It is that time of year—the time of year where the leaves start turning colors and analysts begin to make their predictions for what is to come in 2026. Perhaps an obvious prediction is that the talk of the next 12-18 months will continue to be centered around AI (artificial intelligence)—or more specifically agentic AI. Automation and intelligence are coming together to create a new autonomous era of business for all industries including construction.
To help illustrate this, Gartner Hype Cycles provide a graphic representation of the maturity and adoption of technologies and applications, and how they are potentially relevant to solving real business problems and exploiting new opportunities.
The Players in the Era of Automation
The era of automation is here—but the question remains: What is going to enable it? Gartner recently unveiled the latest emerging technology trends that will support this type of autonomous business across all industries. Let’s explore a few of them.
Machine customers: These are nonhuman actors that purchase goods and services on behalf of people or organizations. Gartner estimates 3 billion B2B internet-connected machines can act as customers today—and that number will grow to 8 billion by 2030. These machine customers could include virtual personal assistants, smart appliances, connected cars, and more. In the construction industry, a smart city digital twin could detect degradation in a public road and that twin could act as a machine customer requesting a repair project, as an example.
AI agents: AI agents can plan, reason, make decisions, and take actions to help an organization meet their goals. These agents could transform many industries by automating work in areas like consumer services, data analysis, logistics, and more. In construction, AI agents can help with bidding, design, and site management, just to name a few. Here at Constructech and Connected World, we have talked about these AI agents in depth, and it is also something Peggy Smedley has explored on The Peggy Smedley Show recently as well.
Decision intelligence: This is a practical discipline that advances decision making by understanding and engineering how decisions are made, as well as how outcomes are evaluated, managed, and improved via feedback. In construction, this could include scenario planning and simulations, realtime optimization of resources, materials, and schedules, and predictive maintenance of machines.
Programmable money: This includes any form of digital money that can be programmed using software that determines its operation based on algorithmic criteria. It can rely on blockchain-enabled tokenization and smart contracts to increase the participation of economic actors and program value exchanges. For construction, an example could be smart contracts. For instance, once a drone verifies the foundation is complete, a smart contract releases payment to the concrete supplier, and bonuses to the site team based on performance KPIs (key performance indicators).
An autonomous construction jobsite could soon be a reality thanks to AI agents, machine customers, decision intelligence, and programmable money. The entire ecosystem runs on a transparent, data-driven infrastructure that reduces costs, increases speed, and adapts dynamically to changing conditions.
Or course this is easier said than done. The construction industry faces a wide range of challenges as it moves to more automation and digital transformation. Resistance to change, high upfront costs, data fragmentation, and cybersecurity risks are just a few of the challenges.
Still, the opportunity to have an autonomous construction business is almost in our grasp. It will be interesting to see how the next few years play out.
Want to tweet about this article? Use hashtags #automation #autonomous #construction #IoT #sustainability #AI #futureofwork #infrastructure
