted.” If the government terminates the contractor’s right to proceed, the clause says the damages keep accruing until the work is done, on top of the excess cost of finishing the job.

FAR 11.501 says liquidated damages are not punitive. They compensate the government for probable damages, so the rate must be a reasonable forecast of the harm from late performance on that contract. The same section says to use them only when timely performance matters enough that the government expects to suffer damage and that damage would be hard to estimate or prove.

FAR 11.502 says what goes into the number. A construction rate should include the government’s estimated daily cost of inspection and superintendence, plus other expected costs of late completion such as renting substitute property or paying extra allowances for living quarters. When a contract has separate completion dates for stages of the work, FAR 11.503 calls for a separate rate for each stage.

Highway work funded by FHWA follows 23 CFR 635.127. Each state DOT must set its own rates, either per project or as a table by project cost and type. At a minimum the rates cover the estimated average daily construction engineering cost for that type of work. With FHWA concurrence a state can add other delay costs, and the regulation names road user delay costs, detours kept in place longer and winter shutdowns among them. The state must review its rates at least every two years, and any incentive or disincentive for early completion has to be shown separately from liquidated damages.

Calendar days and working days

The federal clause counts calendar days, so a Saturday and a Sunday past the completion date each carry the full rate.

Iowa DOT’s standard specifications show the other common form. Section 1108.08 assesses the rate per calendar day on completion date contracts and per working day on working day contracts. When several portions of an Iowa job each carry their own working days and rate, the daily charge is the total of the rates for every portion still open. Iowa also withholds final payment until the parties agree on the amount of liquidated damages.

Which days get excused

The rate applies only to days the contractor is responsible for. FAR 52.249-10 says the government cannot charge damages under that clause for delay from unforeseeable causes beyond the contractor’s control and without its fault or negligence. Its examples include fires, floods, strikes, freight embargoes, unusually severe weather, acts of the government and delays of subcontractors or suppliers that meet the same test.

The clause has a notice requirement. The contractor must notify the contracting officer in writing of the causes within 10 days from the beginning of the delay, unless the contracting officer extends that period. The contracting officer then finds the facts and extends the time when they warrant it. The clause addresses time, so the extra field cost for an excused day is a separate question under the rest of the contract.

A worked example

The figures below are an example. A general contractor is building an $18 million federal office building with a liquidated damages rate of $2,000 per calendar day. The latest schedule update forecasts completion 20 calendar days late.

The first step is the contractor’s own daily cost of staying on site. Take the time-related lines from the general conditions estimate, the ones that run by the week, and convert them to a calendar day by dividing by seven.

Time-related field cost for the example job. Example figures.
Time-related cost	Per week ($)	Per calendar day ($)
Superintendent with burden	$3,500	$500
Project manager at half time	$1,750	$250
Project engineer	$2,100	$300
Field office with utilities and toilets	$700	$100
Telehandler on rent	$1,400	$200
Fencing and site security	$350	$50
Total	$9,800	$1,400

The job costs the contractor $9,800 a week, or $1,400 per calendar day, before any work gets installed. On a working day contract, divide by the number of working days in the week instead.

Next, sort the 20 days. The project engineer logged eight days of unusually severe weather and sent written notice within 10 days of each event, so assume the contracting officer extends the time by eight days. Twelve days remain at the liquidated damages rate. The field cost runs for all 20.

Cost of finishing the example job 20 calendar days late. Example figures.
Item	Calendar days	Per day ($)	Amount ($)
Liquidated damages after an 8-day weather extension	12	$2,000	$24,000
Extended field cost for the full overrun	20	$1,400	$28,000
Total cost of finishing 20 days late	20		$52,000

The late finish costs $52,000. For each of the 12 unexcused days, the contractor loses $2,000 in liquidated damages and $1,400 in field cost, $3,400 in all.

That $3,400 is the most it makes sense to spend to recover one of those days. Say the schedule shows that nine Saturday shifts for a 20-person crew would pull the finish back 12 days. In this example each worker earns $40 an hour and $60 for Saturday hours after a 40-hour week, a premium of $20 an hour. The overtime premium post covers how that premium is calculated.

Three ways to price the 12 unexcused days. Wages only, before payroll taxes and insurance. Example figures.
Option for the 12 unexcused days	Cost ($)	Cost per day of the 12 ($)
Finish late and pay liquidated damages plus field cost	$40,800	$3,400
Work 9 Saturdays and pay the overtime premium	$28,800	$2,400
Work 9 Saturdays at the full overtime wage	$86,400	$7,200

Count only the premium as new cost. The crew would work those hours at straight time later anyway, because the installed quantities stay the same. At $20 an hour, nine shifts add $28,800, or $2,400 per day recovered, which is less than the $3,400 that finishing late costs. A comparison that charges the full $60 Saturday wage gets $86,400 and rejects the plan. Salaried supervision adds no wage cost in this example. The labor taxes and insurance on the premium hours would raise the $28,800, and the labor burden post shows how to add them.

How to start on your jobs

Pull the contract for every job with less than 60 days of total float on its last update. Write down the liquidated damages rate, whether it counts calendar days or working days, and the notice period for delays. The total float post shows how to track that float from one update to the next.

Then compute the time-related field cost per day for one of those jobs from its general conditions budget and add it to the rate. Report the combined figure with each monthly schedule update, next to the days of float remaining. When a delay is excusable, log the event and the date of written notice on the day it happens, since the federal default clause gives 10 days from the start of the delay. Where an owner directs work that adds time, the change order rate post shows how to code the cause.

BRG survey finds 68% of North American construction executives spent $250,000 or more on AI and 15% call it fully integrated

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:35:40 -0400

The consulting firm BRG published AI in Construction: Measurable Results, Unclear Benchmarks on October 9, 2026, the fourth report in its AI Industry Spotlight Series. In July 2026 BRG surveyed 109 executives who work on their organizations’ AI efforts, and the report’s figures describe the 65 North American respondents unless it says otherwise. Of that group, 68% spent at least $250,000 on AI over the previous 24 months, and 15% say AI is fully integrated across their projects and operations. The questions run through estimating, bidding and contract formation, procurement, scheduling, field operations and warranty work, and they end with how firms measure the return.

What it does

The survey tests no product. BRG split respondents into builders, who deliver projects (58 respondents across all regions), and owners, who develop and commission them (51). Construction Dive reports that the builders were mainly small and midsize general contractors and construction managers, and the owners mostly larger developers and REITs. For each function, a respondent said whether AI is implemented, planned, wanted with no current plan, or not being explored.

AI implementation status by function, North American respondents, July 2026
Function	Implemented (%)	Planning to implement (%)	Aspire with no current plans (%)	Not exploring (%)
Planning and feasibility	58	32	2	8
Project management and scheduling	52	32	14	2
Warranty and post-completion services (builders only)	52	36	8	4
Corporate and administrative functions	48	35	12	5
Procurement and supply chain	46	37	15	2
Field operations and site execution	46	31	18	5
Bidding and contract formation	40	38	20	2
Design and engineering	38	45	12	5
Risk, claims and dispute management	37	37	20	6

Source: media.thinkbrg.com

Planning and feasibility leads at 58%, and BRG says the share reaches 80% among builders. On the builder side, the report lists cost estimating, schedule modeling, feasibility analysis and permitting support as that function’s uses. Design and engineering sits at 38% implemented, with the largest share in the table planning to implement, at 45%.

Of the North American respondents, 37% spent $1 million or more over 24 months, and 6% made no dedicated AI investment. On integration, 29% expect to get there within twelve months of July 2026 and 31% within one to two years, while 5% do not expect AI ever to be fully integrated.

Evidence so far

The evidence is one survey of self-reported answers, run by a firm whose services include economics, disputes and investigations work. Every respondent is involved in AI at their organization, so the adoption rates describe firms already doing AI work. Builders and owners are pooled in most figures. A margin of error is not stated, and with 65 North American respondents, one answer moves a percentage by about 1.5 points.

Respondents reported savings by project phase, and BRG counts the share reporting savings above 10%.

AI-delivered cost savings by phase, share of respondents. The last column is BRG's published figure.
Phase	Less than 5% (%)	5 to 10% (%)	11 to 20% (%)	21 to 30% (%)	More than 30% (%)	Too early to quantify (%)	Above 10% (%)
Pre-construction	4	36	31	18	9	2	58
Construction	4	29	38	25	4	0	67
Business operations	9	27	31	22	9	2	62

Source: media.thinkbrg.com

Read the savings figures with these limits:

The report does not say what the savings percentages are measured against, such as the cost of the task, the phase budget or the project.
For post-construction, the text gives 58% above 10%, while the bars in BRG’s chart add to 49%. This table leaves that phase out until the figure is settled.

Anyway, the workforce answers lean toward reorganizing teams. In BRG’s results, 18% added headcount in some areas because of AI and 11% reduced it, 38% reskilled existing staff, and 51% changed how much they rely on outside vendors, consultants or contractors.

The risk questions matter most for anyone drafting an AI policy. Liability for errors in AI-generated work is the concern most often cited as restricting use, at 43%, and 40% point to unclear treatment of AI in contracts. Policies covering human oversight and accountability exist at 42% of firms, and 34% have policies on accuracy and reliability. Construction Dive notes that construction had the lowest policy coverage of the four industries BRG has surveyed. (The other three were retail, energy and financial institutions.)

How to measure it on your projects

So, on measurement, respondents split across methods. The largest group, 37%, relies mainly on financial metrics. Another 23% track usage, which shows whether a tool is in use and leaves the job’s outcome unmeasured.

How respondents primarily evaluate ROI from AI
Primary way ROI from AI is evaluated	Share of respondents (%)
Financial metrics (cost savings, margin improvement, reduced change orders)	37
Operational metrics (schedule performance, labor productivity, rework or error reduction)	29
Usage or adoption metrics (active users, tools deployed across projects)	23
Qualitative assessment (team feedback, post-project reviews)	5
Not currently evaluating ROI	6

Source: media.thinkbrg.com

“Contingency is a useful construction-specific measure,” says Ben Nolan, a BRG managing director, who suggests reading AI’s return in uncommitted contingency at stages of the project. A contractor can turn that into one number. The uncommitted contingency ratio is the contingency not yet committed to a change or a buyout overrun, divided by the original contingency, read at 25%, 50% and 75% complete.

Build the baseline from closed jobs before the pilot starts:

Pick five to ten closed jobs of similar type and size.
From the monthly cost reports, record the original contingency and the uncommitted balance at each of the three milestones.
Average the ratio at each milestone.

Then track the same ratio on jobs where AI handles a defined task, such as drawing conflict review or estimate checks, and compare at each milestone. Pair it with change order rate by cause, since a higher ratio is only useful if the commitments it avoided would have become changes. Start by pulling the contingency history for one closed job this week.

Availability and cost

The report is a free PDF on BRG’s site with no registration form. It also compares regions: 18% of Asia-Pacific respondents and 9% of European respondents say AI is fully integrated, against 15% in North America.

How to price crew vehicle mileage with the IRS rate, which rose to 76 cents a mile in July

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 11:34:49 -0400

A superintendent who drives a personal pickup between three jobsites turns in a mileage log at the end of the month, and payroll pays it at a set amount per mile. Many contractors take that amount from the IRS business standard mileage rate. Estimators often use the same rate to price vehicle travel on a job far from the yard.

The IRS changed the rate partway through 2026. The business rate was 72.5 cents a mile from January 1 through June 30 and is 76 cents from July 1 through December 31, according to the IRS standard mileage rates page. The IRS tied the July increase to fuel prices, and this post prices a month of crew truck miles at both rates.

What the rate covers

The standard rate replaces the itemized costs of running a vehicle. IRS Topic 510 lists those costs under the actual expense method as gas, oil, repairs, tires, insurance, registration fees, licenses, and depreciation or lease payments. Parking fees and tolls for business trips are deductible separately under either method.

Notice 2026-10 says an independent contractor studies the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile for the IRS each year, and the rate comes from that study. The notice also says 35 cents of each 2026 business mile counts as depreciation. Subtract that from the July rate and 41 cents a mile is left for fuel, maintenance, insurance and the rest, up from 37.5 cents in the first half.

Topic 510 limits who can use the rate. The taxpayer must own or lease the vehicle and must not operate five or more cars at the same time, as in a fleet operation. An owned vehicle has to go on the standard rate in its first year of business use. A vehicle that has taken MACRS depreciation, a Section 179 deduction or the special depreciation allowance can’t use it.

For reimbursements, Announcement 2026-11 says the rate also sets how much of an employee’s mileage allowance counts as substantiated. The 76-cent rate applies to allowances paid on or after July 1 for miles driven on or after July 1. Earlier miles stay at 72.5 cents. The per diem post covers the accountable plan rules that decide whether an allowance is treated as wages.

What changed in July

The IRS set the 2026 rate in a news release on December 29, 2025, at 2.5 cents above 2025. It raised the rate again in Announcement 2026-11, which gives a single reason: “This modification results from recent increases in the price of fuel.”

Diesel reached $6.29 a gallon in September, its highest in 25 months

U.S. average retail price, dollars per gallon, monthly average of EIA's weekly survey, September 2024 to September 2026

EIA data published on FRED (GASDESM, GASREGM). EIA computes monthly averages as simple averages of its weekly prices. Source: eia.gov

EIA’s average diesel price was $3.615 a gallon in December 2025 and $5.024 in June 2026, a 39% increase over the period when the 72.5-cent rate was in force. Regular gasoline rose 40% over the same months, from $2.894 to $4.050. The mileage rate rose 3.5 cents, or 4.8%, in July.

Fuel kept rising after the change. Diesel averaged $6.291 in September, 68% above September 2025, and regular gasoline averaged $4.355, up 38%. EIA’s weekly survey for October 19 put diesel at $6.276, $2.656 above the same week a year earlier.

IRS business standard mileage rate since 2022. The IRS split 2022 and 2026 into two periods.
Period	Business rate (cents per mile)	IRS source
2022 (Jan. 1 to June 30)	58.5	IR-2021-251
2022 (July 1 to Dec. 31)	62.5	IR-2022-124
2023	65.5	IR-2022-234
2024	67.0	IR-2023-239
2025	70.0	IR-2024-312
2026 (Jan. 1 to June 30)	72.5	IR-2025-128
2026 (July 1 to Dec. 31)	76.0	Announcement 2026-11

Source: irs.gov

The IRS made a similar mid-year change in 2022, raising the rate from 58.5 to 62.5 cents for July through December.

A worked example

The figures below are an example. A three-quarter-ton diesel crew truck gets 15 miles per gallon and runs 2,000 miles a month, about one round trip a workday between the yard and a job 45 miles away. The table prices those miles at both 2026 IRS rates and prices the truck’s fuel alone at EIA’s September averages for 2025 and 2026.

Monthly cost of 2,000 miles at IRS rates and at diesel fuel cost for a 15 mpg truck. Example figures.
Cost line	Per mile ($)	Cost per month ($)
IRS business rate Jan. to June 2026	0.73	$1,450
IRS business rate July to Dec. 2026	0.76	$1,520
Diesel at 15 mpg, September 2025 ($3.748 a gallon)	0.25	$500
Diesel at 15 mpg, September 2026 ($6.291 a gallon)	0.42	$839

At the July rate, 2,000 miles reimburse $1,520 a month. Diesel for the same miles costs $839 at September 2026 prices, up $339 from $500 a year earlier. Over that year the IRS rate went from 70 cents to 76 cents, which adds $120 a month for the same miles.

Fuel’s share of the rate changed with it. In September 2025, fuel for this truck took 25 cents of a 70-cent rate, or 36%, and left 45 cents a mile for everything else. In September 2026 it takes 41.9 cents of 76, or 55%, and leaves 34 cents. A truck that gets 10 miles per gallon burns 62.9 cents of diesel a mile at the September price, 83% of the rate.

Because of the five-vehicle limit in Topic 510, a contractor with a truck fleet prices those trucks from its own costs, as in the equipment hourly rate post. The fuel line in that rate should use the current diesel price, and the construction input prices post shows how far fuel has moved in the producer price data. For a long job, the escalation clause post sets out how to tie a price adjustment to a published index.

How to start on your jobs

Pull your mileage reimbursements for July, August and September and confirm that payroll paid miles driven after July 1 at 76 cents. Miles from June paid in July stay at 72.5 cents under Announcement 2026-11.

Then take one company truck. Divide last month’s fuel card spending by the miles on its odometer or telematics log to get fuel cost per mile, and set it next to the 76-cent rate. On the next bid with long drives, price vehicle miles from that figure plus your maintenance, insurance and ownership costs, and update the fuel portion from the regional diesel prices in EIA’s weekly survey.

Procore says its Magpie 3.0 engine completed 78% of 200-plus construction tasks, 18 points above the closest general AI model

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 07:36:21 -0400

Procore shared a preview of its own construction AI benchmark at Groundbreak 2026, its annual customer conference, and posted the results on its blog on October 22, 2026. A benchmark is a fixed set of tasks scored the same way for every system, and this one has more than 200 tasks drawn from RFI, submittal, drawing, schedule and change work. Procore says Magpie 3.0, the new reasoning engine behind Procore AI, completed 78% of them. That is 18 percentage points above the closest general-purpose frontier model, meaning the large commercial models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. On October 21, at the same conference, Procore put Procore AI Go, a voice app for field crews, into open beta.

What it does

Start with the project engineer reviewing an emergency generator submittal. That person reads the package against the mechanical spec section and the drawings, then writes a response. A requirement sitting in another division, such as an electrical section that names the transfer switch manufacturer, gets caught only if the reviewer thinks to look there.

Procore describes three layers in Procore AI that do that cross-referencing:

A multimodal index, meaning one that reads images as well as text, opens drawings, site photos and meeting minutes. On a drawing it picks out gridlines, fixture symbols, dimension strings and revision clouds.
A construction ontology, a map of how project records relate to each other, links RFIs, submittals, observations, daily logs, meetings, drawings, photos and change events to the same trade, assembly and location.
Magpie 3.0 works through a question in steps across those linked records. It chooses a tool for each step, such as an image analyzer or a document parser, and cites the governing drawing detail or spec section in its answer.

For submittals, two Procore tools described in a September 18 product post sit on top of this. Submittal Builder reads the spec book and drafts the submittal log, including closeout, warranty and O&M items. The Submittal Reviewer agent checks returned packages against the specs and the contract, flags deviations and unapproved substitutions, and drafts a response. The project engineer or PM reviews the draft and makes the call.

Procore AI Go takes the question-and-answer part to the field. A foreman presses to talk, asks about drawings, specs, RFIs, submittals, daily logs, observations or inspections, and hears a spoken answer drawn from the project’s Procore data. Procore says later releases will let crews create daily logs and observations and draft RFIs by voice, and will add its Daily Log Agent and Site Safety Agent to the app.

What Procore announced around Groundbreak 2026 and where each piece stands
Capability	What it does	Status in October 2026
Multimodal index	Reads drawings, site photos and meeting minutes as content, such as gridlines, symbols and revision clouds	Generally available in all Procore AI packages
Magpie 3.0	Reasons across linked project records and cites the governing drawing, spec section or record	Open beta for Procore AI customers through Procore Explore
Construction ontology	Links RFIs, submittals, observations, daily logs, meetings, drawings, photos and change events	Built in; drawing-photo linking and rework pattern detection roll out over the coming year
Procore AI Go	Voice questions and spoken answers on drawings, specs, RFIs, submittals, daily logs, observations and inspections	Open beta in North America on Digital Coworker Starter, Pro and Enterprise
AI Go on Meta AI glasses	Hands-free questions and first-person photos	Closed beta
Daily log and observation creation in AI Go	Create daily logs and observations and draft RFIs by voice and images	Announced as coming

Source: procore.com

Evidence so far

The evidence is Procore’s benchmark preview, one customer example in the same post, a customer comment in the AI Go release, and one customer figure from a July release. Procore built the tasks and ran the test. Procore says Thomas Kommer of the California Center for Construction Education at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo reviewed the task scenarios, scoring rubrics and correct answers.

