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Labor
For AECO, uncertainty is nothing new. What has changed is the intensity and concentration of the pressures facing today’ s workforce: a deepening labor shortage, ongoing materials volatility and a more demanding regulatory and contractual environment. Deloitte’ s 2026 Engineering and Construction Outlook highlights that the industry will need hundreds of thousands of added workers to meet projected demand, underscoring that the talent gap is structural rather than temporary. Newforma’ s 2025 AECO Project & Information Management Survey reinforces that reality at the project level, with 41 percent of firms attributing project delays directly to labor shortages and 40 percent saying a limited labor pool is placing added pressure on existing staff.
There is no question that this combination of workforce scarcity and project complexity presents real challenges. At the same time, it is also forcing a reset in how AECO firms think about productivity and resilience. When nearly all players are competing for the same finite talent pool, winning firms cannot rely solely on hiring; they must lift the output and impact of every person already on the team. In that context, the way firms manage project information( how quickly teams can find answers, understand context and act) has become a primary differentiator.
When skilled labor is scarce, execution quality and speed are decided less by how many people are on a project and more by how effectively those people can access and use information. Firms that struggle to retrieve drawings, RFIs, emails and approvals quickly are at a disadvantage; every extra hour spent searching or redoing work is an hour that could have been spent being productive. By contrast, firms that have disciplined project and information management practices can compress decision cycles, reduce errors and rework and create a working environment where overstretched teams can still deliver reliably.
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