I recently had the privilege of delivering a keynote at COMIT Community Day 2026, which was held on Thursday, March 19 in London. COMIT has been promoting innovation across the UK construction, operations, and maintenance sectors for over 20 years now, bringing together asset owners, contractors, technology providers, and academia to share best practices and push the industry forward. It felt like the right room, and the right moment, to have an honest conversation about where the construction industry stands, and where it needs to go.
The theme of the event centered on something that has been occupying my thinking for a while: how we move construction from a craft-based industry into one that operates with the rigor, repeatability, and efficiency of a modern industrial system. Think this is too long could we edit it to be shorter:
That might sound like a bold ambition. But every conversation I’ve had over the past year with leaders from across the sector, from general contractors and specialty contractors to engineering‑procure‑construct (EPC) contractors , residential contractors and marine contractors has reinforced the same conclusion. The old ways of working are holding companies back. And the first organizations that recognize this will be the ones that thrive the most by gaining first-mover advantage of market share.
What struck me most in those discussions was the scale of the challenges: shrinking project margins, escalating risk, and stagnating productivity. Just as importantly, I was struck by how remarkably consistent these challenges are across every sub‑sector of our industry. Whether I was talking to a property developer or the head of a ship fabrication yard, the pain points were the same and so, I believe, is the path forward.
Those conversations inspired the presentation I gave at the COMIT event, titled ‘From Craft to System: The Industrialization of Construction’. I structured my keynote around three themes that I think capture the shift our industry needs to make:
Theme 1: Why the Construction and Engineering Industry Must Change and Why It Hasn’t Yet
The first theme I explored was the simplest to state and the hardest to act on: the construction industry needs to change, fundamentally, and the barriers are as much cultural as they are technical.
Consider the challenges every construction business faces today. Project margins are under constant pressure because risk is rising, from supply chain disruption to regulatory complexity. Productivity has flatlined while almost every other major industry has found ways to do more with less. And sustainable growth, the kind that doesn’t depend on simply winning more projects and hiring more people, remains elusive for most firms.
When I asked industry leaders why these problems persist, a pattern emerged quickly. There is precious little standardization of processes across the sector. Instead, we have disjointed, silo-based processes and systems that make it extraordinarily difficult to achieve the kind of integrated, end-to-end visibility that other industries such as manufacturing take for granted.
This fragmentation is not just inefficient. It actively prevents the engineering and construction industry from adopting the technologies and methodologies of AI to advanced predictive analytics that could transform business performance. You cannot layer intelligence onto a foundation of disconnected spreadsheets and siloed project data. And that realization leads directly to the second theme.
Theme 2: From Craft to System, Building the Digital Backbone
The heart of my presentation was about what it looks like to move from craft-based working to a systems-based approach, which is built on integrated, standardized, and repeatable processes.
In practical terms, this means rethinking how we manage the entire project lifecycle. This covers the full lifecycle: from bidding to contract, through design, estimation, planning, and scheduling; then procurement and manufacturing; followed by construction and installation; and finally, the operate-and-maintain phase.Today, most construction businesses handle each of these stages with different tools, different teams, and different data. The result is a fragmented picture where nobody has true visibility across the full lifecycle of a project.
What I showed the audience was how modern ERP platforms provide a unified solution that connects all of these stages within a single digital backbone. Replacing every tool overnight isn’t the goal. The immediate priority is to build a connected foundation. This includes CRM and pipeline management, estimating and tender responses, bill of quantities and scope definition, project costing and forecasting, supply chain and sub‑contract management, materials management, and the processes for payment certificates and retentions.
The connected Project Bill of Material (BOM) sits at the center of this approach. It enables teams to coordinate design, procurement, manufacturing, shipping, installation, and handover as a single, integrated process rather than a series of disconnected handoffs. When the BOM is connected and live, decisions made in design ripple through to procurement and scheduling in real time. That is the difference between craft and system.
Critically, this digital backbone is also what enables meaningful AI adoption. Industrial AI, the kind that solves real-world problems on real projects, needs clean, structured, connected data to work with. Without the backbone, AI remains a pilot. With it, AI becomes a practical tool for forecasting, risk management, and decision support across the project lifecycle.
Theme 3: The New Hybrid Model: Turning Challenges into Competitive Advantage
The third theme I shared was about the future state: a new hybrid model that blends the best of construction-centric and engineering and manufacturing-centric approaches.
Traditionally, construction has operated on a bill of quantities model. You define the scope, measure the quantities, price them, and manage the project against that framework. Engineering and manufacturing businesses, by contrast, operate on a bill of materials models that track individual components through design, procurement, manufacture, and assembly with serialized traceability. These two worlds have largely operated in parallel.
The new hybrid model brings them together. It recognizes that modern construction, especially with the growth of prefabrication and modular methods, increasingly involves manufacturing-style processes alongside traditional site-based work. A project might involve standardized materials and components, structured work packages with part and tag numbering, inventory control and logistics, Building Information Modeling (BIM) integration, and shipping, kitting, and assembly packages all feeding into an evolving project bill of material that culminates in a digital asset handover.
This is where the real prize sits. When you standardize your coding, your processes, and your materials, and you connect them through an integrated ERP platform, you do not just improve efficiency on a single project, you build a repeatable system that improves with every project you deliver. The industry challenges that once felt intractable, margins, risk, productivity, control, sustainable growth, become competitive advantages for the organizations that embrace this approach. The asset itself is created as a serialized record in a maintenance repository, meaning the handover from construction to operations is seamless rather than the painful data re-entry exercise it so often is today.
Looking Forward
Standing in front of the COMIT community, I was struck by the energy and willingness to change in the room. The conversations I’ve had with leaders across our sector tell me the appetite for transformation is real. The technology to enable it exists. What’s needed now is the conviction to move, to stop treating each project as a one-off craft exercise and start building the systems, processes, and digital foundations that will define the next era of construction.
The shift from craft to system is not a future aspiration. It is happening now, project by project, across organizations that have decided to lead rather than wait. If the COMIT Community Day 2026 event reinforced one thing, it is that the construction industry’s moment to shine, where reliability, safety, and performance truly matter, demands nothing less.
SOURCE: Kenny Ingram (2026 March 25) From Craft to System: Three Themes Shaping Industrialized Construction. IFS Blog. https://blog.ifs.com/from-craft-to-system-three-themes-shaping-industrialized-construction
