By: William Antonelli

Contractors and construction executives recently met in Manhattan for the Subcontractors Trade Association (STA) Tech Expo, where experts discussed and demonstrated how new technology is shaping the industry across New York, and the country. 

“Our goal is to uplift all trade contractors,” said Felice Farber, Executive Director of the STA. And the expo’s goal is, in her words, to let those contractors “know what’s out there, make the connections, and see how technology can help them do business better.”

Under Construction News attended STA Tech, where we met contractors who are successfully leveraging AI tools to manage their projects, and talked to entrepreneurs developing hardware and software that can help union carpenters and contractors work more safely, efficiently, and precisely.

Here are four exciting ways the construction industry is using new tech to improve efficiency and safety.

In a speech at STA Tech, Turner Construction CEO Peter Davoren pitched AI as a tool for collating institutional knowledge, especially in companies that have operated for many decades. “Your company already has the information,” he said, citing examples like estimates, schedules, and records of past projects. “There’s tremendous value in that information. AI can help you bring it together, recognize patterns, and use what you've learned to make better decisions.”

This might involve asking an AI agent to compare layout plans for a single jobsite across disciplines to find inconsistencies or redundant work. At Skanska, teams use AI to evaluate the scope and relevance of potential projects before accepting them. 

“Some of these projects, there’s thousands of pages of specs and hundreds of pages of drawings that would take us days to get through,” said Anthony Tulino, Vice President of Estimating at Skanska. “Now, with some of the AI tools we’ve developed, we can go through that in hours.”

Although there are a few AI models designed specifically for construction work, most firms use popular “frontier” models like Anthropic’s Claude or Microsoft’s Copilot. Of course, there are risks to incorporating AI into a project’s workflow, including the need to protect your company’s private data from strangers.

During an STA Tech panel, Curtis Partition’s president and CEO Ajay Narula stressed that you should never trust your data to a free AI tool, since free tools have a higher risk of exposing your data to the company maintaining that tool or even outside sources. 

But even paid AI tools may let strangers read your chats. ChatGPT, for example, has an “improve the model for everyone” option that’s turned on by default for all accounts, except for Education, Business and Enterprise plans. When it’s on, OpenAI uses your conversations to improve the company’s AI models. Anthropic has told reporters that humans review Claude conversations too, though once again Business and Enterprise plans are exempt from being used for model training.

Tulino said there are “some common sense things” that an AI should never see, such as security documents and other confidential files, “no matter how much you’re told that it’s appropriate.” 

Putting all your faith in AI also opens up the risk of receiving false information, or “hallucinations,” so it’s always crucial for employees to review AI-assisted work. 

“I treat AI like a new employee that needs to [have their work] verified along the way,” Tulino said. He noted that at Skanska, they “have a very hard rule that nothing AI-generated leaves our office without being fully checked and reviewed” by a human. 

Over the past few decades, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has gone from a niche specialty to a vital part of many construction projects. At its best, BIM gives clients, contractors, and laborers a clear view of what materials the project needs, the physical scope of the work, and what every team is working on. 

But things can go wrong when measurements are imprecise or not everyone is working with the same data. Industry mainstays like Autodesk (best known for its BIM service Revit) and newer players like Dusty Robotics are trying to plug up those holes with new products that are already in use on jobsites across the country.

On the hardware front, earlier this year Leica Geosystems unveiled the RTC Series, the latest in their line of BIM laser scanners. These scanners, which were on display at STA Tech, boast a farther range than previous models, making them better suited for large construction sites. They also perform accurate scans faster, and allow multiple scanners to stream data into cloud storage at once.

Leica also offers autonomous BIM scanners like the BLK2FLY, a drone that scans jobsites from the air. Tools like these let workers survey difficult-to-reach areas.

Projects further along in the construction timeline are making use of FieldPrinter, Dusty Robotics’ flagship layout robot. It uses ink to print BIM layout designs directly onto construction site floors. The company claims FieldPrinter can mark up jobsites up to 10 times faster than manual layout, and accurate within 1/16 of an inch. Union contractors like Skanska are using FieldPrinter not to replace workers, but to make their jobs easier by giving them accurate models to follow while building.

Meanwhile, BIM software tools are integrating new AI features. Autodesk Revit 2027, for instance, uses an MCP (model context protocol) that makes it easier to share BIM data with AI tools and use AI prompts to perform tasks. It also includes an image generator that lets users preview finished builds.

However, with AI companies steadily raising their prices, combined with the ongoing chip shortage making computers more expensive, these innovations could lead to higher costs.

The construction industry is striving to reduce air and noise pollution by investing in green technology. Skanska, for example, is investing in biodiesel equipment and has committed to net-zero carbon emissions by 2045. At STA Tech, Turner Construction reiterated its promise to reach net-zero across its supply chain by 2040.

New York City is giving the construction industry some help in reaching those targets. In September, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice and the Office of Technology and Innovation teamed up to launch the first “Clean Construction Innovation Pilot.” This program is deploying zero-emission construction equipment on active jobsites in Queens, where the Parks Department is testing electric skid steers and material buggies, and on Staten Island, where the Department of Sanitation is testing an electric forklift and compact track loader.

The pilot is scheduled to last several months. City employees are monitoring the jobsites and speaking to workers to evaluate “key performance metrics” like battery life and the impact on local pollution.

NYC’s Chief Climate Officer Louise Yeung said this pilot will help her office figure out “what it takes to successfully adopt the next generation of construction equipment across City operations.” 

Many of the start-ups featured at STA Tech offer tools to sort out misunderstandings between workers on the jobsite and those in the back office, especially when it comes to pay and other money issues. One of these start-ups was Trayd, a payroll system which markets itself as “the only platform built for union compliance.”

Anna Berger, Trayd’s founder and CEO, says that the construction industry has historically suffered from a “fragmentation” issue. If every individual task—bookkeeping, payroll, scheduling—requires its own piece of software, it’s easy for things to fall apart. 

Trayd combines all these jobs into one workflow. It makes sure that workers at the jobsite receive their prevailing wages on schedule and that the back office can keep track of job costs with ease.

But what really helps Trayd stand out from competitors, according to Berger, is its dedication to union workers and prevailing wages.

“We don’t work with contractors that don’t pay prevailing wages,” she said at the event. “When you look at the prevailing wage, workers are getting annuity, they’re getting healthcare, they’re getting vacation time. And they deserve that full package.”

Technology is evolving faster than ever, and the construction industry is racing alongside it. “Innovation is happening whether we want to see it or not,” Farber said. “Union trade contractors need to be on the cutting edge of that. Ahead of the curve, not the last ones to the table.”

But AI and other automated tools pose risks, and as digital tools become more powerful, people both on the jobsite and in the office worry that their jobs might be threatened.

No one has a perfect solution to these issues. But in his keynote address to STA Tech, Davoren said that any potential answer has to “start with the people” doing the work.

“Technology offers tremendous opportunities to improve how we build,” he said. “But the best innovators are the people on the ground … because when people know their voices will be heard, remarkable things can happen. They share what they're seeing. They identify opportunities to improve and that's where innovation begins.”