These claims come from Procore:

Superintendents, project managers and project executives contributed the questions behind the tasks. The tasks fall into five workflow families and four difficulty tiers, from Easy to Expert.
A task passed only if the answer was correct and supported by the project record. Speed and cost were measured separately.
The general models got the same project data and tasks through Procore’s public API, the route a customer would use to connect them today.
Magpie 3.0 passed 78% of tasks. The closest frontier model scored 18 points lower, which works out to about 60%.

Task success rate on Procore's construction benchmark, early preview, October 2026
System	Task success rate (%)	Basis
Procore AI with Magpie 3.0	78%	Reported by Procore
Closest general-purpose frontier model	60%	Computed here as 78 minus the 18-point margin Procore reports

Source: procore.com

The five workflow families in Procore's benchmark
Workflow family	Example tasks Procore lists
RFI management	Investigating root causes, identifying linked drawing callouts, catching duplicates, evaluating schedule impacts
Submittal management	Cross-checking submittals against spec divisions, identifying non-approved substitutions, flagging lead-time risks
Drawings and specifications	Resolving revision-sensitive details, tracing section cuts across sheets, detecting constructability clashes
Schedule and delay	Evaluating float, identifying critical-path impacts from field observations, analyzing trade sequencing
Cost and change	Identifying unapproved scope changes, calculating budget exposure across cost codes, validating potential change orders

Source: procore.com

Procore calls these results an early preview and says it will publish the full set. Scores by model, by difficulty tier and by workflow family are not yet public, and neither are the speed and cost measurements. The post names the three model families tested and gives one score for the closest of them.

The field example comes from Bernards, a California builder. Procore says project manager Joseph Kim ran a generator submittal through Procore AI, which found that the package met the mechanical spec but missed an electrical spec requirement that the automatic transfer switch come from the generator’s manufacturer. Kim’s comment: “It caught something from a different spec.”

Procore’s July 23 release says Haskell cut submittal reviews from seven days to 10 minutes with Procore AI. The number of submittals and the scope of the reviews behind the figure are not yet public.

Submittal review time at Haskell, as Procore reports it
Customer	Task	Before Procore AI	With Procore AI	Reported by
Haskell	Submittal review	7 days	10 minutes	Procore press release, July 23, 2026

Source: procore.com

For AI Go, the evidence is a comment from Andrew Baker, CIO of Sequoyah Electric, who says his foremen ask questions while looking at the problem and get an answer on the spot. Procore says it is part of a study with Moss Construction, designed by SBK Technologies, of how agents, AI Go and AI wearables affect administrative time. The study’s results are not yet out.

How to measure it on your projects

Track submittal review cycle time: calendar days from the date your team receives a submittal package to the date the response goes back to the subcontractor. Next to it, count spec conflicts caught at review, so a shorter cycle cannot hide missed requirements.

Capture the baseline before you turn on the agent:

Pull the last 30 to 50 closed submittals on a comparable job and record the received and returned dates for each.
Count the revise-and-resubmit responses, and mark the ones whose reason came from a spec section outside the package’s own division.
Count change events or field issues from the last six months that trace back to an approved submittal with a missed requirement.

During the pilot, have the reviewer log each agent flag as a real problem, a false flag or something already caught. The share of flags that were real problems is the tool’s precision. A first step on one job is to run the agent on 10 submittals your team has already approved and compare its flags with what your reviewer found.

Earlier posts covered Autodesk’s Submittals Evaluation Agent, Buildertrend’s AI Submittals and how to measure RFI turnaround before an AI pilot.

Availability and cost

Procore says the multimodal index is generally available across all Procore AI packages, and Magpie 3.0 is in open beta for Procore AI customers through Procore Explore. Ontology features shown at Groundbreak, including linking drawings and photos and automated rework pattern detection, roll out over the coming year.

AI Go is in open beta for North American customers on the Digital Coworker Starter, Pro and Enterprise packages. The Meta AI glasses version is in closed beta. Each Digital Coworker package includes Control Tower, which shows AI usage and credit consumption by agent, project and team member. Package prices are not listed in the releases.

How to price per diem for a traveling crew with the FY 2027 GSA rates, $181 a day in most of the US

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 11:40:05 -0400

Per diem is a fixed daily allowance an employer pays a worker for lodging, meals and incidental expenses while the worker is away from home on a job. An estimator pricing work three states away needs that cost as its own line, and payroll needs to know how much of the allowance it can pay without treating it as wages. Both figures start from the federal per diem rates.

The General Services Administration (GSA) sets those rates for federal employees, and the IRS uses them as the ceiling for tax-free allowances. GSA’s new rates for fiscal year 2027 took effect on October 1, 2026. This post prices a crew’s travel from them.

What the federal rates are

GSA publishes a lodging rate and a meals and incidental expenses rate, called M&IE, for each location in the continental United States. A standard rate covers most of the country. GSA’s per diem page says about 300 non-standard areas have their own rates, and most of those are a key city plus its surrounding county.

For FY 2027, the standard rate is $113 a night for lodging and $68 a day for M&IE, according to GSA’s per diem data. Lodging rose $3 from $110 in FY 2026, and M&IE stayed at $68.

GSA per diem rates for three locations, FY 2026 and FY 2027. The federal fiscal year starts October 1.
Location	FY 2026 lodging ($)	FY 2027 lodging ($)	M&IE both years ($)	FY 2027 first and last day M&IE ($)	FY 2027 full-day total ($)
Standard CONUS rate	$110	$113	$68	$51.0	$181
Houston (Harris, Fort Bend, Montgomery counties)	$128	$133	$80	$60.0	$213
Denver/Aurora, April to October	$215	$227	$92	$69.0	$319
Denver/Aurora, November to March	$165	$170	$92	$69.0	$262

Source: gsa.gov

Some areas change rates by season. Denver/Aurora lodging is $227 a night from April through October and $170 from November through March in FY 2027. A job that runs through the spring crosses from one rate to the other, so the estimate should split the nights by month.

GSA’s M&IE table also lists a first and last day amount for each tier, which works out to 75% of the full-day rate. For the $68 tier that is $51.

What the IRS rules decide

IRS Publication 463 covers how an employer treats these allowances. Under an accountable plan, reimbursements aren’t reported as pay. An accountable plan is a reimbursement arrangement that meets the IRS rules, and for a per diem that means the allowance is no more than the federal rate and each worker documents the dates, place and business purpose of the travel.

Publication 463 sets out the points that matter for a traveling crew:

The federal rate can be the regular GSA rate, the standard meal allowance, or the high-low rate. The high-low method uses two flat rates, one for designated high-cost locations and one for everywhere else, and the IRS updates it in a notice each year.
The rate comes from the place where the worker stops for sleep or rest. A crew that works in one county and sleeps in a cheaper one uses the rate where they sleep.
Travel days are partial days. One method gives three-fourths of the M&IE rate for the day of departure and the day of return. The other allows any proration method the employer applies consistently and that follows reasonable business practice.
When the employer pays the hotel directly or furnishes lodging, the worker’s allowance covers M&IE only.
An allowance above the federal rate splits in two. The amount up to the federal rate goes under code L in box 12 of the W-2 and isn’t taxable, and the excess goes in box 1 as wages.

Publication 463 also ties the tax treatment to how long the assignment is expected to last. It calls an assignment in a single location temporary when it is realistically expected to last, and does in fact last, one year or less. An assignment expected to last more than a year is indefinite from the start, the job site becomes the worker’s tax home, and the living allowances become income. A series of short assignments to the same location can add up to an indefinite one. On a long project, set the travel policy with your tax adviser before the first crew mobilizes.

Allowances under an accountable plan aren’t reported as pay, so the items in the labor burden post that are calculated on wages may not apply to them. Confirm each burden line with your payroll provider before pricing.

A worked example

The figures below are an example. A four-person crew travels out on a Sunday, works three 50-hour weeks, and returns home on the Sunday three weeks later. That is 21 nights of lodging and 22 days of M&IE, with full M&IE on 20 days and the three-fourths rate on the two travel days. Each worker logs 150 hours.

Per diem for a four-person crew, 21 nights and 22 days of M&IE, at FY 2027 GSA rates. Example figures.
Location and month	Lodging per worker ($)	M&IE per worker ($)	Per diem per worker ($)	Crew of four ($)	Per diem per hour worked ($)
Standard rate area	$2,373	$1,462	$3,835	$15,340	25.57
Houston, any month	$2,793	$1,720	$4,513	$18,052	30.09
Denver, January 2027	$3,570	$1,978	$5,548	$22,192	36.99
Denver, May 2027	$4,767	$1,978	$6,745	$26,980	44.97

In a standard-rate area, each worker’s per diem comes to $3,835. Lodging is 21 nights at $113, or $2,373. M&IE is 20 days at $68 plus 2 days at $51, or $1,462. The crew of four costs $15,340, which spread over 150 hours per worker adds $25.57 to every hour worked.

The same job in Denver in May costs $26,980 for the crew, or $44.97 per hour worked. Moved to January, the lower lodging rate brings it to $22,192, with the same hours and the same M&IE.

A crew that stays on site through Saturday and Sunday draws lodging and M&IE on days with no hours to charge. Shorter workweeks spread the same per diem over fewer hours, which raises the cost per hour worked. The 50-hour weeks in this example tie to the overtime premium post, which prices the extra hours themselves.

How to start on your jobs

Pull the travel costs from your last out-of-town job and split them into lodging, meals and incidentals by worker and by night. Look up the GSA rate for the ZIP code where the crew slept, for the months they were there, and compare what you paid against the federal rate line by line. Under Publication 463, the amount paid above the rate is wages, so check how payroll reported it.

On the next bid outside your home market, price per diem from the GSA rate for the job’s location and season, then divide it by the crew hours in your schedule. Carry that per-hour figure next to the labor rate in the estimate, so a schedule change that adds weekends or shortens weeks shows up in the travel line as well.

How to compute Prompt Payment Act interest on a late federal pay application, with a $6,740 example

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 11:38:55 -0400

When a federal agency pays a construction invoice late, it owes the contractor interest. The Prompt Payment Act of 1982 requires it, according to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the Treasury office that publishes the rate. The agency calculates it and pays it without a request, and the project accountant who posts the receipt can check the math.

The rules sit in FAR 52.232-27, the prompt payment clause in federal construction contracts, and in the regulation it points to at 5 CFR part 1315.

When a payment is late

FAR 52.232-27 sets the due dates, and each one starts from a different event:

A progress payment is due 14 days after the designated billing office receives a proper payment request.
Retainage held under FAR 52.232-5 is due on the date the contract sets. When the contract is silent, it is due 30 days after the contracting officer approves its release.
A final payment is due on the later of two dates, the 30th day after the billing office receives a proper invoice and the 30th day after the government accepts the work.

The clock starts only with a proper invoice, which the clause defines in eleven items. A billing office that finds a defect has 7 days to return the invoice with its reasons, and the government takes a late return into account when it computes interest.

Interest is automatic once the agency has processed a receiving report or similar document and there is no disagreement over quantity, quality, compliance or the amount requested. When a due date falls on a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday, the agency may pay on the next working day with no penalty.

How the interest is calculated

5 CFR 1315.10 sets the method. In order:

Count days late from the day after the due date through the payment date. The FAR clause treats the date on the check, or the date of the electronic funds transfer, as the payment date.
Use the rate in effect on the day after the due date. Treasury publishes the rate by period, and for July 1 through December 31, 2026 it is 4.75%. That rate stays with the invoice even when the payment arrives after a new rate takes effect.
Use a 360-day year.
At the end of each 30-day period, add unpaid interest to the principal so later interest accrues on it. This compounding runs for up to one year.

The Fiscal Service publishes the formula behind its online calculator. Multiply the principal by (1 + r/12) raised to the number of full months, then by (1 + r/360 × the remaining days), and subtract the principal. Here r is the annual rate. For a payment 30 days late or less, no compounding period has closed, so the result is simple interest.

Interest stops accruing after one year, or once the contractor files a Contract Disputes Act claim for it. The regulation excludes penalties under $1, delays caused by a dispute over the amount or contract compliance, and amounts withheld temporarily under the contract. Retainage falls in that last group until its release is approved, and the retainage aging post covers how to track it by owner.

A worked example

The figures below are an example with round numbers. A general contractor on a federal fixed-price job has three payments in the second half of 2026:

The August progress payment of $1,000,000. The billing office logged the request on September 1, so it was due September 15, and the agency paid on November 5.
The September progress payment of $800,000, received October 1, due October 15 and paid October 29.
A $500,000 retainage release the contracting officer approved on September 30. The contract sets no date, so it was due 30 days later on October 30. The agency paid on December 29.

All three due dates fall in the July to December 2026 period, so each one uses 4.75%.

Prompt Payment interest on three late payments at 4.75% (example figures)
Payment	Amount ($)	Due date	Paid	Days late	Full 30-day periods	Remaining days	Interest owed ($)	Simple interest ($)	Additional penalty if interest goes unpaid ($)
August progress payment	$1,000,000	Sep 15	Nov 5	51	1	21	6,740.13	6,729.17	5,000.00
September progress payment	$800,000	Oct 15	Oct 29	14	0	14	1,477.78	1,477.78	1,477.78
Retainage release	$500,000	Oct 30	Dec 29	60	2	0	3,966.17	3,958.33	3,966.17

The August payment ran 51 days late, one full 30-day period plus 21 days. The formula gives $1,000,000 × (1 + 0.0475/12) × (1 + 0.0475/360 × 21) minus $1,000,000, or $6,740.13. Simple interest over the same 51 days would be $6,729.17, so compounding adds about $11 here.

The September payment was 14 days late, which keeps it inside the first period: $800,000 × 0.0475 × 14 / 360 = $1,477.78. The retainage was 60 days late, exactly two periods, for $3,966.17.

When the agency leaves out the interest

The regulation requires a notice with each interest payment stating the amount, the number of days late and the rate. Compare those three figures to your own calculation, invoice by invoice.

When the agency pays the principal late without the interest and still has not paid the interest 10 days later, the contractor can request an additional penalty in writing. Under 5 CFR 1315.11, the request must be postmarked or received by the 40th day after the payment. It must name the invoice, attach a copy, and state the date the principal arrived. The additional penalty equals the interest owed, with a $25 minimum and a $5,000 maximum, figured separately for each invoice.

In the example, the cap holds the August payment’s additional penalty to $5,000. For a payment dated November 5, the 40th day is December 15.

The subcontractor side

FAR 52.232-27 flows down to subcontracts. The prime has to pay each subcontractor within 7 days of receiving the government’s payment, and owes the subcontractor interest from the day after that date until it pays. The rate is the one Treasury sets for interest under 41 U.S.C. 7109, the Contract Disputes Act provision, in effect when the obligation arises. The clause does not specify compounding, so read the subcontract’s interest clause.

Say the drywall subcontractor’s share of the August payment is $400,000. The government paid on November 5, so the prime owes the subcontractor by November 12. A prime that pays on November 25 is 13 days late, and at 4.75% simple interest on a 360-day year, which this example assumes, it owes $686.11. Paragraph (k) of the clause says that interest is the prime’s obligation alone, and a cost-reimbursement claim may not include it.

How to track this on your jobs

Add five columns to the A/R subledger for federal jobs: the date the billing office received the request, the due date, the payment date, the interest you computed and the interest received. Use the receipt date the billing office annotates, or the timestamp from the submission portal. The DSO post already sorts federal receivables by due date, so that column may exist. The same 4.75% rate is the cost-of-money input in the Corps of Engineers equipment rate method.

Start with one federal job. Pull every payment received since July 1, 2026, find the ones dated after their due date, and compute the interest each should have carried. Then compare each result to the agency’s interest notice, and mark the 40th day after payment on any invoice where the interest is missing.

Architecture billings index fell to 44.7 in September, the lowest reading since May

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 11:39:46 -0400

The AIA/Deltek Architecture Billings Index (ABI) fell to 44.7 for September 2026, down 2.5 points from 47.2 in August and up 1.4 points from 43.3 in September 2025. The American Institute of Architects published the figure on October 21. The ABI is a diffusion index, a score built from the share of firms reporting higher billings against the share reporting lower billings, so 50 means no change and a score below 50 means more firms billed less than the month before. AIA says September had the largest share of firms reporting declines since May. The score sits below the 12-month average of 46.9 and ranks fourth lowest of the 13 months shown, above only September 2025, January 2026 and May 2026. (That makes the year-over-year gain a comparison against the lowest month in the table.)

Billings fell further below 50 in September

AIA/Deltek Architecture Billings Index, national score as first reported (50 = no change)

Each month as AIA first published it. AIA later revised December 2025 to 47.1. Source: aia.org

ABI national score, last 13 months, as first reported
Month	ABI score	Change from prior month (points)
Sep 2025	43.3
Oct 2025	47.6	4.3
Nov 2025	45.3	-2.3
Dec 2025	48.5	3.2
Jan 2026	43.8	-4.7
Feb 2026	49.4	5.6
Mar 2026	49.8	0.4
Apr 2026	48.3	-1.5
May 2026	44.5	-3.8
Jun 2026	47.3	2.8
Jul 2026	46.6	-0.7
Aug 2026	47.2	0.6
Sep 2026	44.7	-2.5

Source: aia.org

What moved

The two forward-looking indexes moved apart. Project inquiries rose to 53.2 from 50.8, so more firms saw new project inquiries than saw fewer. The design contracts index, which tracks the value of newly signed design contracts, dropped to 43.7 from 48.3. In August the two indexes were 2.5 points apart, and in September the gap was 9.5 points.

By region, the Northeast fell to 39.1 from 40.7 and stayed the weakest. The South had the largest regional drop, to 43.1 from 46.1. The West came in at 50.7 and the Midwest at 50.6, which AIA describes as stable conditions.

By firm specialization, multifamily residential fell 4.9 points to 42.9, the largest move in the detail. Commercial/industrial firms rose to 50.9, which AIA counts as modest growth for a second consecutive month. Institutional firms came in at 47.6 and mixed-practice firms at 41.5, both still in decline.

ABI detail, August and September 2026
Measure	August 2026	September 2026	Change (points)
National ABI	47.2	44.7	-2.5
West	49.8	50.7	0.9
Midwest	50.7	50.6	-0.1
South	46.1	43.1	-3.0
Northeast	40.7	39.1	-1.6
Commercial/industrial	50.4	50.9	0.5
Institutional	47.0	47.6	0.6
Multifamily residential	47.8	42.9	-4.9
Mixed practice	42.5	41.5	-1.0
Project inquiries	50.8	53.2	2.4
Design contracts	48.3	43.7	-4.6

Source: aia.org

AIA also reported backlogs at architecture firms for the end of the third quarter. The average was 6.2 months, down from 6.6 months at the end of the first quarter. Large firms with annual billings of $5 million or more held at 8.1 months, and firms with an institutional specialization held at 8.0. Small firms with billings under $250,000 went from 3.1 months to 3.8. Multifamily firms had the sharpest drop, from 6.2 months in March to 4.8 months in September.

