The construction industry is facing a worker shortage. Numbers released by The Wall Street Journal late in 2025 show that, although the surging demand for data centers is creating a boom, the North American construction industry currently faces a shortage of nearly 439,000 workers. In Europe, the International Trade Union Confederation estimates a two-million-worker shortage by 2030. Australia shows a similar trend.
The reasons are not complicated – as an older workforce shifts into retirement, fewer young people are pursuing jobs within the construction industry, even as demand grows. However, younger members of the workforce entering the construction industry, or those considering it, often expect digital tools as a baseline. These generations are accustomed to smartphones, cloud-based collaboration tools, and AI assistants, and they want digital tools they can trust and data security they can count on.
If your business is slow to embrace construction technology, you’re probably limiting your opportunity to grow your team.
Digital reality capture is a gateway technology
Multivista invented digital reality capture – photos tied to online floorplans – back in 2003. Since then, the capture technology has expanded to include 3D laser scanning, webcams, UAV/drones, and 360º imagery. Reality capture is a time-tested way to introduce construction technology workflows to project teams, current or future. After all, digital workflows need real-world data, so everything builds up from reality capture.
“Reality capture establishes the foundation,” says Multivista CEO and co-founder Luis Pascual, “and we build on that by delivering a verified, connected layer of intelligence that ensures field data is trusted, integrated, and actively driving better decisions across the project.”
Connectivity and the need for a true digital hub
With solid reality capture data (photos, 3D point clouds, webcam images, etc.) in place, project teams can unlock any number of digital analysis workflows, including AI-empowered safety initiatives or firestopping analysis, deviation analysis, progression tracking, floor-flatness, earthworks progression tracking, and more.
Add to that all the workflows and data coming from the building information model (BIM) stages of construction, and one of the most common challenges for construction teams is connectivity between the different solutions available.
“The real value,” Pascual adds, “comes when all solutions are unified and integrated into a single environment, giving teams seamless access to their data and workflows.”
Pascual is also the president of Hexagon Multivista, the Construction Services and Software division of global tech giant Hexagon. His team recently launched the Hexagon Multivista Hub, a single, end-to-end hub for their Capture, Create, Analyze construction technology services that allows customers to access project data without switching software platforms or navigating multiple logins and entry points to their project data and solutions.
Young employees will have grown up with this kind of digital connectivity in other industries or on platforms; they will take to it intuitively and perhaps even expect it as standard working procedure.
AI and construction
The general rise of AI is fueling the data center construction boom, which is increasing the need for skilled workers. After all, AI still can’t plumb a bathroom, run electrical cables into a server room, or install fire escape railings.
AI does play a role in construction technology; however, solutions such as Hexagon Multivista deviation analysis utilize the speed of machine learning to identify discrepancies between a captured 3D point cloud of as-built conditions and the 3D planned model.
In an industry like construction, where accuracy is paramount, AI-empowered workflows still require a level of human oversight and experience. The next generation of workers will be the AI-experienced, digital natives used to those kinds of hybrid scenarios; likely, they will expect them.
The future requires technology
With a growing need for architecture, engineering, construction, and operations workers, industry leaders are not waiting around for the next generation to come to them. Instead, they’re working with colleges, technical and trades schools, and even high schools to ensure the generation about to enter the workforce is aware of, and hopefully excited about, the industry that will literally build the world of the future.
And technology – on the job site, in the planning and pre-construction phases, and throughout a building’s lifecycle – is playing an increasing role.
Reach out to learn more about getting the future to work on your projects today.
