_______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Gray Work
Every construction leader talks about labor shortages, supply chain risk, or rising material costs. But there’ s a quieter threat stealing time, eroding margins, and putting compliance at risk: gray work.
Gray work is what happens when skilled professionals are forced to become part-time administrators. Instead of building, they’ re chasing updates, rekeying data, or stitching together spreadsheets. Too often, the data is there but trapped in silos. Without the right automation and system intelligence, teams are left chasing answers instead of acting on them. In fact, a recent Quickbase survey found that nearly 60 percent of workers spend 11 + hours a week hunting for information across systems. In construction, that’ s not just lost time, but missed safety checks, delayed bids, and money left on the table.
Why gray work is exploding
Despite the billions spent on tech, work on the ground tells a different story: gray work is rising. More than half of construction professionals( 52 percent) say manual work has increased in the last year despite new tech investments. Why?
• Fragmented systems. Tech should reduce friction, but too often, it multiplies it. A patchwork of disconnected apps creates silos, forcing teams to spend hours reconciling data that should flow automatically. Every“ integration gap” becomes another full workday lost each week.
• Overreliance on spreadsheets. Spreadsheets look inexpensive until they cost you millions. Teams enter the same data repeatedly, errors pile up, and costly mistakes follow. One in four construction pros report recurring errors that delay schedules or inflate costs. With integrated databases, mobile reporting, and AI validation at their fingertips, there’ s no reason for skilled builders to spend their time copypasting rows of numbers. They can now be caught instantly in the field before they ripple across projects.
• Rising project complexity. Jobs are bigger, timelines are tighter, and compliance is tougher. What used to be“ quick manual fixes” now ripples across portfolios, eating up thousands of hours. Every extra spreadsheet may seem harmless until it snowballs into lost bids, missed inspections, and profit margins wiped away.
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