AIA Chief Economist Richard Branch pointed to a soft economy, harder project financing and more cautious clients. “With fewer projects moving forward, there is little reason to expect a meaningful improvement in business conditions in the near term,” he said.

How to use this number

AIA says the ABI predicts nonresidential construction activity 9 to 12 months ahead. So September’s design billings relate to work that could start from roughly mid-2027 into the third quarter of that year. That timing is a reading of the data, and AIA’s release gives no regional or sector forecast.

Two uses for a contractor:

If you build multifamily, put the sector score and the backlog figure next to your own count of multifamily bid invitations for the last six months. A sector score of 42.9 and design backlogs down to 4.8 months both point to fewer projects coming out of design. If your invitation count is holding steady while those two fall, the drop may not have reached your market yet, or you are winning a larger share of a smaller pool. Your win rate by month separates the two.
Track the design contracts index against your own preconstruction pipeline. Inquiries count interest, and design contracts count owners who signed with an architect. A simple match on your side is the number of pursuits where the owner already has a design contract in place. If that count falls in step with the index over the next quarter, the national figure is a usable early read for your region. If it does not, use the regional score for your area in its place.

Revisions and caveats

AIA does not label the monthly score as preliminary. The September release puts August at 47.2, the same as first reported. AIA does revise past months. December 2025 was first published at 48.5, and AIA’s January 2026 release put it at 47.1. The pages opened for this post do not explain that revision, so the chart and table use each month as first reported, and the month-over-month changes carry the same caveat.

The regional and sector scores are three-month moving averages, and AIA notes they may not average out to the national score. The September multifamily reading of 42.9 therefore includes July and August survey responses. The national score counts the direction of each firm’s billings and ignores the size of the change, so 44.7 says more firms billed less without saying by how much.

The index comes from AIA’s Work-on-the-Boards survey of architecture firm leaders, which AIA says has run for over 20 years. The pages opened for this post do not give the number of responding firms or a margin of error, so a one-month move is best read alongside the 13-month trend.

EarthCam connects its jobsite camera AI to ChatGPT and Claude and adds seven detection models

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 07:40:24 -0400

EarthCam, the New Jersey company that rents and installs construction cameras, announced on October 20, 2026, a set of connectors that pass its jobsite detections to general AI assistants. A project team can ask ChatGPT or Claude about deliveries, safety conditions or site activity on a job, and the assistant answers from analysis EarthCam’s own software has already run on the camera imagery. The release also adds seven new detection models, several of them aimed at the safety review and delivery log.

What it does

On many jobs, camera footage gets reviewed after something happens. A superintendent or safety manager scrubs through footage when an incident, a disputed delivery or an owner question comes up, and the answer depends on someone finding the right hour of video.

EarthCam’s software analyzes the imagery as it comes in. According to the release, its computer vision (software that recognizes objects and events in images) runs on EarthCam’s servers and in some cases on the camera itself. The detections land in Control Center 9, EarthCam’s existing project platform.

The connectors are the new piece. They are built on the Model Context Protocol, an open standard that lets an AI assistant request data from outside software. EarthCam says the connector is available as an app in ChatGPT and as a connector in Claude, and that it can be added to other assistants that support the protocol, naming Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity. The assistant reads EarthCam’s finished detections, with links back to the high-resolution images, timestamps and metadata behind each answer.

EarthCam says teams can combine that camera data with weather and IoT sensor readings, plus schedules, budgets and specs from other connected systems. Where the assistant supports scheduled tasks, a team can set it to produce safety reviews, delivery summaries and executive updates on a recurring basis. The people most likely to use it are the superintendent, the safety manager and the project executive who writes the owner update.

The new models, as EarthCam describes them:

AI Trench Safety Analytics records workers and equipment entering and leaving defined excavation areas.
AI Housekeeping Hazard Detection flags visible debris, clutter and trip hazards.
Thermal AI Analytics pairs thermal imaging with object recognition to spot people and activity in darkness.
AI Delivery Verification recognizes boxes and pallets as they arrive and keeps time-stamped evidence.
AI Dump Truck Analysis counts truck movements and reads load status.
Visual Occupancy Analysis and Retail Signage Detection are the other two.

The release also mentions expanded schedule automation that compares planned milestones with observed site conditions.

Evidence so far

The evidence so far is EarthCam’s October 20 announcement, its product pages and one customer comment. These claims come from EarthCam:

Its AI analyzes jobsite imagery ten times faster than a customer’s own AI agent can interpret the raw images.
Agents working from EarthCam’s results use fewer AI usage credits than agents processing the images themselves.
In EarthCam’s benchmark testing, its models identified construction assets and objects more accurately than leading general-purpose models on the same images, with no hallucinations, the AI term for output a model makes up, such as a reported pallet that was never delivered.
Its models were trained on billions of construction images from its own cameras over three decades.

The image set, the scoring method and the accuracy rates from that benchmark are not yet public.

The customer comment comes from Scott Travis, director of northern operations at GBR Roofing. His crew used EarthCam’s detection to set exclusion zones around fall-through hazards while replacing rusted roof panels, and got an alert when someone crossed into one so they could check that fall protection was in place. “AI will alert you immediately when someone approaches a fall hazard,” Travis said in the release. His example describes the exclusion-zone alerts inside EarthCam’s platform.

How to measure it on your projects

Start by testing whether the detections are correct, since every answer the assistant gives depends on them. Track the confirmed alert rate: the share of EarthCam alerts or detections that a person, checking the linked image, agrees are correct. Run it per model, because trench entry and delivery recognition can perform differently on the same job.

For a time measure, track the hours a project executive or superintendent spends preparing the weekly owner or safety update. Capture the baseline before turning on scheduled summaries:

For four weeks, log the start and end time of each weekly update, including time spent pulling photos and footage.
Count the camera-related questions from the owner or the safety manager that week, and how long each took to answer.
For delivery verification, pull the delivery tickets for two of those weeks so you can later check each one against a camera detection.

During the pilot, log every summary the assistant drafts and every correction made before it goes out. Earlier posts covered viAct’s PPE detection on Alliad’s site cameras and Miter’s safety reports built from crew photos, and the confirmed alert rate works for comparing camera tools side by side.

A first step is to pick one camera on one job, pull a week of its detections and check twenty of them against the images.

Availability and cost

EarthCam says the connectors are available now to its customers through ChatGPT and Claude. Pricing is not listed on EarthCam’s product pages, which direct buyers to schedule a demonstration. Custom detection models are available on request from its data science team.

Housing starts fell 5.2% in September to 1,221,000, the second-lowest rate in 25 months

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 11:38:27 -0400

Privately owned housing starts fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 1,221,000 units in September 2026, the Census Bureau reported on October 20. The preliminary figure is 5.2% below the revised August rate of 1,288,000 and 7.4% below September 2025’s 1,319,000. Only May 2026, at 1,182,000, came in lower in the past 25 months, and September sits about 9% under the 12-month average of 1,345,000. Building permits, the earlier signal in the same release, held nearly flat at 1,400,000.

September starts were the second-lowest of the past 25 months

Privately owned housing starts, thousands of units, SAAR, September 2024 to September 2026

September 2026 is preliminary. Census revised July and August with this release. Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

Housing starts, last 13 months
Month	Starts (000s SAAR)	Change from prior month	Change from a year earlier
September 2025	1,319	2.2%	-2.8%
October 2025	1,273	-3.5%	-7.1%
November 2025	1,319	3.6%	1.5%
December 2025	1,378	4.5%	-7.8%
January 2026	1,385	0.5%	2.4%
February 2026	1,346	-2.8%	-9.7%
March 2026	1,522	13.1%	13.1%
April 2026	1,414	-7.1%	1.0%
May 2026	1,182	-16.4%	-8.3%
June 2026	1,439	21.7%	4.4%
July 2026	1,369	-4.9%	-4.4%
August 2026	1,288	-5.9%	-0.2%
September 2026	1,221	-5.2%	-7.4%

Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

Starts have now declined for three straight months, and the September rate is 15.1% below June’s 1,439,000. (June followed May’s low with a 21.7% jump, the largest monthly move in the table.)

What moved

The South was the only region where starts rose. Its rate climbed 6.1% to 714,000 and is 11.0% above a year ago, which leaves 58.5% of national starts in that one region. The West fell 23.2% to 235,000 and the Midwest fell 19.0% to 158,000. Northeast starts held at 114,000, which is 30.9% below September 2025.

Housing starts by Census region, thousands of units, SAAR
Region	August 2026 (000s SAAR)	September 2026 (000s SAAR)	Change from prior month	September 2025 (000s SAAR)	Change from a year earlier	Share of September starts
Northeast	114	114	0.0%	165	-30.9%	9.3%
Midwest	195	158	-19.0%	196	-19.4%	12.9%
South	673	714	6.1%	643	11.0%	58.5%
West	306	235	-23.2%	315	-25.4%	19.2%
United States	1,288	1,221	-5.2%	1,319	-7.4%	100.0%

Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

By structure type, single-family starts fell 4.6% to 859,000 and are still 2.6% above September 2025. The annual decline sits in apartments. Starts in buildings with five or more units fell 7.2% from August to 349,000, and they are 25.9% below a year ago. That is 122,000 fewer units at an annual rate, more than the 98,000-unit drop in total starts over the same 12 months.

Permits for those buildings went the other way. Census counted 503,000 five-plus-unit authorizations in September, up 5.9% from August’s 475,000 and 1.0% above a year earlier. Single-family permits fell 4.0% to 845,000. So the release shows multifamily authorizations near last year’s level while multifamily groundbreakings sit about a quarter lower. If that spread holds through the fall, the count of permitted apartment projects waiting to start will keep growing. One month of permits does not show whether those projects are delayed or simply early in the queue.

Starts, permits, completions and units under construction by structure type, thousands of units, SAAR
Measure	Structure type	August 2026 (000s SAAR)	September 2026 (000s SAAR)	Change from prior month	September 2025 (000s SAAR)	Change from a year earlier
Starts	All units	1,288	1,221	-5.2%	1,319	-7.4%
Starts	Single-family	900	859	-4.6%	837	2.6%
Starts	5 or more units	376	349	-7.2%	471	-25.9%
Permits	All units	1,403	1,400	-0.2%	1,444	-3.0%
Permits	Single-family	880	845	-4.0%	888	-4.8%
Permits	5 or more units	475	503	5.9%	498	1.0%
Completions	All units	1,166	1,192	2.2%	1,386	-14.0%
Under construction	All units	1,280	1,280	0.0%	1,323	-3.3%
Under construction	Single-family	587	587	0.0%	604	-2.8%
Under construction	5 or more units	677	677	0.0%	699	-3.1%

Source: census.gov

Further down the pipeline, completions rose 2.2% to 1,192,000 but are 14.0% below a year ago. Units under construction held at 1,280,000 for a second month, 3.3% below September 2025.

Permits held near 1.4 million while completions fell

Privately owned housing units, thousands, SAAR, September 2024 to September 2026

Census data published on FRED (PERMIT, HOUST, COMPUTSA, UNDCONTSA). September 2026 is preliminary. Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

How to use this number

Start with the regional line that matches your backlog. A site or framing contractor in the South saw starts rise 6.1% in September even as the national rate fell. In the West and Midwest, the drops of 23.2% and 19.0% were more than three times the national figure. Put your residential bid invitations by month next to your region’s starts for the last 13 months. If your invitations fell less than regional starts, you are holding share of a smaller market. A steeper fall in invitations than in starts points to your own pipeline, and that belongs in your backlog-in-months calculation.

Anyway, multifamily trades should watch the five-plus permit line as closely as starts. Starts describe work reaching the ground now, while permits describe work that has cleared approval and may still be months from mobilization. A concrete, framing or MEP subcontractor can keep a list of multifamily projects in preconstruction that have permits in hand but no start date. If that list grows while the national five-plus starts stay near 349,000, your experience matches the release. The August permits post has the regional permit detail for the month before.

Revisions and caveats

September’s figures are preliminary, and this release revised the two months before it:

July starts moved from 1,309,000 to 1,369,000, up 60,000 or 4.6%.
August starts moved from 1,275,000 to 1,288,000, up 13,000 or 1.0%.
With the higher July base, August’s monthly decline is now 5.9%. The earlier estimates showed a 2.6% decline.

Revisions to housing starts in the October 20 release
Month	Estimate before the October 20 release (000s SAAR)	Estimate in the October 20 release (000s SAAR)	Revision (000s)	Revision (percent)
July 2026	1,309	1,369	60	4.6%
August 2026	1,275	1,288	13	1.0%

Source: alfred.stlouisfed.org

Starts come from a sample survey, and Census prints a range beside each change. The 5.2% monthly decline carries a range of plus or minus 11.8%, and the 7.4% annual decline carries plus or minus 11.5%. Both ranges include zero, so this sample cannot tell either change apart from no change at all. The same holds for the 4.6% single-family decline (plus or minus 10.0%). The 14.0% annual drop in completions, at plus or minus 11.1%, is the one change in the release text whose range excludes zero. The permit figures carry no range in the release.

Regional estimates draw on smaller slices of the same sample. A one-month swing such as the West’s 23.2% drop deserves a second month of data before it changes a staffing or bidding decision.

How to measure RFI turnaround before an AI pilot, with a 10-RFI example

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:38:59 -0400

A project engineer gets a question from the drywall foreman about a soffit detail that doesn’t match the reflected ceiling plan. The engineer checks the drawings and the specs, writes the RFI, attaches a marked-up sheet and sends it to the architect. Days later the answer comes back and goes out to the field. AI tools for RFIs work on both halves of that sequence, so a contractor who wants to test one needs a record of how long each half takes today.

This post sets up that record. It uses the definitions and benchmarks in a 2013 research paper from the Navigant Construction Forum, which the Construction Management Association of America hosts, and the settings in Procore’s RFI tool.

The definitions

Navigant defines an RFI as a written request from the contractor asking the owner to interpret or clarify a requirement of the contract documents. Its sample contract clause asks the contractor to state the issue, why and when a response is needed, and the contractor’s own reading of the requirement.

The same clause starts the response clock on the date the owner stamps the RFI received from the contractor and stops it on the date the response is stamped out to the contractor. The sample allows 10 working days. A footnote warns owners to say “working days” when they mean it, because most contracts count calendar days.

Procore’s RFI tool asks an administrator to set how many calendar days after creation an RFI is due, and it sends overdue email notices to assignees. Procore also tracks which party has the ball in court on each open RFI.

What the published benchmarks show

Navigant’s figures come from Aconex, which mined its records for 1,362 projects begun between 2001 and 2012. Each project had at least 100 RFIs, and together they logged 1,083,807 RFIs, an average of 796 per project. About 79% of the projects were in Australia and New Zealand, and 29 were in the Americas, so the averages describe that mix.

Across the sample, the average first reply took 6.4 days and the median reply took 9.7 days. A median is the middle value once the RFIs are sorted by time, so one RFI that waits two months for a structural engineer moves it far less than it moves the average. Projects of one year or less had a median reply of 7 days. Projects of two years or more ran close to 10.

On cost, Navigant’s estimate came from interviews with three US design and construction management firms. They put the typical RFI at about 8 hours to receive, log, review and answer, and Navigant priced that at an average of $1,080 per RFI.

The paper’s case study shows why the RFI log needs categories. A claim on a wastewater treatment plant laboratory cited about 4,000 RFIs. About 800 turned out to be repeats of questions already answered, and about 300 were answered the day they arrived by pointing to a specification section, drawing or detail.

Where an AI tool would show up

Procore’s Draft RFI with AI feature, in beta, shows the two places a tool can act. The user types the question and any cost or schedule impact, and the feature suggests a subject, a question, a cost impact and a schedule impact. A second step searches the project documents for information that could answer the question, which Procore says helps the user see whether the question has already been answered.

Suggested wording saves the project engineer drafting time. The document search can stop some RFIs from reaching the architect. The design team’s answer time sits outside both steps, so a pilot of a drafting tool should be measured on the contractor’s side of the clock. Tools that review drawings before the RFI stage, such as Buildcheck and UpCodes, would show up in the count of RFIs per million dollars of work.

How to measure it on your projects

Track three intervals for every RFI, in calendar days unless your contract counts working days:

Days to draft: from the date the question reached the project engineer to the date the RFI was submitted.
Days to answer: from submission to the date the response came back, the interval Navigant’s clause measures.
Total days: from the question to the answer reaching the field.

Add a category to each RFI. Navigant’s list for an RFI coordinator includes “answered by reference to specification or drawing” and “previously asked and responded to.” Those two categories count the questions a document search might have answered before submission.

A worked example

The figures below are an example with round numbers. A general contractor exports 10 closed RFIs from one job, adds the date each question first came in from the field, and assigns a category. The contract allows 10 calendar days for a response.

Example RFI log, 10 closed RFIs from one job (illustrative figures)
RFI	Category	Days to draft	Days to answer	Total days
001	Design clarification	2	6	8
002	Answered by reference to documents	1	1	2
003	Incomplete plans or specs	3	12	15
004	Design coordination	2	9	11
005	Answered by reference to documents	2	2	4
006	Differing site condition	1	14	15
007	Design clarification	4	7	11
008	Previously asked and answered	1	1	2
009	Constructability	2	10	12
010	Design clarification	3	8	11

Example baseline computed from the log above (illustrative figures)
Measure	Example baseline
Median days to draft	2.0
Median days to answer	7.5
Mean days to answer	7.0
Median total days	11.0
RFIs answered past the 10-day contract time (%)	20
RFIs answered from existing documents (%)	30

Days to answer has a median of 7.5 and a mean of 7.0. Two RFIs, the incomplete-spec question at 12 days and the site condition at 14, ran past the 10-day contract time. Three of the 10, or 30%, were answered from the existing documents, and those three account for 4 of the 21 drafting days and 4 of the 70 answer days.

If a drafting tool cut the median days to draft from 2 to 1, the typical RFI would reach the architect about a day sooner. If its document search caught the three RFIs answered from the documents before they went out, the architect would receive 7 RFIs. Navigant’s estimate of $1,080 per RFI is a 2013 figure from three firms, so price your own review hours before carrying it into a pilot budget.

Answer days depend on the design team, so a change in the architect’s staffing can move them during a pilot. RFI volume follows the job too: Navigant reports that projects of five years or more averaged slightly more than 1,400 RFIs, against 270 for projects of a year or less. Compare months at a similar stage of the work, or use a second job of similar size as a control.

RFIs that are late on activities with little float carry the schedule risk. The total float log shows which activities those are, and Navigant’s best practices ask contractors to submit RFIs at least 10 days before the response is needed.

Start with one active job. Export the closed RFIs from the last three months, add the date each question first came in from the field, assign a category, and compute the median of each interval before anyone turns on the new tool.

How to compute overtime premium on a 50-hour week, with a $40 wage that averages $44

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 11:37:35 -0400

Overtime premium is the extra pay a worker earns for hours past 40 in a workweek. A project manager who puts a crew on 50-hour weeks to recover schedule buys those extra hours at a higher rate than the first 40. Payroll pays that premium every week, and the estimate and the job cost report need it as a separate line to show what the extra hours cost.

This post builds the cost of an extended workweek from the federal overtime rules. The worked examples cover a single wage rate, a worker on two rates in the same week, and a prevailing wage job.

What the rules say

The Fair Labor Standards Act sets the floor. Under 29 CFR 778.107, overtime must be paid at no less than one and one-half times the employee’s regular rate. For an hourly worker on a single rate, 29 CFR 778.110 says the hourly rate is the regular rate, and the employee earns straight time for every hour plus one-half the hourly rate for each hour over 40.

