If Your Construction Tech Failed, This Might Be Why
Your implementation failed. Now you’re left wondering why.
And while it might be easy to point fingers at the tech, or at the executive sponsor or even at the construction industry in general for not understanding how to best move forward, there just might be a different reason things went sideways.
More often than not, the effort required to make technology work peaks before the ROI becomes visible. Somewhere in that gap, many simply give up.
The first time you experience it, you assume something has gone wrong. But the more reps you take, the more you begin to recognize what it actually is: a predictable phase.
But there’s a second side to this equation, and it wasn’t until recently that I put two and two together.
At What Point Does “Best Practice” Become “We’ve Always Done It That Way”?
“It’s a best practice.” My, how we love that phrase in construction. In fact, I can still remember the first time I heard it. The answer came back fast and confident, conversation over. Not in a rude way, just fact.
But if we’re not careful, there’s a secret side to the idea of something being a best practice.
That is, at what point does “best practice” simply become an excuse for “we’ve always done it that way?”
Construction Doesn’t Hate Innovation. It Hates What Innovation Reveals.
We like to say construction resists innovation because it’s old-fashioned, risk-averse or slow to change. Personally, I don’t think that’s true. Construction doesn’t hate innovation. It hates what innovation reveals: the inefficiencies, the power structures, the status quo.
You see, innovation forces us to ask the truly difficult questions around why we’ve “always done it that way.”
And as a result? Well, bureaucracy doesn’t kill innovation accidentally. It kills it to protect itself.
Expanding the Conversation in Construction: Mission 2026
In 2025 I launched a ridiculous idea. A place to talk about the messy, human, hilarious, frustrating and brilliant reality of this industry we all love.
But the heartbeat behind TheEngiNerdLife was never about just a blog for lessons full of half-serious satire. It was about creating a place to have honest conversations about what it means to build things. A place to say the things I wished more people in construction were saying out loud.
So when looking toward 2026, I don’t want this to be just a turn of the calendar with simply “more blogs on the way.” Something feels different. In 2026 it’s time for TheEngiNerdLife to level up.
TheEngiNerdLife in Review
Every new endeavor we attempt to tackle comes with a lesson, but that lesson rarely reveals itself up front. No, instead it tends to sneak up on you and slap you across the face.
So, after a year of TheEngiNerdLife, I got smacked by a lesson in clarity. A lesson about how all this work educating others has actually been teaching me all along.
Teaching me what exactly? Well, in a true end-of-the-year reflective fashion, here are the seven things 2025 taught me.
Subtract First: Why More Tech Is Making Construction Worse, Not Better
Sometimes more is truly just…more.
When it comes to technology, construction isn’t under-tooled. In a world that labels construction as a “laggard” the irony is that we’re actually overloaded. Yet global construction productivity has grown less than 1% per year.
If technology along were the answer, we’d be delivery every project faster and cheaper by now. But sometimes the quickest way to innovate is not by adding something new, but rather by taking something useless away.
What It Really Means to Enable Innovation
Everyone will tell you they want innovation. Yet all too often, we treat it like a product to buy instead of a culture to build. We’ll sit around and talk about it all day, but few will actually live it.
The truth is, innovation isn’t something you install; it’s something you enable.
And truly enabling innovation is about more than money, software or slogans. It takes people willing to think differently, processes designed for adaptability and leadership courageous enough to trust both.
Goals Are Great, But Systems Protect the Margin
Anyone who knows me knows I love a good challenge. Sometimes too much. But despite all the plucky optimism I might attempt to muster chasing after an audacious goal, it will never be enough. You simply don’t succeed because you aimed high.
You succeed because your systems didn’t let you fall.
In construction that fall can happen fast, so how do we avoid it?
Risk Averse: The Overlooked (and Inevitable) Gift of Failure
Failure is one of the greatest teachers we’ll ever have…yet construction tends to treat it like an embarrassment.
At the end of the day, every win is built on a graveyard of failures. Somewhere along the way, someone tried something, fell short, dissected what went wrong, adjusted the plan and tried again.
So instead of running from it, how do we build learning from failure into our culture?
In the Great Tech Debate of Build vs Buy…Is It Too Much to Ask for Both?
In a world that’s ripe with questions surrounding the buzziest of buzzwords, like “Should we use AI?” or “Will robots replace field crews?” there is a totally different topic that still reigns supreme.
Do we build our own construction software OR do we buy something off the shelf?
I have lived both sides and seen the pros and cons from every angle. But in my opinion, it’s the wrong question.
The Difference Between Reactive and Proactive Project Management
Let’s have a brutally honest moment here.
We’ve been talking about big data in construction for the better part of a decade now. Every conference, every panel, every sales pitch is all about dashboards, KPIs, predictive insights and “data-driven decisions.”
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most contractors don’t actually have big data. But it’s not their fault.
When Alignment Fails…and We’re Too Proud to Admit It
A few weeks ago, I made the bold statement that digital transformations fail due to a lack of alignment between those leading the change and those affected by it.
This week, I’ll prove it to you with a story about the time I watched a multi-billion-dollar tech company totally botch their tech.
But more importantly, we’ll talk about the lessons learned and how you can avoid a similar fate.
When Business Change Management Fails… It’s Not the Tech. It’s Us.
When a digital transformation fails (in construction or otherwise), it’s almost never because the technology didn’t work. It’s because we (those tasked with executing) didn’t lead the change well.
Construction doesn’t have a tech adoption problem. It has an alignment problem.
Let’s get specific…
ConTech Doesn’t Replace Workers, It Empowers Them
Let’s get something straight right out of the gate: construction technology is not here to take jobs. Or at least it shouldn’t be. It’s here to empower the people you already have.
But somewhere along the line, tech adoption in construction started getting a bad rap. And many leadership teams (and software vendors) aren’t helping that perception much.
So, how do we set the record straight?
The Lie We Keep Telling Ourselves: Why Construction Can’t Afford to Keep Failing the Schedule
Let’s get straight to the point. The fundamental flaw in traditional project management is that it assumes perfect order in a world defined by chaos. The old playbook was built on the idea that if you set a timeline and a budget, and then assign resources with precision, everything will fall into place.
Spoiler alert: it rarely does.
7 Reasons ConTech Implementations Fail (& How to Fix Them)
Let’s be honest: implementing technology in construction feels a lot like trying to run new electrical in a 100-year-old building. You start with high hopes, realize the wiring’s a mess, blow a few fuses and end up questioning all your life choices.
Trust me, I’ve been there.
But here’s the deal, construction needs this. So, here are the top seven reasons why construction tech implementations struggle, in my opinion. And more importantly, how we fix them.
Innovation Demands More Than Ideas, It Demands Courage
Let’s be honest, “innovation” is one of those buzzwords that’s lost its shine. As the go-to word for anything new, different or even slightly techy, it’s a label that has been slapped on many safe ideas to make them sound bold.
It’s overused. It’s misused. It’s just noise. So much so that most folks roll their eyes when they hear it from people like me.
But despite all of that, real innovation still matters.
