£718bn construction pipeline puts pressure on firms to scale

At a glance

The UK government has announced a £718bn infrastructure pipeline, requiring a significant workforce, but construction businesses may struggle to scale due to fragmented systems and manual processes. Propel Tech warns that disconnected technology can hinder efficiency and compliance, especially with new regulations like the Building Safety Act. The company advises construction firms to integrate existing systems and consider AI to improve operations and manage the increased workload effectively.

Software firm warns fragmented systems could hold back businesses as the Government’s infrastructure pipeline grows.

The UK has a £718bn infrastructure pipeline stretching across 734 major projects, but the construction businesses expected to deliver it are facing a difficult question: can they scale quickly enough when many are still relying on fragmented systems and manual processes?

The Government’s latest Infrastructure Pipeline represents a significant increase on the £530bn announced last year and is expected to require between 629,000 and 706,000 construction and infrastructure workers every year for the next five years.

Major schemes are already moving forward. The £10.2bn Lower Thames Crossing is entering its delivery phase, while planning permission has been granted for the £5bn Universal UK resort in Bedfordshire. The Government has also published its Construction Products Reform White Paper, setting out wide-ranging proposals covering regulation, testing, product information, environmental requirements and accountability.

There may be plenty of work coming into the market, but construction businesses are having to prepare for growth while still recovering from a difficult few years. Construction recorded 3,931 company insolvencies during 2025, more than any other sector, while the wider market remains in recovery rather than full-scale growth.

Arcadis’ Spring 2026 UK Market View points to an uneven recovery, with infrastructure providing stronger long-term prospects while residential construction and parts of the private market continue to face pressure. New-build workload fell by 1.9% quarter-on-quarter in Q1 2026, with residential workload down 3.4%.

For David Ritchie, Director and Co-founder of bespoke software development company Propel Tech, which works with clients across the property, construction and facilities sectors, the ability to take on this work will depend partly on whether construction businesses have the operational systems to support growth.

“There is a huge amount of opportunity coming into construction, but businesses are having to prepare for that at the same time as recovering from a very difficult period.

“The challenge is that many companies have grown their technology in the same way they have grown their operations: piece by piece. Site management might have one system, commercial another, procurement another, with health and safety, compliance and reporting sitting across yet more applications and spreadsheets.

“That can be manageable when a business is smaller. Once you start taking on more projects, more subcontractors and more reporting requirements, the gaps between those systems become a real operational problem.

“Every new requirement can create another spreadsheet or another manual process. People end up spending more time moving information around rather than using it to make decisions.”

The issue becomes more pronounced as projects become larger and businesses have more information to manage, with construction companies dealing with increased documentation, tighter compliance requirements, environmental reporting, inspections and supply-chain information, often across multiple projects at the same time.

That challenge is not confined to individual businesses. Construction projects typically bring together a main contractor and a wide network of subcontractors and suppliers, each with their own systems and ways of working. When those systems don’t connect, information can stall or go missing as it passes between one part of the supply chain and another, adding delays and eroding efficiency across a project as a whole. Delivering a pipeline of this scale will depend not just on individual firms modernising their own technology, but on the sector finding more joined-up ways of working across contractors, subcontractors and suppliers alike.

This is playing out against a backdrop of tighter regulation. The Building Safety Act has raised the bar on compliance and transparency throughout the construction process, requiring a clear “golden thread” of information to be maintained and shared across every stage of a project. For businesses already juggling disconnected systems, meeting that standard consistently, and proving it, is another significant driver behind the push for better-connected technology.

The problem is rarely that a business has no software. In many cases, it has too much of it, with systems introduced at different stages of the company’s development that were never designed to work together.

That leaves people filling the gaps. Information is copied between systems, reports are assembled manually and spreadsheets become the link between applications that cannot communicate with each other.

Andy Brown, Director and Co-founder of Propel Tech, says businesses should look at how their systems work together before assuming they need another new platform.

“We see businesses with very good software that isn’t necessarily giving them the value it could because the systems around it aren’t connected. The technology itself isn’t necessarily the problem, the lack of connection between it is.

“You don’t always need to start again. There are often opportunities to modernise existing systems and connect them to newer applications, allowing information to move between the different parts of the business.

“There is a lot of interest in what AI could do for construction, but it needs reliable information to work with. If the underlying systems are fragmented and the data is inconsistent, AI can’t solve that problem.”

Propel Tech says that getting this foundation right should be part of a company’s growth strategy, particularly as businesses begin to explore AI.

Modernising legacy systems, integrating applications and creating reliable data flows can reduce the amount of manual administration involved in running projects, while giving managers a clearer view of performance across the business. It also creates the conditions for AI to be used in practical areas such as reporting, document management, data analysis and repetitive administration.

For construction companies facing a larger and more complex pipeline, the priority is therefore to make the systems they already rely on work together, then identify where automation and AI can add genuine value. The principle is straightforward: construction projects bring many different disciplines together, so the technology running the business should do the same.

Editorial insight

The Government’s latest £718bn infrastructure pipeline sets an ambitious target for the UK construction sector, both in terms of output and operational readiness. As demand ramps up for large-scale delivery, the industry faces the practical challenge of scaling up while still grappling with the legacy of fragmented systems and manual processes. With regulatory requirements tightening and project complexity increasing, the ability to coordinate information efficiently is becoming a business-critical issue.

For construction firms, this is not just a question of investing in new technology, but of ensuring that existing systems can work together to support growth and regulatory compliance. The sector’s recovery from a period of high insolvency and uneven growth means that efficiency and resilience are under scrutiny. As businesses look to take advantage of new opportunities, the drive to modernise operational systems is likely to be a key factor in determining which companies are able to compete for major contracts and deliver on the Government’s pipeline ambitions.

This focus on system integration and data reliability is also being shaped by recent regulatory changes, such as the Building Safety Act, which places greater emphasis on information management and transparency. For firms considering the adoption of AI and automation, the current environment highlights the importance of building solid digital foundations before pursuing more advanced solutions.

Story ideas and journalist angles

Regulation

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The UK Government's Construction Products Reform White Paper and the Building Safety Act are imposing new regulatory demands on construction firms, necessitating better-integrated systems to ensure compliance and project transparency.

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The UK construction industry faces challenges in scaling to meet a growing £718bn infrastructure pipeline due to reliance on fragmented systems. This could hinder their ability to efficiently handle increasing project demands, despite the potential for growth.

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