This blog explains the rise of automation in the construction industry, showing how digital process tools replace manual paper-based work to improve efficiency, safety, compliance and project delivery.
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Digital transformation for businesses in almost all industries has accelerated in the past few years.
The pressures of remote work, plus a need for new competitive technologies, has organizations turning toward mobile-first technologies, AI-powered tools, collaborative platforms, and crucially automation technology.
One industry, however, has struggled to keep up with this trend. While other sectors are accelerating their digital transformation journeys, many construction firms are yet to begin.
For an industry that has so many moving parts, processes, and people, it’s vital that new technologies, like automation, are embraced for businesses to stay competitive.
To gain a real understanding of where the industry is in terms of automation, we partnered with Construction Dive to understand the market to help inform our thesis.
We interviewed over 100 leaders in the industry to get their take on automation in the industry. We felt getting it from the 'horses mouth' was the best way to get a true understanding of the trends.
We will start the blog with the situational analysis of the industry and the survey data and then fire ahead into how organizations are automating and provide real-world examples of automation in practise.
The segment for the interviews and report included:
Key outcomes revealed in our survey included:
Digitization is a top priority for 63% of construction executives and managers.
Results of the survey revealed that while many construction organizations still rely on manual processes (90% still using excel for 25% + of processes), there is large shift towards automation with 47% on their journey. Business leaders are now prioritizing automation, with 63% saying it's a top priority.
I forecast this number to increase with the adoption of AI within organizations. Looking ahead, 74% expect 51% - 100% of processes to be automated over the next 12-months.
This indicates wide-spread automation strategies are in place at board level. And finally, 87% feel that automates provides a competitive advantage.
These results are a great segway to the rest of the blog where we dive into the details of automation.
Construction automation is the use of digital tools, technologies and processes to automate key workflows.
Today, the automation of processes is driven by business needs, but delivered by a hybrid of people, processes and AI.
Our team recently presented this new concept during our AI and Digital Process Automation in 2026: An IT Leaders Briefing webinar. Watch the video below to gain a real understanding of how process automation tech and AI have convered to tranform construction.
AI and Digital Process Automation in 2026: An IT Leaders Briefing webinar.
There are key differences between process automation and physical construction automation. This article is primarily focused on process automation. But, i'll describe the differences below for context.
Construction process automation: this refers to the automation of admin tasks, compliance, and project management workflows. These are typically highly repetitive tasks that can be automated, while still keeping humans in the loop for approvals within the workflow. In this article, this is the core topic I discuss. It's also the key area that the FlowForma platform is used for.
Physical construction automation: this relates to the use of physical/hardware automation technologies on construction sites. Tech such as drones, autonomous machinery and robotic bricklaying are used for augmenting the work of humans with technology.
Construction projects are usually complex with bespoke specifications for each one. This makes projects difficult to iterate and outcomes hard to predict.
However, there are ways to streamline the processes within a construction project, as well as mitigate health and safety risks, eliminate outdated methods (for example, Excel sheets), and limit overruns.
Process automation is an effective way to streamline workflows in a construction project, including material requisition, permit to dig, health and safety checks, risk assessment, and the onboarding of contractors and subcontractors.
For many construction firms, these processes are performed via outdated manual methods. However, outdated approaches will hamper productivity, create overruns (and overheads), and cause project delays.
Requisition for materials is a process often completed via emails, which can be missed, misinterpreted, and cause broken links in communication.
By using a process automation tool, site managers are required to fill out a set form, with accurate data entry fields, which then prompts the requisition team. This ensures that data is relayed accurately, in a standardized way, and means that important information doesn’t get overlooked.
Watch: construction case study: material requisition
The benefits of automation in construction are far-reaching. Since construction projects often have bespoke requirements, automation of processes can positively impact very niche areas of a business.
However, using construction process automation software will also deliver predictable business outcomes:
FlowForma customer Sullivan Engineering describe the benefits of automating on data
Mitigate risk: The construction industry is heavily regulated. Despite this, construction firms still rely on traditional methods (e.g. Excel spreadsheets) for creating audits and reports. If mistakes are made (data not recorded accurately, etc.) there can be serious health and safety implications. With process automation, online forms with exact data entry fields can mitigate risk. For an industry marked by lawsuits, it’s important that construction businesses take preventative measures.
Learn more about the business outcomes for construction in this video delivered in partnership with Engineering News Record (ENR).
Construction Joint Venture, CVB (Costain, VINCI Construction Grands Projects, and Bachy Soletanche), came to FlowForma with a need to automate the following processes:
The firm picked out FlowForma’s process automation tool due to its no code credentials, which meant that non-technical employees could quickly pick up the workflows.
Within only two months of signing up, CVB had something to show for the investment. Employees were impressed by the platform’s ease of use, its agility and flexibility, and the way documents could be inserted into CVB templates. Those employees that worked on-site (often without signal) appreciated offline capabilities within the mobile app.
Most importantly, employees using the FlowForma tool said they felt empowered by process automation.
