Why complexity is now construction's second biggest problem
Are you prepared for what’s next in AECO?
In the space of a year, one finding in Revizto's Bridging the Gap dataset has moved more than any other.
Project complexity and coordination have risen from fifth to joint second among the industry’s biggest challenges. The share increased from 14% in 2025 to 17% in 2026, putting it level with supply chain volatility and just behind technology integration and adoption.
That's the sharpest single-year movement in the entire report. And for anyone leading infrastructure project delivery in 2026, it's telling us something important about where the pressure is actually building.
What "project complexity construction" actually means in 2026
Complexity isn't a vague feeling. The 2026 data describes a delivery environment where the logistical and technical difficulty of getting a project built now weighs on teams as heavily as supply chain volatility and regulatory pressure.
Three forces are driving the change:
- Projects are getting bigger. Mega projects, data centers built to support AI, and energy-transition infrastructure are absorbing a larger share of industry workload. They come with more disciplines, more stakeholders, longer delivery windows, and less tolerance for error.
- The tool stack has expanded faster than the industry can integrate it. Technology integration remains the single biggest challenge cited by AEC leaders, at 22%. In the US and France — two of the most mature technology markets in the survey — that figure rises above 25%. The friction isn't buying the tools. It's connecting them.
- The industry's working medium is still split. 60% of firms primarily run on 2D drawings (22% fully drawing-based, 38% mostly drawing-based). Only 22% describe themselves as mostly or fully model-based. That split adds interpretation friction into every coordination moment — forcing stakeholders to mentally reconstruct a complex 3D asset from flat lines. It's one of the clearest BIM coordination challenges facing the industry today.
Put together, it's a delivery environment where the moving parts have outgrown the coordination methods built for a simpler version of the industry.
"Integration, coordination and digital capability are inseparable. The issue is not tool availability. It is workflow design, tech stack structure and organizational readiness."
Allister Lewis, Founder and CEO, Automated Data Driven Design
The real construction rework causes in 2026
When you look at what's driving rework in the 2026 data, the picture sharpens fast. The top causes of rework are now:
The more telling shift is beneath the surface of those numbers. Site conditions, the external factor teams have traditionally pointed to, fell from 53% in 2025 to 41% in 2026. That’s a twelve-point drop in a single year.
External drivers are easing. What remains is within our control.
When design errors and poor coordination account for roughly half of all rework drivers, rework stops being something that happens to projects and starts being something projects do to themselves.
If you want it tighter or more forceful, I can sharpen the tone further.
It also means it's controllable. In an environment where 92% of AEC leaders are reporting construction cost overruns of 6% or more — with the most common overrun bands being 6–10% (45%) and 11–20% (42%) — controllable rework is where margin either gets protected or disappears.
Why standard approaches to coordination risk construction aren't enough
The instinct, when projects get harder, is to layer on more process. More meetings. More reviews. More sign-off stages. It's a reasonable response. It's also part of why the problem is getting worse.
Adding process to a fragmented information environment doesn't reduce complexity. It just redistributes it. The coordination load shifts from the tools to the people carrying it - and those people, on a modern project, are already the most stretched roles in the room.
The firms pulling ahead in 2026 are doing something different. They're reducing the distance between the model, the drawing, and the decision. That means:
- Fewer translations between file formats and platforms
- Fewer handoffs where context gets lost
- Fewer places a clash can hide until it becomes a problem on site
It also means treating construction project coordination not as a phase the project passes through — but as an outcome the project is delivered through.
"The next phase of digital transformation will not be driven by buying more technology, but by better connecting the tools we have to create a single, undeniable source of truth."
Arman Gukasyan, Founder and CEO, Revizto
The direction of travel
Complexity is not going to ease in 2027. The projects in planning today are larger, not smaller. The disciplines involved are more specialized, not fewer. The data being produced is increasing, not decreasing.
With the biggest year-on-year shift in the Bridging the Gap data now pointing toward complexity as an amplifier of every other challenge, the question for delivery leaders is no longer whether it's coming. It's here.
The question now is whether the coordination environment on your projects is keeping up with it — and if it isn't, where the cost is quietly being absorbed.
FAQs
According to the 2026 Bridging the Gap report, 92% of AEC firms are reporting budget overruns of 6% or more. The most common overrun bands are 6–10% (cited by 45% of firms) and 11–20% (42%). The leading causes are internal rather than external: change orders and scope creep (47%), design errors and incomplete plans (42%), and poor communication and coordination (41%). External factors like site conditions have dropped sharply from 53% in 2025 to 41% in 2026 — meaning most overruns are now traceable to how teams work together, not to what happens on site.
Technology integration and adoption remains the single biggest challenge at 22%. But the fastest-growing challenge is project complexity and coordination, which climbed from fifth place in 2025 (14%) to joint-second place in 2026 (17%) — tied with supply chain volatility. This is the sharpest year-on-year movement in the entire dataset.
The 2026 data suggests rework is increasingly controllable because its drivers are internal rather than external. The most effective approach is to address the coordination and communication failures that now drive roughly half of all rework. That means reducing handoffs between formats, closing the gap between 2D drawings and 3D models, and giving teams a single, connected environment to work in — rather than layering more review meetings onto fragmented information.
Three forces are driving it: project scale is growing (data centers, AI infrastructure, energy transition projects, and critical public works all come with more disciplines and longer timelines); technology stacks have expanded faster than firms can integrate them; and 60% of the industry still runs primarily on 2D drawings, which adds interpretation friction into every coordination moment.
Coordination risk refers to the exposure that comes from misalignment between disciplines, stakeholders, and information sources on a project. In 2026, it's increasingly being recognized as the dominant driver of cost overruns and rework — which is why coordination is now treated as a continuous discipline through the full project lifecycle rather than a phase at the end of design.
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