The regulation’s own example uses a $12 rate and a 46-hour week. That comes to $588: 46 hours at $12, plus 6 hours at $6.

Splitting pay this way matters for job costing. Every hour on the timecard carries the straight-time rate. Only the hours past 40 carry the half-rate premium, and that premium buys no additional work.

A worked example

The figures below are an example with round numbers. A carpenter earns $40.00 an hour. The table prices one week at four schedule lengths, and the last column adds the employer’s 7.65% for Social Security and Medicare. The IRS sets the employer share at 6.2% for Social Security, on wages up to $184,500 in 2026, and 1.45% for Medicare with no wage limit. Both apply to the premium as well as straight time.

One carpenter at $40.00 an hour for one week, example figures. Premium is half the hourly rate for each hour over 40.
Hours worked in the week	Straight-time wages ($)	Overtime premium ($)	Total wages ($)	Wages per hour worked ($)	Premium share of wages (%)	Wages plus employer Social Security and Medicare ($)
40	$1,600	$0	$1,600	40.00	0.0	1,722.40
45	$1,800	$100	$1,900	42.22	5.3	2,045.35
50	$2,000	$200	$2,200	44.00	9.1	2,368.30
60	$2,400	$400	$2,800	46.67	14.3	3,014.20

On a 50-hour week, the carpenter earns $2,200. Divided by 50 hours worked, that is $44.00 an hour, 10% above the base rate. At 60 hours the average rises to $46.67, and premium makes up 14.3% of the week’s wages.

Scale that to a crew. Ten carpenters on 50-hour weeks for eight weeks earn $176,000 in wages, and $16,000 of it is premium. An estimate or a recovery schedule priced at the $40.00 base rate misses that $16,000 before any burden is added.

The labor burden post covers the other items that ride on wages. Some apply to premium dollars and some do not. Check each line of your burden with your payroll provider and insurance carrier before applying one burden rate to every overtime dollar.

Two rates in one week

A worker who does carpentry part of the week and laborer work the rest has two rates. Under 29 CFR 778.115, the regular rate for that week is the weighted average: total straight-time earnings at all rates, divided by total hours worked. The regulation names a few exceptions that allow other methods.

One worker on two rates in a 45-hour week, example figures.
Line	Hours	Rate ($)	Amount ($)
Carpentry	30	40.00	$1,200.0
Laborer work	15	30.00	$450.0
Straight-time earnings	45		$1,650.0
Regular rate (earnings divided by hours)		36.67
Overtime premium (half the regular rate)	5	18.33	$91.7
Total pay for the week	45		$1,741.7

In this example the worker logs 30 hours of carpentry at $40.00 and 15 hours of laborer work at $30.00. Straight-time earnings are $1,650 for 45 hours, so the regular rate is $36.67. The premium for the 5 overtime hours is half that rate, $18.33 an hour, or $91.67, and the week’s pay is $1,741.67.

The job cost report should split that premium across the cost codes the worker charged that week. A system that books all premium to whichever code happened to land after hour 40 puts the whole cost on one activity.

Prevailing wage jobs

Federal and federally assisted construction contracts carry an overtime clause in 29 CFR 5.5(b). It requires one and one-half times the basic rate of pay for hours over 40 in a workweek for laborers and mechanics on the contract work. A violation makes the contractor and the responsible subcontractor liable for the unpaid wages and interest, plus liquidated damages of $33 for each worker for each calendar day worked past the standard 40-hour week without the overtime pay.

The fringe benefit portion of the wage determination stays out of the overtime calculation. Under 29 CFR 5.32, a contractor’s fringe contributions, and cash paid in place of fringes, are excluded from the rate on which premium is computed. The rate can never fall below the basic hourly rate in the wage determination, and employee contributions to fringe plans stay in the rate.

Take a determination with a basic hourly rate of $40.00 and a fringe of $20.00, as an example. Each overtime hour carries a $20.00 premium, half of $40.00. Computing it on the $60.00 total would pay $30.00, which over 10 overtime hours adds $100 a week per worker. The Davis-Bacon fringe post covers how to credit plan contributions against the fringe.

What the BLS hours show

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes average weekly hours for production and nonsupervisory employees in construction. The September 2026 figure is 40.0 hours, seasonally adjusted, and preliminary. Over the 12 months through September 2026 the monthly figure ranged from 39.8 to 40.4 hours. Average hourly earnings for the same group were $39.20 in September, also preliminary.

An average near 40 hours covers crews working short weeks and crews working long ones, so it says little about overtime on any one job. Your own payroll register gives the count that matters, overtime hours as a share of total hours by job.

Revisions and caveats

The BLS figures come from the monthly payroll survey. The two most recent months are preliminary and are revised in the following releases, and FRED lists the next update for November 6, 2026.

The examples cover federal rules only. State overtime laws and union agreements can set different premium rates and triggers, so check the rules that apply to each job before pricing overtime.

How to start on your jobs

Pull the last quarter’s payroll register for one active job and split labor cost into straight time and premium for each week. Divide premium by total wages to get the premium share, and compare that share with the labor productivity figures from the labor productivity post for the same weeks.

Before the next schedule recovery plan goes to the owner, price the added hours at the average rate per hour worked from the table, using your own wages and schedule. That figure, with burden on top, is the labor cost of the acceleration.

Origin raises $20 million for OG-1, a robot that applies joint compound, sands and primes drywall

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 07:40:07 -0400

Origin, a San Francisco robotics company founded in early 2025, came out of stealth on October 15, 2026, with $20 million in funding co-led by Accel and Zacua Ventures. Its robot, OG-1, does drywall finishing. It applies joint compound, sands and primes interior walls. Origin says the money will go mainly toward deploying OG-1 and building its fleet, and will also fund pilots with what it calls two of the largest drywall finishing contractors in the US.

What it does

OG-1 works on walls after the board is hung. According to Origin’s announcement, the robot sprays and spreads compound, sands, and primes to a professional finish, including corners, pillars, soffits and edges. Sanding uses real-time force control, meaning the arm senses its pressure against the wall and adjusts it as it moves. The robot reaches walls up to 14 feet high.

Origin’s product page lists the hardware: a wheeled base with a 30-by-35-inch footprint, cameras and LiDAR (a laser sensor that measures distance to build a 3D picture of the room), and a tool station with swappable end effectors. The announcement describes a three-wheeled platform with a 360-degree view of its surroundings. Origin says the robot works alongside other trades without a cordoned-off area.

The crew still has work to do around it. Per Origin, people handle site mapping and material replenishment, and the robot does the finishing passes. In a finishing contractor’s organization, that puts OG-1 under the foreman or superintendent who assigns rooms and keeps it supplied with mud and primer. Someone in operations would then compare its output with the crew’s.

The software is what Origin calls its Construction Action Model, a foundation model, which is a large AI model trained on broad data and then adapted to specific tasks. Origin describes three parts:

A reasoning system that plans the sub-tasks in a workflow.
An action policy that navigates, picks where to work and which tool to use, and checks the quality of the result.
A controller that turns those decisions into precise, feedback-driven motion.

Origin trains the model in simulation and on data from its live deployments. The company says the same hardware will later take on taping, drywall installation, drilling and conduit installation. The announcement presents those trades as plans. Today the robot finishes and primes walls.

Evidence so far

The evidence so far is Origin’s announcement and its own website. These figures come from Origin:

Figures Origin reports for OG-1
Claim	Figure Origin reports	Where Origin states it
Wall area completed on job sites	More than 100,000 sq ft	origin.tech homepage
Robot hours worked	5,000	origin.tech homepage
Speed compared with human finishers	3 times	October 15 announcement, CEO Yogesh Ghaturle
Time saved	5x	origin.tech homepage
Cost reduction	20%	origin.tech homepage
Margin expansion	300%	origin.tech homepage
Robots deployed	150 targeted by the end of 2027	October 15 announcement

Source: origin.tech

The production figures need context. The homepage reports more than 100,000 square feet completed and 5,000 hours worked. Dividing one by the other gives about 20 square feet per robot hour. That is a fleet-wide average across every job, and the page does not say whether the square footage counts wall area or floor area, how many coats each square foot received, or what finish level the work reached. Those three details decide how 20 square feet an hour compares with a finishing crew on your jobs.

The speed claims come in two versions. In the announcement, CEO Yogesh Ghaturle says the robots work at three times human speed, and the homepage lists 5x time saved. The human baseline behind each figure, along with the jobs and finish levels measured, is not yet public. The same applies to the 20% cost reduction and the 300% margin expansion on the homepage.

Origin says it put its first robots on New York job sites within 10 months of founding. It says OG-1 now works in commercial space, multifamily buildings, data centers, hotels and warehouses. The homepage lists Bouygues Construction, Performance Contracting Group, JM, Aroundtown, Nesma & Partners and MAREK as customers. Ghaturle explains the company’s timing this way: “We spent 18 months building before coming out of stealth because we wanted to prove what our robots could do on real job sites.”

The outside voices in the announcement belong to investors from Accel and Zacua, which led the round. The other backers include Unilazer Ventures, Schema Ventures, Z21, ISAI and Imad Ventures, plus angel investors from Anduril, Skild AI, 1X and Tesla. Zacua founding partner Vivin Hegde has joined Origin’s board.

How to measure it on your projects

Track finishing labor hours per 1,000 square feet of board, split by finish level. Divide the crew hours spent on finishing by the board square footage from your takeoff, then multiply by 1,000. OG-1 does not tape yet, so separate taping hours from the hours spent on compound coats, sanding and prime. Compare the robot only against the second group.

Capture the baseline before a pilot:

Pull timecards from the last three jobs your crews finished, and code each hour as taping or as later passes.
Take the board square footage for each job from the estimate or the takeoff.
Note the finish level the specs called for on each area.
Count drywall finish items on the punch list per 1,000 square feet.

During the pilot, log robot hours, the crew hours spent mapping and refilling, and touch-up hours after the robot’s passes. The crew’s support time belongs in the robot’s column. If the robot’s hours per 1,000 square feet look good only after you leave that time out, the comparison favors the robot unfairly. The labor productivity method built from daily logs and timecards uses a drywall example and fits this calculation. For background on which trades robots can reach, see Anthropic’s robot exposure index for construction occupations.

A first step is to have the foreman on one job in finishing split tomorrow’s timecards between taping and the later passes.

Availability and cost

Origin is preparing customer pilots in the US and Europe, with more scheduled in Germany, Sweden, France and Saudi Arabia. It is targeting 150 robots deployed by the end of 2027. Pricing and commercial terms are not public, and Origin takes inquiries through its website and sales@origin.tech.

How to annualize Davis-Bacon fringe benefit credit, with a $1,200 health premium worth $7.50 an hour

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 11:34:22 -0400

A payroll administrator preparing certified payroll on a Davis-Bacon job has to show that each worker received the full prevailing wage. That wage is the basic hourly rate on the wage determination plus the fringe benefit rate listed beside it. A contractor can pay the fringe portion in cash, through contributions to bona fide benefit plans, or through a mix of the two.

The plan contributions count only at their hourly equivalent, and the federal rule sets how to compute it. A contractor whose crews split time between public and private work can overstate that credit when it divides by the wrong hours, and its certified payroll then shows less than the prevailing wage.

The rule

Annualization is the Department of Labor’s name for the method. Under 29 CFR 5.25(c), a contractor divides the total cost of a fringe benefit by the total hours the worker put in during the period the cost covers. Those hours include work covered by the Davis-Bacon Act and its related acts, and private work. The rule was written into the regulation in an amendment published August 23, 2023, and the eCFR text was current as of October 15, 2026.

The Wage and Hour Division explains the purpose in Fact Sheet #66E. Averaging over all hours keeps Davis-Bacon work from being the sole or a disproportionate source of funding for a benefit that covers the worker on every job.

The divisor follows the contribution. These rules come from section 15f12 of the Field Operations Handbook unless noted:

Weekly contributions are divided by the week’s hours, monthly contributions by the month’s hours, and quarterly contributions by the quarter’s.
Overtime hours go in the divisor, according to DOL’s infrastructure law FAQ.
When a contractor pays a year in advance, it can divide by the hours the participating workers put in during the prior calendar or plan year. The Resource Book’s example puts a $3,000 annual pension cost over 1,850 hours from the prior year, for $1.62 an hour.
When the contribution differs from worker to worker, such as single and family health coverage, the credit is computed for each worker. An average across the crew is not allowed.

A worked example

The figures below are an example with round numbers. An electrician’s wage determination lists a basic hourly rate of $40.00 and fringe benefits of $20.00, for a prevailing wage of $60.00. In October the electrician works 160 hours, 100 on a Davis-Bacon project and 60 on private work. The contractor pays a $1,200 monthly health premium for this worker and contributes $3.00 to a pension plan for every hour worked.

Fringe credit for one electrician for one month, example figures
Fringe item	Cost for the month ($)	Hours worked on all jobs	Credit per hour ($)
Health insurance premium	$1,200	160	7.50
Pension contribution at $3.00 per hour	$480	160	3.00
Total creditable fringe	$1,680	160	10.50

The creditable fringe comes to $10.50 an hour. On each Davis-Bacon hour, the contractor owes the $40.00 rate plus $9.50 in cash in lieu of fringe, so the worker receives $49.50 in cash and $10.50 in benefits.

Dividing the same costs by only the 100 Davis-Bacon hours gives a credit of $16.80. That leaves $3.20 an hour in cash.

The same month with two divisors, example figures
Line	All 160 hours as divisor ($)	100 Davis-Bacon hours as divisor ($)
Fringe rate on the wage determination	20.00	20.00
Health insurance credit per hour	7.50	12.00
Pension credit per hour	3.00	4.80
Total credit per hour	10.50	16.80
Cash in lieu of fringe per Davis-Bacon hour	9.50	3.20
Cash in lieu for the month's 100 Davis-Bacon hours	950.00	320.00

The gap is $630 for the month, which is $6.30 on each of the 100 Davis-Bacon hours. If the worker splits time the same way all year, the gap reaches $7,560 for this one electrician. Fact Sheet #66E lists leaving private hours out of the annualization among the common violations.

Overtime and cash in lieu

Fringe is owed on every hour worked, overtime included. The half-time premium is computed on the basic hourly rate, and cash paid in lieu of fringe stays out of it. DOL’s Resource Book example has an electrician working 44 hours at $27.00 plus $18.00 in fringe. Straight time is 44 hours at $45.00, or $1,980.00, and the premium is 4 hours at half of $27.00, or $54.00, for $2,034.00.

Fact Sheet #66E adds a limit. When a worker is consistently paid above the basic hourly rate, including on work with no fringe requirement, the extra pay is part of the regular rate and goes into the overtime premium.

What cannot be credited

Fact Sheet #66E lists costs that do not count toward the fringe rate. These include workers’ compensation insurance and any other benefit that federal, state or local law already requires. They also include the contractor’s own administrative cost of running its benefit plans, along with travel, per diem, lodging, and company vehicles or phones.

That list matters when the estimating database stores one labor burden figure. Workers’ compensation sits inside burden, as the labor burden post shows, and it cannot be credited toward the fringe rate on a wage determination.

How to use this number

On a public bid, price Davis-Bacon labor at the basic hourly rate plus the cash in lieu each worker will be owed after credit. The credit per hour depends on each worker’s total hours in the period, private work included, so it falls as hours rise. In a 200-hour month, the same $1,200 premium is worth $6.00 an hour.

On the job cost report, the cash in lieu is a labor cost of the Davis-Bacon job. Track it as its own cost code so the project manager can compare it with the estimate each month.

Caveats

The regulation excepts contributions to defined contribution pension plans from annualization. The plan has to provide immediate participation and vesting within the first 500 hours worked, and it has to meet the two conditions in 5.25(c)(3). Contractors and plans can ask the Wage and Hour Division for an exception for other benefits.

Many construction vacation and sick leave plans are unfunded, which means they are paid from the contractor’s general assets. A contractor must get DOL’s approval before it takes credit for an unfunded plan. For vacation, the Handbook divides the year’s vacation pay by the year’s total hours, so $1,500 over 1,500 hours is $1.00 an hour.

When a plan’s cost includes employees who are not laborers or mechanics, such as office staff, their hours go into the divisor or their contributions come out of the cost. This post covers the federal rule. State prevailing wage laws are outside it.

How to start on your jobs

Pick one worker who had both public and private hours last month. Pull the month’s hours by job from payroll, flag the Davis-Bacon hours, and pull each benefit cost paid for that worker with the period it covers. Compute the credit per hour with all hours as the divisor and compare it with the fringe credit on that month’s certified payroll. If the two differ, run the same check for every worker on the job before the next payroll.

Multiply the cash in lieu per hour by the labor hours per unit from the labor productivity post to see what cash in lieu of fringe adds to the cost of each unit installed.

SketchDeck 3.0 adds connection material and revision matching to the AI steel takeoff that more than 500 estimators use

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 07:35:03 -0400

SketchDeck.ai released SketchDeck 3.0 on October 15, 2026. It is a rebuilt version of the company’s AI takeoff software for structural steel fabricators and erectors, the tool that reads a PDF drawing set and returns the member counts, weights and bill of materials a steel estimator would otherwise build by hand. Version 3.0 adds connection material, markup tools and bid tracking to the takeoff, and automates the matching of revised sheets to the originals. The company says more than 500 estimators use the software on hospitals, stadiums and data centers.

What it does

Steel takeoff by hand is sheet-by-sheet work. Maccabee Industrial, a fabricator in southwestern Pennsylvania, described its old method in a SketchDeck customer story: the estimator opens the drawing, finds the W8x10, notes that it is 10 feet long, and marks it off.

SketchDeck runs that work in three steps, according to its homepage:

The estimator uploads the PDF set, which can run to hundreds of sheets. SketchDeck sorts the sheets and reads the scale.
A detection model, meaning software trained to find and label one kind of object on a page, here steel members, locates the beams, columns and bracing and sizes and measures them. It marks what it found and what it could not identify. The estimator reviews those marks, fixes members with a click, and adds connections, counts and markups.
The bill of materials exports to Tekla PowerFab, STRUMIS, FabTrol, E.J.E. or Excel. The 3.0 page also shows Bluebeam as an export target.

The release lists what changed in 3.0. With connection material, the estimator selects a group of members, enters the plates and bolts once, and SketchDeck applies them to every member in the group. The release says the new automations also match revised drawings, pull schedules out of tables and identify drawing scales.

What SketchDeck 3.0 includes, by status
Feature	Status	What it does
Automated takeoff	Carried over	Finds beams, columns and bracing on a PDF set, sizes and measures them, and builds a bill of materials
Revision management	Carried over	Compares a revised drawing set with the original and marks each member as added, removed or changed
Connection material	New in 3.0	Applies plates and bolts entered once to every member the estimator selects
Markup tools	New in 3.0	Areas, polylines, counts and annotations, with quantities that update as the estimator counts
Setup automations	New in 3.0	Matches revised sheets to originals, reads scales, classifies sheets and extracts schedules from tables
Section-cut linking	New in 3.0	Opens the section or detail a callout points to without leaving the plan
Bid tracking	New in 3.0	Shows where each bid stands, with assignments, due dates, roles and permissions
3D modeling	In beta	Turns the 2D takeoff into an interactive 3D model of the frame
Column automation	In beta	Follows a column through every level with the column schedule beside the plan
Page stitching	In beta	Shows multi-page drawing sets in one view
Parametric connection material	In beta	Listed by SketchDeck as a beta feature

Source: sketchdeck.ai

Revision management carries over from earlier versions. An estimator loads the new drawings, lines them up with the old set, and sees every member that was added, removed or changed, ready for a change order. SketchDeck’s blog post on the release explains why it is pushing that feature. The company says GCs are selling jobs at earlier design stages to lock in steel prices, so changes come after award and the fabricator absorbs them. It wants the takeoff to become an early advanced bill of materials (ABM, a bill of materials accurate enough to order steel from) so a shop can buy before detailing is finished.

