2022 Benchmarking Program Overview: Helping Contractors Identify and Prioritize Areas for Improvement

Over the past decade, a flood of venture capital as well as strategic investment from major tech and industry players has left the industry with a flood of emerging and mature technology solutions offering to address an ever-widening and deepening array of problem areas in construction operations. The result increasingly looks like a construction industry that is overwhelmed and skeptical about adoption of solutions.

The BuiltWorlds Construction Technology Benchmarking program offers an independent, solution agnostic way for BuiltWorld’s Engineering and Construction Company members to gauge their own technology adoption effort against their peers so they can identify gaps in their technology stack and also better prioritize which of those gaps to address first. Further, the program aims quickly to give contractors a quick look at the top solutions in the areas they would want to address. Since its inception, the BuiltWorlds Survey Report has aimed to identify leading construction technology solutions across the following technology categories and 22 specialty areas:

Preconstruction

Value Engineering
Life Cycle Costing
Project Modeling & Simulation
Scheduling
Estimating
Bid Management/Pre-qualification

Project Management

Accounting & Payment
Business Intelligence (BI)
ERP
Collaboration & Document Management
Project Management
Safety & Risk Management
QA/QC

Field Solutions

Reality Capture
Tool/Equipment Management
Materials Management
Jobsite Monitoring
Field Management

Advanced Machinery & Equipment

Equipment Purchasing & Procurement
Equipment Management

Offsite Construction / Modular

Prefabrication Design & Management

Watch the Benchmarking Overview Presentation from the 2022 Americas Summit

BuiltWorlds' Director of Technology Adoption, Eveart Foster, delivered a presentation that overviews the benchmarking presentation and dives into some of the insights learned throughout the year of analyzing survey results. Members can click the button to watch the video with un-redacted charts.

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Our Benchmarking Survey Research Methodology

The Benchmarking Survey Program is a key element of BuiltWorlds' program designed to provide more efficient and actionable insights for our members as they implement different technology solutions into their operations.

The report data is gathered through our BuiltWorlds Benchmarking Survey Program which examines construction project delivery technology solutions in 22 specialty areas covering the solutions being applied to construction projects. The questions in the surveys are designed intentionally as a means to get a more clear picture of how and where technology is used and the overall satisfaction companies have when using it. The collection of this data from year to year allows us to identify trends and potentially understand what drives certain decisions—helping member companies in their implementation process.

Respondents for the benchmarking surveys typically include C-Suite leaders, Executives, Presidents, Operations & IT Directors, Directors of Technology/Innovation and Implementation Managers at Specialty Trades, Engineering Firms and General Contractors. Most respondents are members of the BuiltWorlds Engineers & Contractors (E&C) Technology Adoption Leaders Forum, which meets monthly to help each other improve their technology adoption and innovation programs. Additionally, the survey program offers the opportunity for Engineering and Construction Companies to benchmark their own technology adoption and utilization among industry peers.

Combining Benchmarking Findings With Other Primary Research to Enhance Our Insights

Data collected through the benchmarking program is then also informed by data collected through other means, such as applications for our Top Lists, our catalogue of thousands of technology solutions maintained in our companies database, and our programming efforts across our weekly calls and conferences.

Through our comprehensive, rigorous research we are now able to evaluate the solutions in each tech specialty area by level of adoption compared to its user experience and functionality as shown below:

Source: 2022 Project Management & Oversight Report

See Our Full Library of Benchmarking Reports

Members can access a complete library of updated benchmarking reports, reports about emerging tech and venture investment, and surveys of other key topics!

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Mapping Costruction's Data Ecosystem

The construction project delivery data ecosystem comprises all the ways information is captured, translated and analyzed over the timeline of the project delivery lifecycle. The image below illustrates how BuiltWorlds currently maps the flow of this data:

Implementation Variance Between Large and Mid-Sized Contractors

Through our surveys, analyst calls and direct feedback from our contractor network, we are able to estimate the typical project delivery technologies adopted relative to the annual revenue of the contractor.

The chart below helps to illustrate some of the differences we find in terms of how data is collected and managed in mid sized construction companies as distinguished from large construction companies.

Purple = SMB & Enterprise Contractors ($10M+)
Orange = Enterprise Contractors Only ($1B+)

TECHNOLOGY'S RELATIONSHIP TO contractor size (by Revenue)

As construction companies take on more work and more project sectors, the need for different project delivery technology functionalities increases. There is a positive correlation between technology adoption and contractor size. Large contractors are generally identified in our research as having revenues above $1Billion. Typically contractor's of this size have operations in multiple cities or states with various project types and business units. These companies are also more likely to pilot new or emerging solutions within their organizations via dedicated technologists while also having the resources to evaluate and expand those technologies more rigorously and with strategic enhancements from dedicated software engineers within their organizations.

About BuiltWorlds Construction Tech Research Program

To help our Enterprise Level Members more efficiently and rigorously assess the available solutions addressing the various challenges contractors face throughout the project life cycle, BuiltWorlds offer a combination of regular Analyst Calls, Annual Reports, Peer Group Meetings, and also a library of Tech Specialty Reports that dive deeper into the nearly two dozen discreet construction technology areas. These reports provide detailed and up to date information about the following per applicable technology area: