7 Types of Information Technology in Construction You Will Use in 2026 and Beyond

Benefits of adopting new technologies in the construction industry

Resisting new information technology can mean that your existing tools become obsolete and that your business loses the ability to compete for clients and partners who expect digital delivery, from BIM models to reporting through shared project platforms.

Adopting the right technology helps people make better decisions both in the office and in the field. Better decisions help teams meet or beat deadlines and budget materials, labor and time more accurately, which leads to better margins. In practice the benefits fall into four groups:

• Fewer errors and less rework, because everyone works from the same current information.
• Faster decisions, because data from the site reaches the office the same day instead of weeks later.
• Safer sites, because inspections, training and hazardous tasks can be supported or replaced by technology.
• Better evidence for claims, handovers and audits, because every step is documented as it happens.

The benefits are not automatic. The Autodesk 2025 State of Design & Make construction spotlight, based on more than 3,500 industry leaders in 28 countries, found that organizations that fully automate workflows and actively integrate AI outperform their peers and win more bids, but also that trust in AI fell from 80% to 68% as firms ran into real implementation problems. Technology pays off when it fixes a specific problem and connects to the rest of the business.

What information technologies are used in the construction industry

These seven types of information technology are changing how construction projects are planned, built and handed over. For each one, we describe what it does, where it is in 2026, and what to watch out for.

1. Building Information Modeling (BIM)

BIM combines a 3D model of a building or infrastructure asset with structured data about every element in it, and keeps that information current across the asset’s life cycle. Designers use it to coordinate disciplines and find clashes before construction, contractors use it for quantities, sequencing and site logistics, and owners use it to operate the building.

Where it is in 2026: BIM is mainstream on larger projects. The ISO 19650 series now defines how BIM information is specified, exchanged and secured, from design and construction through operation, with a sixth part on health and safety information published in 2025. The standard also defines the common data environment (CDE): the agreed single source of project information with version control and status tracking.

Watch out for: models that look complete but carry poor data, and BIM used only by the design team while the site still works from printed drawings.

2. Augmented Reality (AR)

AR adds digital information on top of a real-world view, on a tablet, phone or headset. In construction it is useful in three phases:

• Design, before construction begins, to show clients and planners the proposed building in its real context.
• Construction, to check whether installed work matches the model, for example ducts, pipes and openings, and catch mistakes before they are covered up.
• Completion and operation, to confirm that requirements have been met and to show maintenance teams what is hidden behind walls and ceilings.

The key advantage of AR is that it brings documentation and digital information to the place where the work happens. Engineers, site managers and clients can check progress and measurements on site against the model.

Where it is in 2026: tablet-based AR is practical and cheap to try; headset-based AR works well in specific tasks but has not become everyday equipment for most site teams. Watch out for: accuracy depends on how well the model is aligned to the real site, so set-out points and model quality matter more than the device.

3. Virtual Reality (VR)

VR creates an immersive, interactive version of a project before it exists. Clients and users can walk through a building as if it were finished and spot problems that are hard to see on drawings, so they do not pay twice for changes later. The market keeps growing: Fortune Business Insights values the global VR market at $20.83 billion in 2025 and projects $26.71 billion in 2026.

VR also makes construction training safer. Workers can practice responding to emergencies such as falls, fires or work in bad weather, or learn to operate equipment, without being exposed to the real risk.

Where it is in 2026: common for design reviews with clients and end users, and growing in safety training. Watch out for: VR reviews are only as useful as the decisions you record from them; capture comments directly against the model.

4. Robotics

Robots now appear both in factories that prefabricate building components and on job sites. They partly replace manual work in repetitive or dangerous tasks and extend what people on site can do. The main types available today:

• Bricklaying robots. They lay masonry faster, with less waste. FBR’s Hadrian, for example, lays blocks at up to 360 blocks per hour with a two-person crew and is offered to select partners at a base price of AUD 7.8 million, which shows both the potential and the scale of investment involved.
• 3D construction printing. Computer-controlled printers read the digital model and build walls layer by layer. COBOD reports 90+ printing systems installed across more than 35 countries, with projects in France, Denmark and Portugal among them.
• Exoskeletons. Wearable frames that support a worker’s body when lifting or working overhead, reducing strain and the risk of injury from heavy loads.
• Inspection and layout robots. Mobile robots that scan the site to compare progress with the model, or mark layout lines on floor slabs directly from the drawings.

Where it is in 2026: proven in specific, repetitive tasks and in prefabrication; still a niche on most general sites. Watch out for: robots need a site prepared for them, and the business case depends on volume.

5. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is the type of construction IT that has changed most since 2023. Construction firms use it to analyze project data, monitor sites, read documents, predict delays and risks, and support decisions that affect quality, safety, profitability and schedule. Generative AI added new uses: answering questions about contracts and specifications, drafting reports, and extracting data from invoices and delivery notes.

Where it is in 2026: widely discussed, unevenly used. The RICS AI in Construction 2025 report, based on more than 2,200 professionals, found that 45% of organizations do not use AI at all and only 1% have scaled it across projects. The main barriers are a lack of skilled people (46%), system integration (37%) and poor data quality (30%). The Autodesk survey found 32% of construction leaders approaching or achieving their AI goals.

Our own work shows where AI is most useful today. For a German construction project management consultancy, we mapped more than 300 process steps and found that project steering engineers spent 30-40% of their billable capacity on administration. The resulting roadmap, with a modelled value of €4.19M, combined read-only connections between three disconnected systems, rule-based invoice auditing, and a locally hosted AI that drafts cited answers on contract questions, with every legally binding output signed off by a person. For ING+, a German platform that uses automation and AI to help municipalities and service providers manage infrastructure, our dedicated team redesigned the system and delivered a 40% reduction in development costs.

Watch out for: AI built on messy data produces confident wrong answers. Fix data first, and keep calculations that approve money or create legal commitments rule-based and reviewable.

6. Data collection mobile apps

Almost every part of a construction project can now be managed from a phone or tablet: planning and scheduling, work orders, progress, time reporting, defects, inspections, safety, maintenance and accounting. Field teams capture data where the work happens, with photos, locations and timestamps, instead of copying notes into spreadsheets in the evening.

The scale of adoption shows how mature this category is. PlanRadar, one of many such platforms, reports more than 200,000 users in 75+ countries using it for site diaries, inspections, defect management and handovers. The benefits of integrating this type of technology into your processes are:

• Time savings and fewer data entry errors, because data is entered once, at the source, with structured forms.
• Better workflows, because forms trigger the next step automatically, such as assigning a defect to a subcontractor.
• Instant reporting, because progress and issues reach the office the same day, in reports you can customize.

When standard apps do not fit, a custom one can. For Get Worker, a construction company in Croatia, we built web and mobile applications for employee records, vacation requests and work schedules, connected to the company’s existing Airtable database, and went from onboarding to release in 2 months.

You might also be interested in: How to Make Construction Data Management a Competitive Advantage in the Industry

7. Drones

Drones were one of the first digital technologies to spread quickly on construction sites. Back in 2018, DroneDeploy reported that drone use on job sites had grown 239% in a year, based on data from its own platform. Today they are a standard tool for survey, progress and inspection work. The main benefits of drones for construction companies are speed, lower survey costs, safer inspections and more accurate data.

Topographic mapping and land surveys

Drones cut the time needed to map a site’s topography, because they can cover large areas in one flight. High-resolution images and the models made from them let the team spot problems during pre-construction.

Equipment tracking

With a drone, project managers can quickly check whether equipment and materials are where they need to be, and spot issues remotely.

Remote monitoring and progress reports

Regular flights produce aerial views and models that show clients how the project is progressing, and let the team compare progress with the schedule and the model.

Rules to know in Europe: under EU rules, drones in the low-risk open category must fly below 120 m above ground, generally need a class label from C0 to C4, and must keep set distances from uninvolved people: 30 m in subcategory A2 (5 m in low-speed mode, with an A2 certificate of competency) and 150 m from people and urban areas in A3. Registration is required for class C1 and above, and for C0 drones that carry a camera or sensor unless they are toys. Pilots of C1, C3 and C4 drones must complete the online A1/A3 training and pass a theory exam. Flights that do not fit these limits fall into the specific category, which needs an authorization, so check before the first flight.

How mature is each technology in 2026?

The layer that connects them: data and integration

The seven technologies above all produce data. The biggest gains come when that data flows between them: drone scans compared with the BIM model, defects captured on mobile linked to model elements, and AI reading from one consistent source instead of five conflicting ones.

That is why the most important technology decision is often not which app to buy, but how information will be organized. In practice, that means a common data environment as the single source of truth, open formats such as IFC where tools must exchange models, agreed naming and status rules, and integrations that remove manual re-keying between systems. For Visoplan, a German platform for collaboration on construction projects, our dedicated team worked on exactly this problem: integrating plugins, file types and 3D models into one framework, and over 3.5 years the team grew from 1 to 5 engineers while time-to-market improved by 40%.

How to choose and introduce new construction technology, step by step

1. Start from a problem, not a product. Name the process that costs the most time or money today, for example defect management, invoice checking or progress reporting.
2. Measure the current state. How many hours does it take, how often does it go wrong, what does an error cost?
3. Pick the simplest technology that fixes it. A mobile form often beats an AI project as a first step.
4. Check integration before you buy. Make sure the new tool can exchange data with your project management, accounting and document systems.
5. Run a pilot on one project with a site team that is willing to try it, and agree in advance what success looks like.
6. Train the people who will use it, including subcontractors, and make the new way of working the only way for that process.
7. Measure again and scale. If the numbers improved, roll it out project by project; if not, find out why before spending more.

Common mistakes when adopting construction IT

• Buying tools before defining the process. Software automates whatever process exists, including a bad one.
• Too many disconnected apps. Each solves one problem and creates a new data silo.
• Ignoring the site team. If a tool slows foremen down, they will go back to paper.
• Skipping data quality. Poor data was one of the top three barriers to AI in the RICS survey, and it undermines every other technology too.
• Treating technology as a one-off project. Tools need owners, updates, training and support after launch.
• Overlooking rules, from drone flight categories to data protection for photos and personal data collected on site.

What's next?

Investing in the right construction technology is a sound business move, but adopting new digital tools or changing existing systems takes time and leaves room for error. Working with a software partner that understands construction processes, data and regulation reduces that risk.

Intelvision builds and modernizes software for construction and ConTech companies, implements AI in real workflows, and adds senior engineers to product teams. From our experience, digital data collection is a good place to start: it has a modest upfront cost, quick results and creates the clean data that later steps such as analytics and AI depend on.