The direct users are estimators and chief estimators at steel fabricators and erectors. A general contractor would see the effect in the fabricator’s response to a revised set, as steel pricing and a change order that lists members added and removed.

Evidence so far

The evidence so far is SketchDeck’s October 15 release, its product pages, and customer stories and testimonials on its website. These claims come from SketchDeck and its customers:

Results SketchDeck and its customers report
Customer	What was measured	Before	With SketchDeck	Who reported it
Steelworks of the Carolinas	Takeoff throughput		More than tripled	Jordan Engelking, estimating manager, in SketchDeck's October 15 release
Maccabee Industrial	Takeoff time on a 600-ton project		75% less	Dawn Hargraves, estimator, in a SketchDeck customer story
Maccabee Industrial	Overall takeoff speed		50% faster	Dawn Hargraves, estimator, in a SketchDeck customer story
SSE (Southern Services & Equipment)	Estimating time on one large project	About 8 hours	1.5 hours	SketchDeck customer story
SSE (Southern Services & Equipment)	Estimating time overall		50% to 80% less	Justin Airhart, COO, in a SketchDeck customer story
King Steel	Estimating time on complex projects	4 days	2 days	SketchDeck customer story
MotionSteel	Estimates completed per month	30 to 40	70	Jay Livesay, general manager, in a SketchDeck customer story
MotionSteel	Team time freed for detailed reviews		40% to 50%	SketchDeck customer story
MSE	Time on beam takeoffs for larger projects		Up to 95% less	MSE's estimate, in a SketchDeck customer story
MSE	Accuracy rate on large projects		95% to 99%	MSE's estimate, in a SketchDeck customer story
MSE	Time saved		About one work week per month	MSE's estimate, in a SketchDeck customer story
S&H Steel	Time for one project takeoff	A day and a half	About 2 hours	Tim Allen, estimator, on SketchDeck's homepage
NAFCO	Members corrected on a drawing with 100 beams		Fewer than 5, a minute or two each	Matt Chance, estimating, on SketchDeck's homepage

Source: sketchdeck.ai

Two of the stories give a before and after in the same unit, which allows a direct comparison.

Reported estimating time before and with SketchDeck
Customer	Task	Unit	Before	With SketchDeck	Cut in percent (computed by Construction Metrics)
SSE (Southern Services & Equipment)	Estimate for one large project	hours	8	1.5	81.3%
King Steel	Estimate for a complex project	days	4	2	50.0%

Source: sketchdeck.ai

The customer stories were posted in December 2025, and several refer to the product under its earlier name, LIFT. They describe the takeoff and revision tools that 3.0 carries over. The connection material, bid tracking and beta features in 3.0 are new, and the stories predate them.

The measures also differ from story to story. MSE’s figures are the team’s own estimates, and its time cut covers beam takeoffs on larger projects. Maccabee’s 75% applies to one 600-ton job, and its 50% to takeoff work overall. SSE’s story adds that the company grew from $8 million to an anticipated $40 million in annual revenue over two years, and links that growth to bidding more work.

Two customers describe how much checking the output still takes. Matt Chance of NAFCO says on SketchDeck’s homepage that on a drawing with 100 beams he adjusts fewer than five, at a minute or two each. Dawn Hargraves at Maccabee said in her company’s story, “I actually appreciate that it’s not 100% perfect because it keeps me engaged and checking the work.” An accuracy rate measured across customers, and error rates for connection material, are not yet public.

For comparison, Togal.AI’s recent takeoff benchmark tested general-purpose AI models on drawing tasks. SketchDeck’s FAQ says its own detection model is built only for structural steel drawings, and that estimators keep the final say on every number.

How to measure it on your projects

Track estimator hours per steel takeoff, recorded with the tonnage and sheet count of each bid. Hours per takeoff is the time from opening the drawing set to a finished bill of materials ready for pricing. Tonnage and sheet count let you compare jobs of different sizes on the same basis.

Capture the baseline before a pilot:

Pull the last ten steel bids. For each, write down the tonnage, the sheet count and the estimator hours from timesheets.
Count bids submitted per estimator per month over the last six months, and the win rate on those bids. Maccabee’s story says its win ratio was 3% to 5%, which is why bid volume mattered to that shop.
For jobs with a revised drawing set, record the calendar days from receiving the revision to sending the change order price.

During the pilot, track a correction rate as well: members the estimator added, deleted or resized per 100 members SketchDeck detected. That number shows how much review the tool needs on your drawings, and it can differ from one drawing set to the next. Run the same bid both ways on at least one job and compare the two bills of materials line by line. General contractors can track the third measure from their side, as days from issuing a revised steel set to receiving the fabricator’s change order pricing.

The same baseline works for other takeoff tools covered here, including Quotr and STACK IQ.

A first step is to pull your last ten steel bids and write down the tonnage, sheet count and estimator hours for each.

Availability and cost

SketchDeck 3.0 is available now to fabricators and erectors. Customers can try the beta features, which are column automation, 3D modeling, page stitching and parametric connection material, by asking during a demo. The company says shops with one estimator and teams with dozens both use the software.

SketchDeck discusses plans and pricing on a 30-minute demo call, where it runs a takeoff live on a drawing set the shop brings and sets up a free trial if the fit is good. Its blog says the rebuilt platform is designed to ship new tools every few weeks. SketchDeck.ai, which its release says was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta, will show 3.0 at FABTECH in Las Vegas from October 21 to 23, at the CISC Canadian Steel Conference in Vancouver on November 3 and 4, and at Trimble Dimensions in Las Vegas from November 9 to 11.

Autodesk names Diana Colella to lead AEC, the product family that brought in $3.58 billion in fiscal 2026

Sat, 17 Oct 2026 11:50:33 -0400

Autodesk named Diana Colella executive vice president of its architecture, engineering and construction business on October 6, 2026. She succeeds Amy Bunszel, who is retiring and stays through November 2 to support the transition. The job covers Forma, Autodesk’s industry cloud for AEC, and desktop products such as Revit and Civil 3D. AECO, the product family Autodesk reports for this business, brought in $3.58 billion in the fiscal year that ended January 31, 2026, which was 49.7% of company revenue. On October 14, Bricks & Bytes published its panel’s reaction, and the three panelists disagreed on whether an internal pick from Media & Entertainment fits the job.

What Autodesk announced

The release says Colella will advance the Forma strategy while she continues to develop Revit and Civil 3D and connects them more closely to Forma workflows. She keeps Media & Entertainment (M&E) until she hires a new leader for it, who will report to her. Her executive bio carries both titles and lists AutoCAD in her AEC portfolio.

Colella said in the release: “My priority is to listen to them, build on the strong foundation Amy and the team have created, and make sure the work we’re doing across Forma and AI translates into meaningful improvements in how projects are designed, built and operated.”

ENR reports that CEO Andrew Anagnost’s internal email to employees gave her a mandate to speed up the embedding of AI in critical workflows, and called her “an internal disruptor and challenger who is willing to question how we’ve always done things while staying close to customers.”

Who Diana Colella is

Autodesk says she has nearly three decades at the company. She joined through its acquisition of Discreet Logic after working at KPMG, and her roles have covered finance, strategy, sales, operations and product management. She ran the AutoCAD business and launched One AutoCAD. Most recently she led M&E, where Autodesk credits her with moving that business to a connected platform through Autodesk Flow and with the acquisitions of Moxion, PIX and Wonder Dynamics. Bricks & Bytes notes that none of those roles was running an AEC product line.

Revenue by product family

AECO stands for architecture, engineering, construction and operations. Autodesk reports AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT as a separate family, so that revenue is not included in the AECO figure even though the bio places AutoCAD in her portfolio.

Autodesk net revenue by product family, fiscal year ended January 31, 2026. Shares computed by Construction Metrics from Autodesk's figures and may not sum to 100 because of rounding.
Product family	FY2026 revenue ($M)	Share of total	Change from FY2025
AECO	$3,583	49.7%	22%
AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT	$1,787	24.8%	14%
MFG	$1,379	19.1%	16%
M&E	$332	4.6%	5%
Other	$125	1.7%	6%
Total	$7,206	100.0%	18%

Source: investors.autodesk.com

AECO grew 22% from fiscal 2025, the fastest of the four families, and Autodesk’s CFO singled out construction in the fourth quarter. M&E grew 5% and made up 4.6% of revenue, so the business Colella ran most recently is less than a tenth the size of the one she takes over. The figures come from Autodesk’s February 26 earnings release, which labels its financial statements unaudited.

What the Bricks & Bytes panel said

The reaction comes from an episode of the Bricks, Bucks & Bytes show, written up by Owen Drury. The other voices were Martin Piekarz and Dustin DeVan, CEO of Ediphi, who worked at Autodesk after it bought his previous company, according to the article.

DeVan said he has never met Colella and is sure she is capable. In his view Autodesk already lacks clarity on where AEC is going, and a leader from a small vertical unrelated to construction makes a clear direction harder to set. (M&E was 4.6% of Autodesk’s fiscal 2026 revenue.) Bricks & Bytes quotes him: “If you don’t have a vision for what AEC should be in five years, you can’t efficiently manage your resources.” DeVan also said he doubts a full outside search took place, although Autodesk said it would run one when Bunszel’s retirement was announced. The article presents this as his view as a former insider and says Autodesk has neither confirmed nor denied it publicly.

Piekarz argued that running a product business takes experience building product, and said he could not see the connection between creative-industry software and the AEC roadmap. Drury took the other side. A strong executive can adapt to a new industry, Drury said, and Colella may have seen something work in M&E that she believes can be repeated in AEC.

How to track this on your Autodesk account

Bricks & Bytes lists four things to watch over the next two quarters:

Who Autodesk hires to run M&E, and whether that person reports to Colella.
Whether the first large Forma announcement under Colella keeps investment in Revit and the other desktop products. Our earlier post covers Autodesk’s plan for Revit and Forma.
Whether senior AEC product leaders leave in the next six months.
Pricing.

Pricing is the item that shows up on a contractor’s invoice. Autodesk already sells token-based access through Flex, where you prepay tokens and spend them at a daily rate per product, and through enterprise business agreements, which give token access to a pool of products over a contract term. At Autodesk University in September, Autodesk previewed a next-generation Autodesk Assistant and said its availability, rollout timing and subscription terms will be announced in 2027. Bricks & Bytes has reported a prediction from Buro Happold’s CTO that AI billing will shift from seats toward compute.

So the number to set up now is your annual Autodesk cost per active user, in three buckets. The first two follow the Design and Make categories in Autodesk’s revenue reporting.

Desktop subscriptions, such as the Architecture, Engineering and Construction Collection, Revit and AutoCAD.
Cloud construction products, such as Autodesk Build and BuildingConnected.
Token spending through Flex or an enterprise business agreement.

Add up 12 months of Autodesk invoices in each bucket and divide by the number of people who used those products in that period. If the 2027 terms move AI features into token billing, you will have a per-user baseline to price them against. A first step is to get the list of assigned users by product from whoever manages your Autodesk account and mark the ones who have not used their seat this year.

How to compute an hourly rate for owned equipment with the Corps of Engineers method, with a $400,000 excavator example

Sat, 17 Oct 2026 11:33:38 -0400

A project manager pricing a change order or a delay claim needs an hourly rate for every machine on the equipment line. For an excavator the company owns, someone has to turn the purchase price and the fuel and repair records into a dollar figure per hour that the owner’s estimator will accept.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers publishes a method for that in Engineer Pamphlet (EP) 1110-1-8, the Construction Equipment Ownership and Operating Expense Schedule. The current text is dated August 12, 2021. USACE uses its rates in independent government estimates, and contractors must use them on negotiated Corps procurements when their own cost records cannot support a rate. Each element maps to a cost the equipment ledger already tracks, so the method works for internal rates too.

What the rate includes

The pamphlet adds an ownership cost and an operating cost, both per hour on a 40-hour workweek.

Ownership has two elements. Depreciation is straight line over the machine’s economic life in hours: total equipment value (discounted list price plus sales tax and freight), less salvage value and the cost of the tires, divided by life hours. The second element is facilities capital cost of money (FCCM), the return a contractor gives up by tying cash up in the machine. It equals equipment value times an average value factor times a discounted cost-of-money rate, divided by working hours per year.

Operating cost has five elements: fuel; filters, oil and grease (FOG), which includes the labor to service the machine; repairs, including maintenance and major overhauls; tire wear; and tire repair.

The rate leaves out operator labor, mobilization and demobilization, field and home office overhead, contingency and profit. License fees, property taxes, storage and insurance are also outside it. The pamphlet calls those allowable costs that belong in the contractor’s overhead rate. Operator wages go in separately at a burdened labor rate, which the labor burden post builds from payroll.

Where the factors come from

USACE posts the factors on the EP 1110-1-8 web page. Each equipment category has an economic life in hours, a salvage percentage, a fuel factor in gallons per horsepower-hour, a FOG factor and a repair cost factor. Each of 12 regions has its own working hours per year, fuel prices, sales tax and freight rates.

The cost-of-money rate is Treasury’s Prompt Payment interest rate. The pamphlet divides it by 1.25 so it does not double count the markup it assumes for overhead and profit. Treasury set the rate for July 1 through December 31, 2026 at 4.75%, which discounts to 3.8%.

A worked example

The figures below are an example with round numbers. A contractor owns a 200-horsepower hydraulic excavator with a total equipment value of $400,000, an economic life of 10,000 hours, 30% salvage value and 1,400 working hours a year. The fuel factor is 0.03, off-road diesel costs $4.00 a gallon, the FOG factor is 0.10, the repair factor is 0.80 and the regional labor adjustment factor is 1.00. The machine runs on tracks, so it has no tire cost. The cost of money is the discounted Treasury rate of 3.8%.

Hourly ownership and operating rate for one excavator, example figures, 40-hour week
Element	Formula	Example inputs	Per hour ($)
Depreciation	Equipment value x (1 - salvage) / life hours	$400,000 x 0.70 / 10,000	28.00
Cost of money (FCCM)	Equipment value x average value factor x discounted rate / working hours per year	$400,000 x 0.699 x 3.8% / 1,400	7.59
Ownership subtotal			35.59
Fuel	Horsepower x fuel factor x price per gallon	200 x 0.03 x $4.00	24.00
Filters, oil and grease	FOG factor x fuel cost per hour x labor adjustment factor	0.10 x $24.00 x 1.00	2.40
Repairs	Equipment value x repair factor / life hours	$400,000 x 0.80 / 10,000	32.00
Operating subtotal			58.40
Total hourly rate			93.99

Ownership comes to $35.59 an hour and operating cost to $58.40, for a total of $93.99. The average value factor of 0.699 comes from the pamphlet’s formula:

Depreciation period N equals life hours divided by working hours per year: 10,000 / 1,400 = 7.14 years.
The average value factor equals ((N - 1) x (1 + salvage) + 2) / (2 x N), which gives 9.99 / 14.29 = 0.699.

Repairs are the largest element at $32.00, and the same holds in the pamphlet’s own worked example for Region 2, priced for 2022. For a 350-ton all-terrain hydraulic truck crane, repairs came to $141.97 of a $336.88 hourly rate, and fuel to $43.86.

Adjustments the pamphlet allows

Chapter 3 lists eight rate adjustments, including these three:

Fuel. When the jobsite fuel price differs from the regional table price by more than 10%, the fuel element is multiplied by the ratio of the new price to the table price, and FOG by the same ratio. The Corps requires the fuel supply contracts and invoices.
Weeks over 40 hours. FCCM is paid on at most 40 hours a week, so on a longer week the 40 hours of FCCM are spread across the actual hours.
Standby. The standby rate is half the hourly depreciation plus the full FCCM. Paid standby is capped at 40 hours a week per machine, operating hours in that week count against the cap, and no standby is paid for time the machine would have sat idle anyway.

The example excavator under three of the pamphlet's adjustments, example figures
Case	Ownership ($/hr)	Operating ($/hr)	Total ($/hr)
Base rate, 40 hours a week	35.59	58.40	93.99
Diesel at $5.00 instead of $4.00	35.59	65.00	100.59
60 hours a week	33.06	58.40	91.46
Standby	21.59	0.00	21.59

At $5.00 diesel, fuel rises to $30.00 and FOG to $3.00, and the total rate rises $6.60 to $100.59. A 25% increase in the fuel price raises the whole rate 7.0%. The September input prices post covers the diesel increase in the BLS producer price data.

How to use this number

On a change order or delay claim with a public owner, compute the rate the owner’s estimator will compute. Check the contract’s changes clause for the schedule the owner uses for contractor-owned equipment. Corps contracts use this one, and a fuel adjustment needs the invoices behind it. For internal rates, divide a year of each cost in the equipment ledger by the machine’s metered hours and compare element by element. A repair cost per hour well above the pamphlet’s figure can mean the machine is past its economic life, which chapter 3 handles with a separate over-age adjustment.

Utilization changes the ownership side. The pamphlet spreads the annual cost of money over the region’s working hours. In the example, that annual cost is $10,624.80, which is $400,000 x 0.699 x 3.8%. A machine that logs 700 hours a year carries the same capital cost over half the hours, or $15.18 an hour instead of $7.59.

Caveats

The predetermined rates on the EP web page start from list prices for equipment manufactured three years before the table’s publication. The pamphlet assumes a machine bought new and in sound condition, and it gives no detailed method for equipment bought used. It does not apply to rented or leased equipment.

To use a table rate, a contractor’s machine must be within 10% of the table machine’s size, capacity, horsepower and value. Otherwise the rate is computed with the chapter 2 method or with CHECKRATE, an Excel workbook from USACE.

The cost-of-money rate changes each January 1 and July 1. The Region 2 example used 1.30% in its FCCM line. At today’s discounted 3.8%, FCCM on the same crane would be about 2.9 times as high.

How to start on your jobs

Pick the owned machine with the most hours last year. Pull its purchase invoice, fuel and repair costs and hour-meter readings, and build the rate in a spreadsheet with one row per element, filling gaps in your records with your region’s factors from the EP web page. Then compare the result with the rate your estimating system uses for that machine.

Punch raises $2 million for spoken daily reports that one drywall superintendent says take 3 minutes instead of 30

Sat, 17 Oct 2026 07:34:45 -0400

Punch, an Atlanta construction software company founded in 2025, announced on October 15, 2026, that it raised $2 million from returning investor Gutter Capital. Its product targets the superintendent’s end-of-day paperwork. A super talks to the Punch phone app during the day, and Punch assembles the daily report, flags delays and turns material requests into purchase orders that follow the contractor’s approval rules.

What it does

Today the daily report usually gets written last. The superintendent walks the job, remembers what happened, and types it into a form in the truck or the trailer after a long day.

Punch moves that capture into the walk itself. The super speaks short updates and takes photos as things happen, or forwards an email. According to Punch’s product page, each capture files into the day’s record under labor, deliveries, delays or issues, and the app asks a follow-up question when something is unclear. By the end of the day the report is drafted. The super reviews it and sends it as a PDF on the company’s template, with the photos and AI-written captions inside.

