The materials and equipment contractors buy have long been standardized down to a market price that can be checked instantly. And while rate books have told estimators what a crew should theoretically install for decades, no one has ever continuously measured what construction actually delivers, week by week, against the plan. This report does exactly that, turning real data into a set of objective benchmarks.
The activity-level benchmarks in the new report include schedule adherence, on-time starts, completion overrun, planned-vs.-actual production, peak-vs.-typical performance, and trade-level reliability across 21 core construction activities.
Among the report's key findings:
- Nearly half of all active construction work is behind schedule in a typical week – sites keep just 52.8% of activities on schedule.
- The typical construction activity finishes 5.3 weeks late, but performance varies sharply. Top-quartile projects hold that to 2.3 weeks, showing that fast, reliable delivery is achievable.
- Nearly 40% of planned weekly output is not delivered. The typical project delivers just 63% of its planned output, leaving 37% of planned work volume undelivered in a typical week.
- Nearly every construction activity under-delivers its planned weekly output. 20 of 21 activities measured fell short of plan, ranging from 38% (resilient/soft flooring) to 122% (drywall framing, the only activity to exceed plan).
- 70.7% of construction activities miss their planned start date. Just 29.3% of activities actually start on time.
"Everything else that goes into a building has long been standardized – equipment, materials, specs. But one thing that hasn't been is the work itself," said Amir Berman, VP of Industry Transformation at Buildots and head of the Intelligence Lab. "This report is a step toward changing that: turning construction activity into repeatable, measurable units, so we can finally answer how much a project can actually build in a given timeframe, and how wide the gap is between a typical week and a top-performing one."
An ongoing construction benchmark series
The Global Construction Benchmarks Report is the first release in an ongoing Buildots Intelligence Lab research series. Having established a global baseline, the Lab will next apply the same methodology to sector-specific and regional editions – starting with data centers and healthcare – sharpening these global reference points into benchmarks that project teams can hold a specific project to.
"You can't fix what you can't measure, and the construction industry has always lacked a source of macro-level truth about its own performance," said Roy Danon, Co-founder and CEO of Buildots. "Establishing objective, data-driven benchmarks like these is central to our mission at Buildots, and these findings show exactly why. This report proves strong performance already exists in the industry, it's just inconsistent. Revealing that is the first step toward helping every construction project, portfolio, and organization perform at its best."
The full Global Construction Benchmarks Report, including sector breakdowns, quartile data, and detailed production-rate tables for 21 core construction activities, is available at: https://buildots.com/lab/global-construction-benchmarks-report/
About Buildots Intelligence Lab
The Buildots Intelligence Lab is construction's first AI-powered research hub. Drawing on aggregated, anonymized global data, the Lab publishes metrics, insights, and benchmarks designed to drive decisions from the project level to the enterprise. All data published by the Lab is freely available and designed to help address long-standing industry blind spots. It operates as an autonomous research unit within Buildots and invites industry professionals, academics, and analysts to challenge it with their own questions and hypotheses.
About Buildots
Buildots is the global construction intelligence platform, serving as the operational backbone for construction projects of all scales – from local schools and multi-family projects to the world's most complex data centers and mega-projects. By transforming site data into actionable insights, Buildots enables construction leaders to know sooner, act faster, and outperform. Buildots is currently used by Fortune 500 contractors and household-name owners, including Turner Construction, JE Dunn, Intel, HOCHTIEF, and Bouygues, to drive operational excellence worldwide.
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