I interviewed Lambros Arvanitis, BIM Manager at CVB JV about their process automation journey and the key outcomes they achieved. Watch the video below to get inside the real success story and hear from Lambros about their goals, process to digitalize and the end outcomes.
Lambros Arvanitis, BIM Manager at CVB JV describes their automation journey
Health and safety is one of the primary use cases we see automated among our global construction customers. It's one of the most important processes to automate due to regulations, financial impact and the safety of workers and the general public.
No matter what stage of the construction lifecycle organizations are building for, having manual health and safety processes automated is critical.
The recent fine of £124,000 received by Care Pro under the UK's Building Safety Act 2022 underscores the importance of creating digital audit trails of health and safety processes. In this example, the organization received a fine for multiple failures for fire-fighting and fire detection, duty to take general fire precautions and risk assessment, as well as one failure to discharge maintenance duties.
Digital tools, audit trails, and real-time monitoring support organizations to mitigate risk and avoid costly fines such as the one highlighted above.
Alongside the financial impact, there is also reputational damage from the 'media noise' created by the fine. This has the potential to lead to business loss.
Finally, the health and safety of workers and the general public is at risk when relying on manual health and safety processes. In the example above, using manual methods to record fire risk assessments is risky and prone to data errors. Instead, the organization would benefit from a digital process where records are kept digitally, issues are surfaced in real-time, and a clear audit trail is provided for easy access.
The list of health and safety workflows to automate will be very specific to your business needs. Some of the most common workflows we see are:
Fire risk assessments: this tends to be for post construction organizations that look after building maintenance. Fire safety managers review, record and submit rire risks.
FlowForma has a long track record of supporting customers with health and safety and compliance. Organizations start by automating with FlowForma Copilot, our AI workflow generator.
With FlowForma Copilot, users just need to type a simple text prompt and the tool will build out the steps, questions and rules for you.
In the example here below, you'll see the steps needed to create a regulatory compliance workflow and the prompt needed to refine the process.
Once you have a completed process build and live, workers use our mobile app to submit forms, highlight health and safety issues, and complete checklists. This data is automatically passed to relevant stakeholders such as health and safety managers.
An audit trail is automatically generated so that both internal stakeholders and external auditors can access the data any time.
A real-world example of health and safety workflows at play is with Hegarty, an Irish-based construction organization.
The EHS team at Hegarty found it's safety behavioral observation process was administrative heavy and drew in it's resources. There was also a lack of real-time data and delays with actioning inights from the data recorded.
A pilot was launched to automate the safety behavioral observation process and the results were transformative for the EHS team. Results included:
Administration time on SBO was cut by 25%
Brian Mooney, Director at PJ Hegarty, sumed up the benefits to Hegarty:
“Staff are happy with its user-friendly application, and our project managers like the real-time information dashboards available daily,” he said. “We have accessible information to engage with safety at daily meetings relevant to the site activities. It has reduced our EHS staff’s administrative time, allowing them more time on site.”
At every senior manager meeting in construction, compliance is at the forefront of conversations. Compliance is foundational to the industry as construction firms face regular inspections from HSE, agencies and clients.
Regulations such as the Building Safety Act 2022, ISO 9001 quality management and ISO 14001 environmental management mean that organizations still working on email and spreadsheets will find it difficult to produce audit trails in a timely manner. It also means that data is prone to corruption and inaccuracy.
Automating compliance workflows is critical to the modern enterprise, as it supports their health and safety teams. Audit trails are the cornerstone of compliance workflows as they provide the track record of compliance, timestamped and logged for each interaction.
One notable example of the importance of audit trails is with one of FlowForma's customers, A14. The A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon Improvement Scheme was the largest construction project in the UK. It was a £1.5 billion joint venture between Costain, Skanska and Balfour Beatty.
The project needed a platform to generate audit trails for better governance with full traceability and found FlowForma suited their needs.
By creating an audit trail, A14 avoided a £10M penalty for material requisition, proving the importance of accurate and pure data for compliance.
The IT Manager of the project stated,
"We looked at Nintex and K2, from our point, they were cost prohibitive. We looked at PowerApps, which again didn’t really fit the bill, it became quite evident we were going to need to have skills around accessing APIs and doing a bit of Java. FlowForma Process Automation met all our requirements.''
IT Manager, Costain, Skanska & Balfour Beatty A14 Joint Venture
For road construction and building construction businesses to digitize, they need to pick out tools which support the specific needs of projects and processes. This can be difficult, since construction projects are unique and the demands across a project can vary.
FlowForma’s no-code process automation technology is award-winning and built specifically for construction firms. It empowers construction firms to rapidly digitize processes 5-10x faster than other tools.
With process automation, construction firms see an ROI within six weeks. Though the industry has been slow to mobilize, there is a budding race toward digitization. Those firms that automate construction sooner will see themselves ahead in the digitization game.
In a competitive landscape, with knocks from the pandemic and rising costs for materials, it’s important to adopt and set in motion new technologies. Those construction firms that don’t automate their processes now will be playing catch-up down the line. Learn more about our construction management software today.
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