The same updates feed other work. Punch says a spoken material request becomes a purchase order priced from the contractor’s supplier list and checked against the budget, and a scope question becomes a task assigned to the project manager. The rules come from a company “playbook,” Punch’s term for approval limits, preferred vendors and required fields that the contractor writes down once. One example on its homepage routes any change order over $10,000 to the PM before it reaches the client.

Punch sits between the estimating and accounting systems and sends cost data on to the accounting side, which stays the system of record. Its website names Excel, PlanSwift and On-Screen Takeoff on the estimating side, and QuickBooks, Sage, Foundation and Trimble on the accounting side. The company says it is built for contractors doing $5 million to $1 billion a year.

Evidence so far

The evidence so far is Punch’s October 15 release and the customer pages on its website. Most of the measured figures come from one person, Dustin Gibbs, general superintendent at Piedmont Drywall in Atlanta. These claims come from Punch and its customers:

Results Punch and its customers report
Claim	Figure	Who reported it
Time to complete one daily report	30 minutes in the previous field app, 3 minutes in Punch	Dustin Gibbs, general superintendent at Piedmont Drywall, in Punch's release
Time saved per day across daily reporting and material orders (the release also lists payroll)	About 2.5 hours	Gibbs, in Punch's release and customer story
Projects behind those daily reports	6	Punch's daily reports product page
Reduction in time spent on paperwork	About 90%	Punch, on its website
Expected annual savings at one drywall subcontractor	$178,000, a projection	Punch case study of a business case the subcontractor mapped with Punch's team

Source: businesswire.com

The 30-minute baseline is Gibbs’s time in the field app his company used before, and Punch’s customer story says the times were reported by the customer. In that story, one spoken walk covered three buildings across five floors, with photos, flagged delays and a scope question that went to the PM as a task. Gibbs describes the change this way in the release: “I’m saving that time by not having to stop and fill out forms and search through emails all day.”

The $178,000 figure measures something different. It is a projection a drywall subcontractor built with Punch’s team, and most of it comes from expected savings on wrong material orders, labor sub overbilling and problems caught earlier. Only $13,000 of it is the cost of the daily report app the sub expected to drop.

How often supers edit the drafted report before sending it, and results from Punch’s other listed customers, are not yet public. Punch’s homepage shows logos for Rado Mechanical Group, Atlas Demolition and KR-Witwer alongside Piedmont Drywall.

How to measure it on your projects

Track superintendent minutes per daily report, along with the share of reports filed the same day. Minutes per report is the time from opening the form, or the app, to sending the finished report. Same-day filing matters because the daily report is the record a contractor relies on in a delay claim or a backcharge dispute.

Capture the baseline before a pilot:

For two weeks, have each participating super note the start and end time of every daily report.
Count reports filed after midnight on the day they cover, and divide by the total.
Pull ten reports at random and count the entries for crew headcount, deliveries, delays and photos, so you can compare completeness later.

During the pilot, log every report where the super changed the drafted content before sending. That edit rate tells you how much review the tool still needs on your jobs. The labor productivity method built from daily logs and timecards is a second check, since better crew counts in the report make that calculation more reliable. ServiceTitan is piloting a daily log agent for commercial contractors as well, so the same baseline works for comparing tools.

A first step is to time the next five daily reports on one job and write down the minutes.

Availability and cost

Punch is available now. It prices by proposal, with no fixed tiers or per-seat fee, and its pricing page says each proposal targets a return of five to ten times the software’s cost. Punch says a team can go live on one workflow, such as daily reports, in less than 48 hours, and that a broader rollout across purchase orders, invoices, subcontracts and scheduling takes weeks. It plans to spend the new funding on its engineering and customer teams.

How to compute labor burden per hour worked, with a $50 wage that costs $70.86

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 11:36:19 -0400

Labor burden is what a contractor pays for an hour of labor beyond the base wage. It covers payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, health insurance, retirement contributions and paid time off. The estimator uses it to price labor in a bid, and the project accountant uses it to bill time-and-material and force account work.

Many payroll and estimating systems store burden as one percentage of wages paid. Total cost divided by hours worked gives a higher hourly figure, because paid holidays and vacation are wages with no hours on the job. This post builds both from one worker’s year and compares the result with Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures for the construction industry.

What goes into burden

Public owners define the statutory part when they pay for extra work. The Caltrans Labor Surcharge and Equipment Rental Rates book in effect from September 1, 2026 through March 31, 2027 lists six statutory payroll items in its labor surcharge: workers’ compensation, Social Security, Medicare, federal unemployment insurance, state unemployment insurance and state training taxes. Caltrans applies the surcharge to actual wages paid on force account work.

The general Caltrans rate is 10 percent for regular time and 10 percent for overtime. Trades with high workers’ compensation costs get higher rates, up to 16 percent for regular time on sign erection or repair.

The federal rates come from the IRS. The employer pays 6.2% for Social Security on wages up to $184,500 in 2026, and 1.45% for Medicare with no wage limit. The federal unemployment tax, FUTA, is 6.0% of the first $7,000 of each employee’s wages. An employer that pays its state unemployment tax in full and on time can usually take a credit of up to 5.4%, which leaves 0.6%.

State unemployment rates and wage bases vary by state and by employer. Workers’ compensation premium is priced against payroll by class code and then multiplied by the experience mod, which the experience mod post walks through. The rest of burden comes from the firm’s own plans, such as health insurance, retirement contributions, paid holidays and vacation.

Two denominators

The calculation takes one craft and one calendar year of payroll:

Add up the year’s burden for the craft without paid leave. That is the employer payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, health insurance and retirement.
Divide that sum by wages paid, including paid leave. This is the burden percentage most payroll systems store.
Add wages paid and burden to get the total annual cost.
Divide total cost by hours worked, which is hours paid minus holidays, vacation and paid sick time. The result is the cost of one hour on a timecard.

BLS uses the second denominator. Its Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC) survey reports costs per hour worked, and it counts paid leave as a benefit. The other benefit categories are supplemental pay, such as overtime premiums and shift differentials, along with insurance, retirement and savings, and legally required benefits.

A worked example

The figures below are an example with round numbers. A carpenter earns $50.00 an hour and is paid for 2,080 hours, or $104,000 for the year. That includes 160 hours of paid holidays and vacation, so the carpenter works 1,920 hours. The federal tax rates are the IRS rates above. The state unemployment rate, the workers’ compensation rate, the health premium and the retirement match are example values.

Annual cost of one carpenter, example figures. Per-hour figures are rounded to the cent and do not add exactly to the total.
Item	Basis	Annual cost	Per hour worked ($)
Wages for hours worked	1,920 hours at $50.00	$96,000	50.00
Paid holidays and vacation	160 hours at $50.00	$8,000	4.17
Social Security	6.2% of wages paid	$6,448	3.36
Medicare	1.45% of wages paid	$1,508	0.79
Federal unemployment (FUTA)	0.6% of the first $7,000	$42	0.02
State unemployment	3.0% of the first $10,000 (example)	$300	0.16
Workers' compensation	$5.00 per $100 of payroll (example)	$5,200	2.71
Health insurance	$1,200 a month (example)	$14,400	7.50
Retirement	4% of wages paid (example)	$4,160	2.17
Total cost		$136,058	70.86

Burden without paid leave comes to $32,058, or 30.8% of wages paid. Applied to the $50.00 wage the usual way, that rate gives $65.41 an hour. Dividing the full $136,058 by the 1,920 hours worked gives $70.86.

An estimate priced at $65.41 for 1,920 hours comes to $125,592, which is $10,466 short of the carpenter’s annual cost. That amount equals the $8,000 of paid leave plus the 30.8% burden on it.

Two payroll details change the rate during the year. At $50.00 an hour, the carpenter reaches the $7,000 FUTA wage base after 140 paid hours, in the fourth week of January for a worker on payroll from January 1. A burden rate computed from the first quarter alone runs high, so use a full year. On overtime, Caltrans leaves workers’ compensation off the premium portion in its surcharge, citing workers’ compensation regulations. Social Security and Medicare apply to all covered wages.

Comparing with BLS

The ECEC release for June 2026, published September 9, 2026, puts total compensation for private construction industry employers at $51.96 per hour worked. Wages and salaries were $36.13 and benefits were $15.84, or 30.5% of compensation.

Compensation per hour worked, example carpenter and BLS construction industry, June 2026. Example shares are rounded and add to 100.1.
Category	Example per hour worked ($)	Example share (%)	BLS construction industry per hour worked ($)	BLS share (%)
Wages and salaries	50.00	70.6	36.13	69.5
Paid leave	4.17	5.9	2.63	5.1
Supplemental pay	0.00	0.0	2.49	4.8
Insurance	7.50	10.6	3.90	7.5
Retirement and savings	2.17	3.1	2.39	4.6
Legally required benefits	7.03	9.9	4.42	8.5
Total compensation	70.86	100.0	51.96	100.0

Source: bls.gov

Benefits are 29.4% of the example’s cost, close to the industry’s 30.5%, while the categories differ. Insurance is 10.6% of the example’s cost and 7.5% of the BLS figure. BLS includes every worker in its benefit averages, including workers without access to a plan and workers who do not enroll, so an industry average for health insurance falls below the cost of one covered worker. The example has no supplemental pay, which is 4.8% of construction compensation in the BLS table.

Legally required benefits are 9.9% of the example’s cost and 8.5% for the industry. Against wages paid, the example’s statutory items come to 13.0%, above the 10 percent Caltrans general rate. Social Security and Medicare account for 7.65 points of each. Workers’ compensation is 5.0 of the example’s remaining 5.3 points, so the workers’ compensation rate decides most of the difference.

The BLS construction industry figure covers every occupation at construction firms, office staff and managers included. The same table reports construction, extraction, farming, fishing and forestry occupations in goods-producing industries at $47.56 an hour, with benefits at 31.2%. For a field craft, that row is the closer comparison.

Revisions and caveats

ECEC data come from a probability sample of about 6,600 private industry establishments, and BLS publishes relative standard errors for its estimates. The September 2026 figures are scheduled for December 16, 2026.

Starting with December 2026 data, released in March 2027, ECEC will drop workers’ compensation costs. BLS says workers’ compensation has a lower item response rate than other benefits and makes up about 1 percent of total compensation. From that release on, remove workers’ compensation from your own cost before comparing.

How to start on your jobs

Pick one craft and pull last calendar year’s payroll register for it: gross wages, hours paid, hours of paid leave, and each employer tax and benefit line. Compute burden as a percent of wages paid and as total cost per hour worked. When the estimating database holds the first number, the hourly labor cost in the bid leaves out the cost of paid leave.

Multiply the cost per hour worked by the labor hours per unit from the labor productivity post to get labor cost per unit installed. Recompute both numbers when the Social Security wage base changes for a new year and when the workers’ compensation policy renews.

Procore opens Compass Q Score prequalification to every general contractor and subcontractor on its platform

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 07:38:30 -0400

Procore has named Compass, the subcontractor prequalification platform from Toronto-based Bespoke Metrics, its preferred prequalification tool, Bespoke Metrics announced on October 15, 2026. The program, called Prequal for All, makes Compass prequalification available to every general contractor and subcontractor working in Procore, starting that day. It touches the prequalification packet a risk manager reviews before a trade partner can bid, and the bid list a preconstruction team builds in Procore’s Bidding tool.

What it does

Today a subcontractor fills out a separate prequalification form for each general contractor it works with, and someone in the GC’s risk or preconstruction group reads the financial statements, EMR letter and insurance certificates in each one. Compass replaces those forms with one standardized questionnaire, the 1Form. The subcontractor completes it once, keeps it current and chooses which general contractors can see it. Bespoke Metrics says more than 150,000 subcontractors already have a profile.

Compass checks each submission in two passes. Its product page says machine learning flags possible problems in the data first, and then a person checks the supporting documents. Data that could not be verified carries a warning.

From the verified data, Compass produces the Q Score, a rating from Q1 (lowest risk) to Q7 (highest risk), along with a recommended prequalification outcome. Its published methodology weights three sections:

How the Compass Q Score is weighted, per Bespoke Metrics' methodology
Section	Weight in Q Score	Examples of what Compass measures
Business	50%	Employee turnover, revenue diversification, backlog relative to revenue, legal history, years in business
Finance	40%	Liquidity (current ratio, cash ratio), leverage (debt to equity, interest coverage), turnover, profitability
Health and safety	10%	Incident rate, experience modification rate, recordable incident rate, safety policy, dedicated safety lead

Source: compass.bespokemetrics.com

Each ratio is graded strong, average or weak against a fixed threshold, and the same thresholds apply to every subcontractor regardless of trade, region or size. Severe findings, such as an active insolvency or financial statements older than 24 months, cap the score however strong the ratios are. Missing, expired or unverified data counts as weak, and Compass treats financials as expired six months after fiscal year end. The health and safety inputs include the experience modification rate and the recordable incident rate.

The Compass Q Scale
Q Score	Color	Risk level	What Compass's methodology says it calls for
Q1	Green	Very low	Minimal review
Q2 to Q3	Green	Low	Minor issues with above-average overall performance
Q4 to Q5	Yellow	Moderate	Further evaluation or risk mitigation may be required
Q6 to Q7	Red	High	Additional due diligence or information before selection

Source: compass.bespokemetrics.com

The work splits between two groups. The GC’s risk team sets the standards and reviews exceptions inside Compass. Project teams see the Q Score and the prequalification result in Procore, where they invite bidders and level bids. The subcontractor’s financial statements stay in Compass, and only the score and the outcome reach Procore.

The connection runs over the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard that lets AI software pull data from outside systems. Bespoke Metrics says a Compass Risk Agent, which will show project teams where every subcontractor stands from bid to award, is expected later this year.

Evidence so far

The evidence is Bespoke Metrics’ announcement, a statement from Procore inside it, ENR’s report and Compass’s own published methodology. These claims come from Bespoke Metrics:

Compass connects more than 400 general contractors and more than 150,000 subcontractors in 33 countries, representing more than $1 trillion in annual construction volume.
The 1Form meets the data collection standards of more than 70 general contractors across North America.
The 1Form satisfies more than 92% of surety applications.

ENR reports that Compass has been available on Procore for more than two years. What changes now is its reach to every Procore customer and its status as the default provider. Procore’s Geoff Lewis, senior vice president of product, said the partnership will “replace passive, static forms with active, modern risk intelligence.”

The methodology says Compass backtests the Q Score by comparing past scores with what happened later. Default or failure rates by Q Score band, the figure that would show how well the scale separates strong subcontractors from weak ones, are not yet public.

How to measure it on your projects

The metric to track is prequalification cycle time: calendar days from the day you send a subcontractor the prequal request to the day your risk team records an approve, approve-with-conditions or decline decision. When a review runs past the bid date, a subcontractor can end up on the bid list before anyone has read its financials.

Capture the baseline before you switch:

Pull the last 20 to 30 prequalification files your risk team closed and record the request date and decision date for each.
Count how many of those needed a second request for missing documents, such as an expired insurance certificate or last year’s financials.
On two or three recent bid packages, count the bidders who were invited before their prequalification was complete.

During a pilot, record the same three numbers, split between subcontractors who already have a Compass profile and those who have to create one. Log every case where your reviewer’s decision differs from Compass’s recommended outcome, with the reason. That log shows how closely the Q Score matches your own risk tolerance. The marketplace listing says a risk manager can also build a custom risk model with Compass to fit the company’s thresholds.

A first step on one job is to export the bidder list from your next bid package and check how many of those companies already have a Q Score in the Procore Construction Network.

Availability and cost

The announcement says Prequal for All is available to Procore customers now. Procore’s support guide for the existing Bidding integration lists it for the Enhanced Bid Management experience in the United States and Canada, with an active Procore Bid Management subscription required. The fastest match uses each company’s EIN, and Compass syncs to Procore twice a day, so new data can take up to 12 hours to appear. The guide says companies without a Compass account can still see the Q Score for companies listed in the Procore Construction Network.

The Procore Marketplace listing says the integration requires a Compass subscription, that a free trial is available, and that Bespoke Metrics prices by quote. Pricing specific to Prequal for All could not be verified.

Prices of goods bought by construction rose 2.2% in September, led by a 24% jump in diesel

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 11:39:10 -0400

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on October 15 that its producer price index for goods bought as inputs by construction industries rose 2.2% in September 2026, to 365.4. That follows a revised 1.1% gain in August and leaves the index 11.2% above September 2025. A producer price index, or PPI, measures the prices domestic producers receive for what they sell, and this one covers the goods that contractors and other construction industries buy. It is not seasonally adjusted, and the September figure is preliminary. September is the highest reading of the last 25 months and sits 6.4% above the 12-month average of 343.5.

Construction input prices hit a 25-month high in September

BLS PPI, net inputs to construction industries, goods, index June 1986 = 100, not seasonally adjusted, September 2024 to September 2026

September 2026 is preliminary. BLS revised May through August with this release. Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

Goods inputs to construction industries, last 13 months
Month	Index (June 1986 = 100)	Change from prior month	Change from a year earlier
September 2025	328.5	0.1%	3.3%
October 2025	327.6	-0.3%	2.6%
November 2025	329.2	0.5%	3.4%
December 2025	327.2	-0.6%	2.9%
January 2026	329.8	0.8%	2.4%
February 2026	334.3	1.4%	3.2%
March 2026	342.0	2.3%	5.1%
April 2026	347.4	1.6%	7.0%
May 2026	355.6	2.3%	9.1%
June 2026	352.1	-1.0%	7.8%
July 2026	353.5	0.4%	7.8%
August 2026	357.5	1.1%	8.9%
September 2026	365.4	2.2%	11.2%

Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

From February 2025 through January 2026 the index moved less than 1% in either direction each month. The climb started in February 2026, and the year-over-year change has gone from 2.4% in January to 11.2% now.

What moved

Most of the September increase came from energy. BLS’s index of energy bought by nonresidential construction rose 14.5% in the month and stands 70.1% above a year ago. The diesel index rose 24.2% from August and has more than doubled over 12 months, up 115.2%. Strip out food and energy and the nonresidential goods index rose 0.6% for the month and 5.9% for the year.

BLS input price indexes for construction, September 2026
Index	August 2026	September 2026	Change from prior month	Change from a year earlier
Goods inputs to all construction	357.5	365.4	2.2%	11.2%
Goods inputs to residential construction	348.9	355.2	1.8%	9.7%
Goods inputs to nonresidential construction	180.7	184.9	2.3%	11.2%
Nonresidential: energy	184.6	211.3	14.5%	70.1%
Nonresidential: goods less foods and energy	168.3	169.3	0.6%	5.9%
Nonresidential: services	171.8	174.4	1.5%	14.0%

Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

The economy-wide release shows the same pattern. BLS said final demand prices rose 1.3% in September on a seasonally adjusted basis, the largest monthly increase since March 2022, and that final demand energy jumped 10.8%. Within processed goods sold to businesses, BLS traced nearly half of the September rise to a 21.0% increase in diesel fuel, and it named fabricated structural metal products among the indexes that moved higher. (The 21.0% and the 24.2% describe the same fuel. BLS seasonally adjusts the release figures, while the series used here are unadjusted.)

Residential work saw a smaller increase. Goods inputs to residential construction rose 1.8% for the month and 9.7% for the year, compared with 2.3% and 11.2% on the nonresidential side. The services that nonresidential builders buy rose 1.5% in September and 14.0% over the year.

