Construction leaders urged to balance speed and risk as digital tools spread

Baltimore, Maryland, September 27, 2025

News Summary

Construction leaders are being urged to balance speed and risk when adopting digital tools, emphasizing pilots, clear processes and team training to protect data and embed new systems in daily work. The industry faces rapid technological change—especially from generative AI and large language models—that can streamline proposals and documentation but requires safeguards. Meanwhile, Maryland hosted a large hands-on Construction Career Day for high school students, and a university unveiled preliminary designs for a six-story, 500,000-sq-ft Life Sciences Building with more than 1,200 lab benches to foster collaborative biomedical research.

Construction industry weighs speed versus safety as digital tools spread; Maryland career day draws thousands; Johns Hopkins reveals designs for large life sciences building

Summary: Industry leaders urge a careful balance between fast technology adoption and risk management as builders integrate new digital tools. In Maryland, thousands of high school students took part in a major Construction Career Day designed to boost trades awareness. Meanwhile, a local university revealed preliminary designs for a six-story, 500,000 gross square feet Life Sciences Building that would house more than 1,200 lab benches and workspace for about 920 scientists.

Top story — technology adoption and risk

Experts say successful contractors find a middle ground between rapid rollout and measured testing when adopting new digital tools. The most successful contractors balance speed and risk when assessing and implementing new technology.

Josh LaSharr is a senior consultant at Well Built Construction Consulting. Well Built Construction Consulting is a Baltimore-based firm. Well Built Construction Consulting delivers strategic consulting, facilitation services and peer roundtables for construction executives. A viewpoint in the source text is marked with the phrase Opinions are the author’s own and lays out a view of how construction has always used tools and now faces another shift driven by digital systems.

The piece notes that phones, computers, estimating programs and project management software are already part of most operations and that every company relies on digital technology in some manner. It also asserts the construction industry is slow to embrace new tools and frames modern digital construction technology as another stage in a long evolution of builder tools, from early hand tools to pneumatic and powder-actuated devices.

The commentary says technology was advancing linearly before 2020 and that since 2020 technological advancements have been occurring at an exponential rate. That accelerated pace often leaves companies wondering whether they made the right decision in adopting or avoiding particular products. The opinion stresses that adopting a tool into daily operations is different from merely possessing one and cites the diffusion of innovation categories innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. The author self-identifies as part of the early majority in technology adoption and says he is still learning to best leverage AI with a risk-aware attitude.

The analysis calls out generative AI and large language models as technologies that have rapidly changed how teams can generate proposals, evaluate text for grammar and logical coherence, and create documents from a few inputs. It warns that integrating such tools risks inadvertently releasing confidential information and says ensuring data remains safe is a critical component of technology adoption. The text recommends developing proper processes and procedures and training teams together with new-tool adoption, comparing such training to teaching a new laborer how to use a physical tool. It also warns of risks from uploading data to tools with an open learning system.

Decision-making is said to typically rest with leadership teams, with input from IT, while younger professionals may execute repetitive tasks such as submittals and RFIs. The author argues leadership must stay informed about new tools because a typical college graduate may not fully understand the implications of running a submittal, RFI or proposal through a tool that collects data to learn. At the same time, younger employees may have the closest touch to recent technologies and their knowledge gives experienced professionals a chance to combine youth enthusiasm with risk evaluation.

As a concrete contrast, digital drawing sets are described as more flexible and trackable than hard-copy drawings, which require time, space and energy to print, slip-sheet, copy, edit, update and manage multiple full-sized drawings, and are vulnerable to damage. Digital drawings can be accessed by multiple parties in a cloud environment and allow tracking of changes with printing of a single consolidated set at the end of a job. Alternatives for those who prefer physical sets include smaller, less expensive sets, digital plan-tables, large monitors, and similar tools.

Maryland Construction Career Day — hands-on outreach

Thousands of Maryland high school students traded in their book bags for a hard hat on Wednesday. The Maryland Center for Construction Education & Innovation held its third-annual Construction Career Day at a large stadium site. Students at the event came from Baltimore County, Harford County and Baltimore City.

The event provided hands-on experience exploring engineering, architecture and transportation careers and aimed to increase career awareness for construction trades. Jennifer Dewees is president of the Maryland Center for Construction Education & Innovation. Jennifer Dewees said there were over 40 companies, unions, apprenticeship providers and higher education institutions participating. The higher education participants listed included Howard Community College, Morgan State, Capitol Tech University and Johns Hopkins. The MCCEI event is free for students. The next Construction Career Day will be held in Frederick County.

Major campus project — life sciences building

University leaders unveiled preliminary designs for a six-story Life Sciences Building planned to deliver about 500,000 gross square feet of space and more than 1,200 lab benches for biomedical researchers. The building is designed to provide space for about 920 scientists and hundreds of graduate students pursuing biomedical research and to bring together experts from five different schools to create a collaborative, technology-driven hub for fundamental, basic biomedical science.

The five schools slated to use the building are the School of Medicine; Bloomberg School of Public Health; Krieger School of Arts and Sciences; School of Nursing; and Whiting School of Engineering. The design, led by an experienced laboratory architect, shows a glass and metal exterior with copper- and bronze-colored walls that curve at certain entrances, a series of landscaped terraces on ground and upper levels, conference rooms and a glass-walled cafeteria on the first floor overlooking Broadway. The design emphasizes opening newer campus buildings to the street and includes five technology hubs and six scientific neighborhoods that will be designed and led by university scientists alongside construction.

The project site covers a full city block almost directly across the street from the main domed administration building and stretches along Broadway from Monument Street to McElderry Walkway. To make way for construction, the university is demolishing three buildings on that block. The three buildings slated for demolition are the 10-story Hampton House Building at 624 N. Broadway; 14-story Reed Hall at 600 N. Broadway; and the Denton A. Cooley fitness center at 1620 McElderry St. All faculty members and other staffers have been relocated from Reed Hall and Hampton House. Temporary space has been identified to house the research and teaching activities that were in Reed Hall and Hampton House.

Demolition of buildings on the block is well underway and Berg Corporation is the contractor for the demolition work referenced. The Denton A. Cooley fitness center is scheduled to close on Oct. 11. A new space for fitness is scheduled to be operational at the end of October. Departments of the Bloomberg School of Public Health that were located in Hampton House will move into a school addition currently under construction and scheduled to open in fall 2026.

Payette is the architect of the Life Sciences Building and Olin is the landscape architect. The university timetable calls for construction to begin in the summer of 2025 and be complete by the end of 2029. A firm cost estimate for the Life Sciences Building had not been released at the time of reporting. The building will be funded through university funds.

Why this matters

The stories intersect around workforce and tools. Workforce outreach events aim to feed labor pipelines for large projects, and large research buildings require careful planning, demo work and staged moves. The technology discussion matters because how firms choose to pilot, test and implement tools will shape productivity, security and long-term operations on sites like the new life sciences project.

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Key features table

Deeper Dive: News & Info About This Topic

Additional Resources

• Construction Dive: Construction adoption, tech & AI
• Wikipedia: Construction technology
• The Baltimore Sun: Maryland school buildings failing
• Google Search: Maryland school buildings infrastructure condition
• WBAL-TV: Maryland Center for Construction Education & Innovation — Career Day
• Google Scholar: construction career day vocational education Maryland
• Baltimore Fishbowl: Johns Hopkins unveils plans for six-story Life Sciences building
• Encyclopedia Britannica: Johns Hopkins University (search)
• Construction Dive: Generation Z and construction technology
• Google News: Generation Z construction technology

Author: Construction NY News

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