Selected material and fuel price indexes, September 2026, not seasonally adjusted
Material	BLS series	September 2026 index	Change from prior month	Change from a year earlier
No. 2 diesel fuel	WPU057303	675.6	24.2%	115.2%
Steel mill products	WPU1017	388.6	2.2%	27.6%
Structural, architectural and pre-engineered metal products	WPU1074	394.2	1.7%	7.4%
Lumber	WPU081	282.3	-1.4%	8.7%
Ready-mix concrete	WPU1333	395.3	0.0%	2.3%

Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

Metals rose again. Steel mill products gained 2.2% in September and are 27.6% above a year earlier. Structural, architectural and pre-engineered metal products rose 1.7% for the month and 7.4% for the year. Lumber fell 1.4%, its second straight monthly decline, though it remains 8.7% above September 2025. Ready-mix concrete was flat and is up 2.3% over the year.

So input costs are rising faster than the prices contractors charge. BLS also publishes price indexes for new nonresidential building construction, which track what builders receive for the finished work. That index was 186.2 in September, essentially unchanged from August and 5.4% above a year earlier. Rebase both series to September 2024 and the goods that go into nonresidential buildings are up 15.2% over two years, while the price of the buildings is up 6.1%.

Input costs have risen more than twice as fast as nonresidential building prices since 2024

BLS producer price indexes rebased so that September 2024 = 100, not seasonally adjusted

Rebased by Construction Metrics from BLS data published on FRED (WPUIP2312001 and WPU801). September 2026 is preliminary. Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

By trade, the building price indexes rose between 3.9% and 5.8% over the year. Electrical contractors were highest and roofing contractors lowest.

BLS price indexes for new nonresidential building work by contractor type
Contractor type	September 2025	September 2026	Change from a year earlier
All nonresidential building contractors	163.7	172.5	5.4%
General contractors	162.0	170.7	5.4%
Electrical contractors	179.8	190.2	5.8%
Concrete contractors	175.9	184.9	5.1%
Plumbing, heating and air conditioning contractors	147.5	153.4	4.0%
Roofing contractors	191.5	199.1	3.9%

Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

Nearly all of the movement in these building price indexes over the past 25 months appears in January, April, July and October. The other months change by a fraction of a percent, so a flat September is the usual pattern for this series.

How to use this number

The first use is escalation on jobs you priced a year ago. BLS’s technical note says unadjusted indexes are the ones generally cited when contracts escalate, which is why the indexes in this post’s tables are unadjusted. Pick the index that matches the material you are buying, since the aggregate mixes fuel, metals, wood and concrete that moved in different directions in September. A sitework estimate with a large fuel line has a different exposure from a drywall package. The site’s post on tying an escalation clause to a BLS index walks through the clause wording and the arithmetic.

The second use is a margin check on fixed-price work. Run it on the jobs in your work-in-progress schedule that still have material to buy:

Pull unit costs for material and fuel on purchase orders issued in the last quarter.
Compare each with the unit cost in the estimate, and note the month the estimate was priced.
Set the percentage change beside the BLS index for that material over the same months.

If your buyout costs track the 11.2% input figure and your contract values track the 5.4% building price figure, expect projected gross profit on those jobs to fall when you next update cost to complete. Jobs priced before February 2026 carry the most exposure. The goods index has risen 10.8% since January.

Revisions and caveats

September’s figures are preliminary. BLS revises every PPI for up to four months after first publication to pick up late reports and corrections, and this release revised May through August. August’s goods index moved from 357.475 in the September 10 vintage to 357.508, which trims August’s monthly gain from 1.2% to 1.1%. May moved up from 355.363 to 355.564.

BLS collects these prices for the Tuesday of the week containing the 13th of the month. A price change after that date in September will appear in October’s figures, due from BLS on November 13, 2026.

The indexes come from a probability sample of establishments that report voluntarily, and BLS publishes indexes rather than prices. The output side is thinner than the input side. As of January 2023, BLS says, the PPI covered 17% of construction, so the building price indexes describe a subset of contractors and building types (warehouses, schools, offices, health care and industrial buildings among them).

Relantic's RealityBench finds the best AI model reads a tape measure in a solar install photo within 1/8 inch 36% of the time

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 07:38:43 -0400

Relantic, a company in Columbus, Ohio, posted RealityBench to arXiv on October 9, 2026, and revised it on October 14. It is a benchmark, a fixed test scored the same way for every model, that checks whether vision-language models (AI models that answer questions about images) can review the photos crews take to prove work was done. Seven of its eleven scenes come from rooftop solar installation and four from vehicle repair intake. Across 26 models, the best read the tape measure at a solar module frame within 1/8 inch on 36% of photos.

What it does

Each item is one photo and one prompt. The model first judges acceptability, meaning whether the photo meets the stated requirement well enough to serve as proof of work. It then answers a documentation question about what the photo shows, such as the number on the tape or whether a lag bolt is present.

The photos are rendered in Blender, a 3D modeling program, through a simulated phone camera, and 30% of frames have missed focus or hand shake. Because every scene is built, the true answer is always known. The solar scenes follow an install in order:

A close-up of one L-foot showing its flashing and lag bolt.
The low point of the wire under the modules.
A tape measure standing from the roof to the module frame.
A digital angle gauge on the module.
Equipment nameplates, the skyline from the ridge, and the panel’s circuit directory card.

That list matches the photo checklist a solar or electrical subcontractor’s QA reviewer works through, and the closeout photos a GC’s project engineer collects.

Evidence so far

The evidence is the authors’ paper and their leaderboard on Hugging Face. Relantic built the scenes, wrote the scoring rules, ran the models at list API prices, and supplied the human raters (four authors and two colleagues). Results from an independent rerun are not yet public. The paper states that the benchmark measures third-party models and no Relantic product.

RealityBench leaderboard, selected rows. Paper runs were September 13 to 23, 2026; October rows were added after the paper.
Model	Run	Acceptability F1	Documentation score	Cost for all 1378 items (USD)
GPT-6 Astra	Paper	0.61	0.83	30.05
Gemini 4 Argon	October	0.60	0.86	4.96
GPT-6.1 Sol	October	0.59	0.82	6.22
Claude Opus 5.5	Paper	0.58	0.83	16.36
GLM-5.3 Flash	Paper	0.57	0.75	1.30
Gemini 3.8 Flash	Paper	0.54	0.84	7.16
Gemma 4 31B	Paper	0.52	0.79	0.70
GPT-6 Luna	Paper	0.43	0.62	0.69
Single human rater	Paper	0.59
Always answer "adequate"	Paper	0.33

Source: huggingface.co

The acceptability column uses F1, a score from 0 to 1 that penalizes both bad photos a model accepts and good photos it rejects. Answering “adequate” every time scores 0.33. The best models land near 0.6, about where a single non-author rater scored (0.59) on a separate set of rated frames. Raters disagree with each other, too. An individual rater matched the others’ majority on 76% to 92% of frames.

Documentation splits by skill. The authors report that eight of ten fields asking a model to read text, such as nameplates and directory cards, scored 0.90 to 1.00 averaged across models. Questions about small parts, spatial relations and measurements scored lower.

Share answered correctly, solar questions. Tape leaning is scored on all tape photos, the rest on acceptable photos.
Question about a solar install photo	Mean of 26 models (%)	Best model (%)
Is the lag bolt present	67%	82%
Does any wire touch the roof	57%	74%
Is the tape leaning	55%	82%
True module-to-roof gap within 1/4 in	23%	48%
Tape reading at the module frame within 1/8 in	11%	36%

Source: arxiv.org

On every acceptable tape frame the tape stood within 5 degrees of upright, yet the models called it tilted 75% of the time. In that task, 97% of the models’ wrong rejections came from misreading the scene, while the models applied the requirement consistently to what they reported seeing.

The authors also tested real photos, including 133 tape readings on 84 photos of a tape held against everyday objects, which they released. GPT-6 Astra read 44% of those within 1/8 inch and Claude Opus 5.5 read 35%. Model rankings carried over from rendered to real photos on all three questions tested, with Spearman rank correlations (a measure of how closely two rankings agree, where 1 means identical) of 0.63 to 0.79.

The paper priced one human pass over the 1,378 photos at $11 to $165, using $10 an hour as a low bound and $35.91 an hour from BLS wage data for construction and building inspectors as the high end. Claude Opus 5.5 cost $16.36 for the same set.

How to measure it on your projects

Anyway, your own install photos are the better test. If you pilot a model as a first-pass photo reviewer, track the photo retake rate: the share of required photos in a job’s closeout packet that the reviewer sends back for a reshoot.

Capture the baseline before the pilot:

Pull the photo packets from three to five recent jobs and count required photos, photos sent back, and reviewer minutes per packet.
Run the same packets through the model and record its verdict on each photo.
Count photos the model accepted that your reviewer rejected, and the reverse, as separate numbers.

Leave tape readings and gauge values with the reviewer during the pilot, since measurement scored lowest. A first step on one job is to take one closeout packet from a recent solar or electrical job and compare the model’s accept and reject calls with your reviewer’s, photo by photo. ConSynth-X is another test built on synthetic jobsite images.

Availability and cost

The rendered benchmark is a free download on Hugging Face after you agree to share contact information. The frames, ground truth and model results carry a CC BY 4.0 license and the scoring code an MIT license, and the scripts run against any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Across the 28 priced models on the leaderboard, one run of the full set cost from $0.56 to $45.99 at list prices. The simulated scenes themselves, which can generate new tasks, are available by contacting Relantic.

How to tie a steel escalation clause to a BLS producer price index, with a $1.2 million example

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 11:40:51 -0400

An estimator who prices a structural steel package in March may not see the mill order placed until summer. When the subcontract price is fixed, the fabricator carries every change in steel prices between the bid and the buy. An escalation clause writes that risk into the contract as a formula, so the price moves by the same percentage as a named price index between two named months.

Most of these clauses use an index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A producer price index, or PPI, measures the average change in the prices that domestic producers receive for their output. BLS publishes a guide for contracting parties that tie prices to PPIs, and the steps below follow it. The guide also says BLS neither encourages nor discourages these clauses and does not help write contracts, so the wording of the clause belongs with your attorney.

What the steel indexes did in the past year

Over the 12 months to August 2026, the BLS index for steel mill products rose 23.4%. The index for hot rolled steel bars, plates and structural shapes rose 13.4%, and the index for goods that construction industries buy as inputs rose 8.9%. All three are not seasonally adjusted. The August values are first-published figures that BLS can still revise.

Steel mill prices rose 23.4% in the year to August 2026

BLS producer price indexes, rebased so that August 2025 = 100, not seasonally adjusted

August 2026 values are first-published and subject to revision. Rebased by Construction Metrics from BLS data published on FRED. Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

Three BLS producer price indexes, August 2025 and August 2026
BLS index	Code	Index base	August 2025	August 2026	12-month change
Steel mill products	WPU1017	1982=100	308.8	381.2	23.4%
Hot rolled steel bars, plates, and structural shapes	WPU101704	June 1982=100	275.6	312.5	13.4%
Net inputs to construction industries, goods	WPUIP2300001	June 1986=100	328.3	357.5	8.9%

Source: fred.stlouisfed.org

Each index has its own base period, so the chart divides each month by that index’s August 2025 value and multiplies by 100. The BLS guide uses the same step when a clause combines several indexes.

Pick the index

The guide asks the parties to cite each index by its full title and code, for example “the Producer Price Index for hot rolled steel bars, plates, and structural shapes, code WPU101704.” BLS has no single index called the Producer Price Index. It warns against citing the All Commodities index, which counts one price change several times as a material passes through stages of production.

A detailed index follows the material more closely. BLS says detailed indexes are also more likely to be discontinued or to miss a month when too few producers report, and it suggests citing commodity indexes at the 4- or 6-digit level or above. The clause should name a fallback for a missing month, such as the next higher-level index.

BLS also suggests indexing the inputs to a product. Its reasoning is that if every seller of a product tied its price to that product’s own index, the price could rise only after the index rose, and the index could rise only after the price did. For a fabricated steel package, the hot rolled bars, plates and shapes index tracks the fabricator’s main purchased material.

Write down the months and the data version

The base month is the month the price was set. Name it by month and year, such as March 2026, and leave the index value out of the contract. BLS revises and occasionally rebases its indexes, and a clause that names only the month always points to the current official figure.

Use the index that is not seasonally adjusted. Seasonal adjustment removes price swings that recur at the same time each year, and BLS says adjusted indexes generally do not belong in these clauses, because the clause is meant to pass along the price change that occurred.

Name the adjustment month the same way. BLS warns against wording such as “the index as of September 30,” which could mean the August index available on that date, the September index, or the October index.

Then choose the data version:

PPI data usually come out between the 9th and the 16th of the following month.
BLS revises each month’s index for up to 4 months after first publication.
The version published 4 months after the first is final and does not change, apart from a correction or a rebasing.

First-published values let the parties settle within weeks of the adjustment month. Final values arrive about four months later and stay fixed after that. BLS asks the parties to agree on the version before the contract is signed.

A worked example

The figures below are an example with round numbers. A steel subcontractor holds a $2,000,000 subcontract priced in March 2026. The parties agree that $1,200,000, the steel material, moves with the hot rolled bars, plates and shapes index. The other $800,000 for shop and field labor stays fixed, although the BLS guide shows how a clause can move a labor share with the BLS Employment Cost Index.

The BLS method for adjusting part of a price divides the adjustable portion by 100. Here each 1% change in the index moves the price $12,000. The clause sets a 3% trigger, with no adjustment until the index has moved at least that far from the base month, and a ceiling of 10% of the adjustable portion, or $120,000. Adjustments run in both directions.

Escalation on $1,200,000 of steel material, base month March 2026 (example figures)
Scenario	Base month index	Adjustment month index	Index change	Adjustment before cap	Adjustment paid
Index rises 12%	300.0	336.0	12.0%	$144,000	$120,000
Index rises 2%	300.0	306.0	2.0%	$24,000	$0
Index falls 5%	300.0	285.0	-5.0%	-$60,000	-$60,000

In the first row the index rose 12.0%, which works out to $144,000, and the cap holds the payment to $120,000. In the second row the 2.0% rise is under the trigger, so the price stays at $2,000,000. In the third row the index fell 5.0%, and the owner receives a $60,000 credit.

The first row also shows why BLS strongly discourages clauses written in index points. The index rose 36.0 points. A clause paying $12,000 per point would pay $432,000, three times the percentage result, because one point is a third of a percent when the index stands at 300.

Where it fits with the other reports

Bill each adjustment as its own change order line. The change order rate post segments change orders by cause, and escalation can take its own cause code there.

Until an adjustment is approved, a steel price increase shows up as higher cost against an unchanged contract value, which the margin fade post and the work-in-progress schedule both track. The commercial furniture post covers the August steel and aluminum indexes in more detail.

How to start on your jobs

Pick one open subcontract or purchase order with a large steel share that was priced at least six months ago. Look up the hot rolled bars, plates and shapes index, code WPU101704, for the month it was priced and for the latest month, and compute the percent change.

Multiply that change by the material portion of the price. The result is the amount a clause would have moved on that job, and it gives you a starting point for the trigger and the cap on the next bid.

Blueprints AI launches V2, which drafts architectural, structural and MEP sheets from a sketch or a written description

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 07:39:21 -0400

Blueprints AI, a Santa Monica startup, launched the second version of its drafting software at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, which runs October 13 to 15, 2026. V2 takes a sketch, a PDF or a written description of a building and produces a drawing set with architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing and interior sheets, according to the company and a TechCrunch interview with its founders. The work it touches is construction document production, the drafting between an approved schematic design and the set that goes to the building department for permit.

Founder Al Dram runs an architecture firm, Drams Design-Build, and added a construction business in 2021 after earning a general contractor’s license, TechCrunch reports. The company says it trained its models on eight years of approved drawing sets from that firm.

What it does

On most projects a drafter or junior architect turns the designer’s sketches into sheets in CAD or BIM, and a licensed architect or engineer reviews and seals them. On a design-build job, the contractor’s design manager coordinates that work and waits on it before permit. Blueprints AI says its tool does the drafting step. The steps below follow the company’s own description.

How a project runs in Blueprints AI, as the company describes it
Step	What happens in Blueprints AI
1. Onboarding	About two weeks. The firm uploads its standards and past projects, and Blueprints AI fine-tunes the model on them
2. Start a project	Upload hand sketches, site photos, PDFs of existing drawings, point cloud scans or a plain-text description
3. Generate	The tool drafts the sheets and applies IBC, IFC, NFPA, ADA and local zoning rules, citing the sections it used
4. Revise	Ask for a change in plain language, upload redlines, or export to CAD or BIM and edit the files there
5. Review and seal	A licensed architect or engineer reviews the set and seals it where the jurisdiction requires, then submits for permit

Source: blueprints-ai.com

Fine-tuning, in step 1, means further training the model on one firm’s past drawings so the output uses that firm’s title blocks, sheet layouts and detail library.

The main change in V2 is coordination across disciplines. TechCrunch reports that one design change now updates the whole project and is checked against local building codes. The first version produced architectural documents only and did not allow editing inside the tool. The company’s site also lists Title 24 energy compliance and fire and life safety sheets, with civil and landscape sheets on Enterprise plans.

Blueprints AI lists single-family, multifamily, ADU, commercial and light industrial work, and says repeatable project types that resemble a firm’s past work benefit most. It recommends settling planning and zoning decisions during design, because those codes vary widely and change often.

Evidence so far

The evidence so far is the company’s product description, its founders’ interview with TechCrunch, and customer comments on its website. These claims come from Blueprints AI:

Manual construction document production takes one to four months. With the tool, the company says, a user spends hours.
Licensed professionals spend about 70% of their time on drafting, a figure the company attributes to the AIA 2023 Firm Survey. Dram told TechCrunch the share is about 80%.
Delivery is up to 10 times faster. The company calls its times illustrative and says they depend on the plan, the project type and its complexity.
More than 4,000 companies have signed up.
Early customers were using V2 before the public launch, Dram told TechCrunch.

Manual drafting compared with Blueprints AI, as stated on the company's website
Measure	Manual drafting	With Blueprints AI
Time spent producing a construction document set	1 to 4 months	Hours, including chat, markup and revisions
Share of professional time spent drafting	70%	15%
Share of time on design and business development	20%	75%
Share of time on admin and operations	10%	10%

Source: blueprints-ai.com

On the website, the president of Beaumont & Associates in Emeryville, California, says the tool freed significant hours from documentation. An unnamed construction company owner in Manitoba says the main bottleneck is getting from a concept to drawings ready to stamp. Drafting hours per set measured on customer projects, and the number of plan-check corrections on sets the tool drafted, are not yet public.

How to measure it on your projects

The metric to track is drafting hours per permit set. It is the total hours that drafters, designers and the reviewing architect or engineer log from an approved schematic design to the first permit submission. Count the licensed reviewer’s hours, because a tool like this moves time from drafting into review.

Capture the baseline from projects you have already permitted:

Pull timesheets for three to five recent projects of the type the tool targets, such as single-family homes or small multifamily buildings.
Record drafting hours, review hours, the sheet count, and calendar days from schematic approval to first submission.
Count the comments in the building department’s first review letter, so a faster set that draws more corrections shows up. Our post on UpCodes AI Plan Review explains how to count them by category.

Blueprints AI does not offer a free trial, only a live walkthrough. A first step on one job is to bring the sketch from a project your city has already permitted to that walkthrough, ask the team to generate the set, and have your architect mark up the output against the approved set. Record the redlines per sheet.

Availability and cost

The company says V2 is live, and it is offering a Founding 100 group of firms priority access with 30% more credits and two extra seats. TechCrunch reports that the first-generation software costs $3,200 to $8,500 a month depending on plan, with custom pricing for enterprises, and that the company may add a one-time fee for single projects.

The company’s pricing page lists monthly and yearly plans, with yearly billing saving up to 20%, and asks buyers to contact sales for prices. Enterprise engagements include an on-premise deployment option. The company says most professional liability policies cover AI-assisted work once a licensed architect or engineer seals the drawings, and tells buyers to confirm with their carrier.

ABC's Construction Backlog Indicator rose to 8.7 months in September, its second monthly gain

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 11:40:23 -0400

Associated Builders and Contractors reported on October 13 that its Construction Backlog Indicator rose to 8.7 months in September 2026. That is 0.2 months above August’s 8.5 and 0.2 months above September 2025. The indicator measures work under contract but not yet performed, expressed as months of the firm’s prior-year revenue, and comes from a survey of ABC member firms in commercial, industrial and infrastructure construction. ABC ran the September survey from September 21 to October 5. Over the past 12 months the reading has averaged 8.4 months, and September’s figure ties April and June 2025 for fifth-highest of the last 25 months. The top reading in that window is May 2026’s 9.1.

Backlog has climbed back from July's low

ABC Construction Backlog Indicator, months of work under contract, September 2024 to September 2026

Member survey. ABC's methodology note does not describe a seasonal adjustment. Source: abc.org

ABC Construction Backlog Indicator, last 13 months
Month	Backlog (months)	Change from prior month (months)	Change from a year earlier (months)
Sep 2025	8.5	0.0	-0.1
Oct 2025	8.4	-0.1	0.0
Nov 2025	8.1	-0.3	-0.3
Dec 2025	8.2	0.1	-0.1
Jan 2026	8.0	-0.2	-0.4
Feb 2026	8.1	0.1	-0.2
Mar 2026	8.6	0.5	0.1
Apr 2026	8.8	0.2	0.1
May 2026	9.1	0.3	0.7
Jun 2026	8.8	-0.3	0.1
Jul 2026	8.0	-0.8	-0.8
Aug 2026	8.5	0.5	0.0
Sep 2026	8.7	0.2	0.2

Source: abc.org

What moved

Commercial and institutional work drove the gain. That segment rose to 9.0 months from 8.5, the highest since July 2025, according to ABC. In ABC’s definitions the segment covers offices, retail, multifamily, hospitals, schools, warehouses and data centers. Heavy industrial backlog slipped to 8.1 months, its lowest since March, though it is still 0.5 months above a year ago. Infrastructure fell to 9.4 months from 10.0.

Backlog in months by segment, region and firm revenue
Group	Sep 2025	Aug 2026	Sep 2026	Change from a year earlier (months)
Commercial and institutional	8.5	8.5	9.0	0.5
Heavy industrial	7.6	8.3	8.1	0.5
Infrastructure	9.5	10.0	9.4	-0.1
Middle States	8.6	7.8	6.7	-1.9
Northeast	7.6	7.8	8.5	0.9
South	9.9	9.8	10.3	0.4
West	7.5	8.3	8.1	0.6
Revenue under $30 million	7.8	7.5	7.7	-0.1
Revenue $30 million to $50 million	7.8	8.9	6.4	-1.4
Revenue $50 million to $100 million	8.3	10.1	11.3	3.0
Revenue $100 million or more	12.5	11.9	11.8	-0.7

Source: abc.org

The regional numbers moved further than the national one. The South rose to 10.3 months and the Northeast to 8.5. The Middle States, ABC’s 12-state block from Ohio and Michigan west to the Dakotas and Kansas, fell to 6.7 months from 7.8. That is the lowest Middle States reading since September 2023 and 1.9 months below a year earlier.

ABC chief economist Anirban Basu tied the gain to data centers. By his count, the 15% of members under contract on data center work averaged 11.3 months of backlog in September, three months more than members without it. He also said 39% of contractors with more than $100 million in annual revenue have data center work now, compared with 1 in 10 smaller firms. The workbook’s revenue bands do not line up neatly with that split. Firms with $50 million to $100 million in revenue jumped to 11.3 months, while the $100 million-plus group held near 11.8 and sat below its 12.5 of a year ago. The $30 million to $50 million band dropped from 8.9 to 6.4 in one month.

The Construction Confidence Index, a diffusion index from the same survey where readings above 50 mean more firms expect growth than decline, moved in both directions. Staffing rose to 60.7 from 59.5. Sales fell to 60.1 from 62.0, the lowest since November 2025, and profit margins fell to 52.0 from 52.9. Basu said more than 1 in 4 contractors expect margins to shrink over the next six months. In the workbook, 23.7% expected margins to fall a little and 2.6% expected them to fall a lot.

How to use this number

ABC computes the indicator for each firm as current backlog dollars divided by prior fiscal-year revenue, times 12. You can run the same arithmetic on your own books and compare like with like:

Take contracted backlog from your work-in-progress schedule at the end of September.
Divide by last fiscal year’s revenue and multiply by 12.
Compare the result with the row in the segment table closest to your firm: your main market segment, your region, and your revenue band.

A $40 million commercial contractor in Ohio would read three rows: commercial and institutional at 9.0, Middle States at 6.7, and the $30 million to $50 million band at 6.4. The segment row is above the national 8.7, while the region and size rows are at least two months below it. For that firm, the region and size rows are the closer comparison. The site’s post on computing backlog in months walks through the calculation with a worked example.

The second use is sorting out how much of the national number applies to you. Basu puts members with data center work at 11.3 months and members without it about three months lower. If you have no data center contracts, compare your backlog with that lower group before reading the 8.7 as your market. Then check the confidence index, where sales expectations fell for the month, before you plan next year’s bid volume off this year’s.

Revisions and caveats

August’s 8.5 months was not revised. ABC first published 8.5 on September 15, and the October 6 workbook carries the same figure. The workbook replaces the full history each month, so earlier months could change without a mention in the release text.

The indicator is a member survey, and the count of responding firms is not in the release or the methodology note. Subgroups such as a single region or revenue band rest on fewer responses than the national figure, which helps explain one-month swings like the 2.5-month drop in the $30 million to $50 million band. ABC’s methodology note says the backlog figure covers the previous month’s work under contract, based on the latest financials each firm has. ABC revised the reference months for the whole series in May 2020 to better match the survey period. The methodology note does not describe a seasonal adjustment, so part of the July dip and the two gains since could be seasonal. The year-over-year comparison avoids that problem, and on that basis backlog is up 0.2 months.

UpCodes says its AI Plan Review flagged 180,000 potential code issues across 1,300 plan sets

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 07:40:48 -0400

UpCodes, an Austin company that sells building code research software, said on October 13, 2026, that its AI Plan Review feature has checked more than 1,300 construction plan sets since it launched in June and flagged more than 180,000 potential issues. Plan Review reads an uploaded drawing set and compares it with the codes and amendments adopted where the project will be built. UpCodes named Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, BDG Architects and Hereford Dooley Architects among the organizations now using it.

The workflow it touches is the code check on a drawing set before it goes to the building department for permit. On a contractor’s side, that is the design manager on a design-build job or the preconstruction team reviewing a set before bid.

What it does

UpCodes describes most QA/QC today as manual review, often done by one person working through the sheets against the adopted code. Plan Review takes the same set and returns a list of issues. UpCodes’ June launch release describes the steps in the order a user takes them.

How a Plan Review run works, as UpCodes describes it
Step	What happens in Plan Review
1. Set up the project	Enter the jurisdiction, code year and building type once
2. Upload drawings	The drawing set goes into the UpCodes QA/QC platform
3. Pick the analysis	A general code review, or a checklist review built on the firm's own QA/QC template
4. Pick disciplines	Optional runs for architecture, structural, MEP, fire protection, life safety, and accessibility and energy
5. Read the issues	Issues sorted by severity and category, each linked to the drawing page and the governing code section, with plan and spec discrepancies flagged
6. Work the list	Filter, comment on, assign and track issues, and ask the Copilot assistant for a code interpretation
7. Rerun and export	Re-upload revised drawings to run the check again, and export the report for consultants, clients or government officials

Source: prnewswire.com

The October release says Plan Review runs on multimodal AI, meaning a model that reads the drawing images along with the text on them. That lets it read a dimension string or a door location on a floor plan together with the notes. UpCodes says each run checks against 11 million sections of locally adopted codes and amendments, with amendments from more than 6,000 jurisdictions.

Each issue in the output carries a severity, a category, the sheet where it appears and the code section behind it. The tool also flags places where the plans and the specifications disagree, the kind of conflict a project engineer would otherwise write up as an RFI once the job is in the field.

UpCodes calls Plan Review a first-pass analysis and says the tool does not replace review by a licensed design professional or approval by the authority having jurisdiction. Someone with code knowledge still has to read each flag and decide whether it is real. A similar tool from Buildcheck, which raised $12 million in September, has its own staff check each flag before a customer sees it.

Evidence so far

The evidence is UpCodes’ own count of every plan set run through the tool since the June launch. The three new users the release names are an airport owner and two architecture firms. These figures come from UpCodes’ October 13 announcement:

UpCodes Plan Review results, June to October 2026, as reported by UpCodes
Measure	Value	How UpCodes states it
Plan sets reviewed since the June 2026 launch	1,300	more than 1,300
Potential issues flagged	180,000	more than 180,000
Jurisdictions covered by the plan sets	73	73
Code editions covered by the plan sets	14	14
Critical issues per plan set	21	average
Share of critical issues involving life-safety systems (%)	46	nearly half (46%)
Share of critical issues that were cross-discipline coordination conflicts (%)	10	roughly one in ten
Estimated potential construction error cost per project (USD)	1,000,000	more than $1 million on average, estimated

Source: prnewswire.com

The plan sets ranged from single-family homes to commercial and medical buildings. Missing exit signage was the most common critical finding. The life-safety group covers means of egress, fire protection and fire-resistance-rated construction. The coordination conflicts are clashes between the architectural, structural and MEP sheets.

The release gives totals and averages, and two more figures follow from them.

Dividing 180,000 flagged issues by 1,300 plan sets gives about 138 issues per set. With 21 of those rated critical, about 15% of what the tool flags is critical. Both inputs are “more than” figures, so treat the ratio as approximate.
Applying the 46% life-safety share to 21 critical issues gives about 10 critical life-safety findings per set. About two per set were coordination conflicts between disciplines, and the two groups can overlap.

Issues per plan set, derived from UpCodes' reported averages
Item	Per plan set	How it was derived
All flagged issues	138.0	180,000 issues divided by 1,300 plan sets (both are lower bounds from UpCodes, so approximate)
Critical issues	21.0	Average reported by UpCodes
Life-safety critical issues	9.7	46% of 21 critical issues
Cross-discipline coordination conflicts	2.1	Roughly one in ten of 21 critical issues

Source: prnewswire.com

The $1 million figure is an estimate. UpCodes built it from the average issue counts and its estimated cost to resolve comparable issues during design, permitting and construction. The share of flags that a reviewer confirmed as real code issues, and the time a reviewer spent working the list, are not yet public.

How to measure it on your projects

The metric to track is permit review comments per submission. It is the number of comments in the building department’s plan review letter for one permit submission, counted by category such as egress, fire protection, accessibility, structural, MEP and energy. A tool that catches code issues before submission should lower that count and the number of resubmission rounds.

Capture the baseline from projects you have already permitted:

Pull the plan review comment letters for three to five recent projects in the same jurisdiction and of a similar building type.
Count the comments in each letter by category, and record the number of review rounds and the calendar days from first submission to permit issue.
Note which comments turned into RFIs or change orders after construction started.

During a pilot, log each flag the tool raises and whether your reviewer accepts it. The share accepted is the tool’s precision, the portion of its flags that are real code issues. A low share means your reviewer spends more of the pilot clearing flags that turn out to be fine. Then, when the building department’s letter arrives, count how many of its comments the tool had already flagged. That share is the tool’s recall, the portion of real issues it caught.

A first step on one job is a backtest. Take a set that has already been through permit, with the comment letter in hand, ask the vendor to run it, and count how many of the building department’s comments show up in the tool’s list.

Availability and cost

UpCodes’ pricing page lists AI Plan Review in early access on the Enterprise plan only, priced through its sales team. The Enterprise plan also lists bulk discounts for teams of 25 or more.

UpCodes plans and list prices, October 13, 2026
Plan	Per user per month billed annually (USD)	Per user per month billed monthly (USD)	Includes AI Plan Review
Essentials	39	45	No
Professional	59	68	No
Enterprise			Yes, in early access, priced by sales

Source: up.codes

The Professional plan adds UpCodes’ Copilot assistant, which answers code questions limited to a chosen jurisdiction and cites the code sections it used. Essentials and Professional come with a two-week free trial. The pricing page does not list a trial for Plan Review.

How to track total float across monthly schedule updates, with a 30-day example

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 11:40:49 -0400

Every month the scheduler statuses the CPM schedule and the software recalculates total float for each activity. The update report usually shows where the critical path stands on that data date. A second number comes from comparing updates: how many work days of float the longest path lost since the last one. Logged month after month, that figure tells a project executive how fast the job is using its float and how many updates are left before the forecast finish moves past the contract date.

The definitions

The Government Accountability Office’s Schedule Assessment Guide defines total float as the time an activity can be delayed or extended before the delay affects the program’s finish date. It can be positive, zero or negative. Negative float is the time that has to be recovered to hold a constrained date, and GAO treats any activity with zero or negative total float as critical.

Free float is the part of total float an activity can use before it delays its immediate successor. An activity can carry 2 days of total float and no free float, in which case a 2-day slip leaves the finish date alone and still pushes the next crew’s start.

GAO calls activities whose float sits within a narrow range of the critical path near-critical, because a small delay makes them critical. The guide gives one example threshold, monitoring activities with 5 days or less of total float, and says the threshold should fit the length of the program.

On reporting, the guide says: “Periodic reports should routinely report the amount of float consumed in a period and remaining on the critical and near-critical paths.”

What a federal schedule spec requires

The Army Corps of Engineers’ guide specification for project schedules, UFGS 01 32 01.00 10, turns those ideas into contract language. The version posted by USACE requires a schedule status report at least monthly. The last activity, End Project, carries a late finish constraint at the contract completion date, so a forecast finish past that date shows up as negative float.

Each periodic update comes with a narrative report. It has to describe the activities on the 2 most critical paths where total float is 20 work days or less, along with problem areas and corrective actions. The update also includes a total float report that lists every incomplete activity in ascending order of total float.

Two clauses decide who gets the float. Section 3.10 says float available in the schedule is not for the exclusive use of either the Government or the contractor. Section 3.7.1 says a request for a time extension must show that the contractor used all the float available for the affected work.

The measure

Five numbers from each update are enough:

Work days from the data date to the contract completion date.
Total float on the longest path, read at the End Project activity or the last activity before it.
Total float on the second most critical path.
Float used this period, the prior update’s longest-path float minus this update’s.
Float as a percent of work days remaining, item 2 divided by item 1.

Keep the units in work days on the project calendar. GAO says all float should be in the same units and notes that nonworking periods on a calendar are not float.

A worked example

The figures below are an example with round numbers. A general contractor is building a mid-rise office building with 330 work days from the baseline data date to contract completion. The baseline shows an early finish with 30 work days of total float on the longest path and 35 on the second path.

The longest path has used 26 of its 30 days of float in eight updates

Total float in work days at each monthly schedule update, example office building

Example figures. Update 0 is the baseline.

Example float log by monthly update (illustrative figures)
Update	Work days to contract completion	Longest path	Second path	Float used this period	Float as % of days remaining
0	330	30	35	0	9.1%
1	309	28	33	2	9.1%
2	288	27	30	1	9.4%
3	267	22	28	5	8.2%
4	246	21	24	1	8.5%
5	225	15	22	6	6.7%
6	204	12	19	3	5.9%
7	183	7	15	5	3.8%
8	162	4	11	3	2.5%

After eight updates the longest path has 4 work days of float left and 162 work days to go. The job has used 26 days in eight months, an average of 3.25 days per update, and 3.7 days per update over the last three. If the average holds, longest-path float turns negative by the tenth update, with about 120 work days left before contract completion.

The percent column adjusts for the shrinking job. Float held near 9% of the remaining duration through update 4, then fell below 7% at update 5 and to 2.5% at update 8.

The longest path dropped to 20 work days or less at update 5, and the second path followed at update 6. On a contract written like the USACE spec, both paths now belong in every narrative report.

Float used by cause

Attach a cause and a responsible party to each period’s loss, the same way a change order log groups changes by cause. The driving activity is the one on the longest path whose late start or longer duration took the float.

Example float used on the longest path by update and cause (illustrative figures)
Update	Driving activity	Cause	Responsible party	Work days of float used
1	Excavation and shoring	Rock not shown in the geotechnical report	Site condition	2
2	Foundation walls	Rain days above the baseline allowance	Weather	1
3	Structural steel erection	Late steel delivery	Supplier	5
4	Metal deck and slab on deck	Crew shortage	Subcontractor	1
5	Elevator shop drawings	Resubmittal after design comments	Design team	6
6	Roofing	Rain days above the baseline allowance	Weather	3
7	Curtain wall	Crew shortage	Subcontractor	5
8	Switchgear	Delivery date pushed by the manufacturer	Supplier	3

Suppliers account for 8 of the 26 days, subcontractor crews for 6, the design team for 6, weather beyond the baseline allowance for 4 and a site condition for 2. The 6 days from the elevator resubmittal and the 2 from rock are the entries a project manager would document for a possible time extension. Under a clause like USACE section 3.7.1, a request has to show that all available float on the affected work was used, so the log of when and why float was used becomes the evidence.

Reading changes in float

GAO lists several reasons a float value can be wrong. Missing or incomplete logic, unrealistic durations, unstatused work and date constraints all distort it. GAO says significant changes in float can mean a logic link was broken or an out-of-sequence activity was completed.

High float gets the same scrutiny. GAO says unreasonable amounts of total float usually come from missing logic. The guide cites a Federal Aviation Administration schedule in which one testing activity showed 1,280 days of float.

GAO also says float should not be treated as schedule contingency, because it is shared along a sequence of activities and any activity on that sequence can use it.

This log pairs with the SPI and CPI calculation from pay applications. SPI compares earned value with planned value in dollars across the whole job. Float on the longest path shows whether the work that is behind is the work that sets the finish date.

How to start on your jobs

Open the last three updates on one active job. Read total float at the finish milestone and on the second most critical path in each, and enter the five numbers above in a spreadsheet row per update. At the next update, add the row along with the driving activity and the cause of any float lost.

Share of project complete	PPC managed traditionally (%)	PPC managed with Buildots (%)
35%	27	52
40%	27	57
45%	27	71
50%	27	37
55%	27	32
60%	31	57
65%	22	72
70%	27	81
75%	27	90
80%	22	96

Share of project complete	PPC managed traditionally (%)	PPC managed with Buildots (%)
35%	27	52
40%	27	57
45%	27	71
50%	27	37
55%	27	32
60%	31	57
65%	22	72
70%	27	81
75%	27	90
80%	22	96

Share of project complete	PPC managed traditionally (%)	PPC managed with Buildots (%)
35%	27	52
40%	27	57
45%	27	71
50%	27	37
55%	27	32
60%	31	57
65%	22	72
70%	27	81
75%	27	90
80%	22	96