Survey: Most AEC Firms Aren’t Quite Prepared for AI Revolution

Software program and synthetic intelligence supplier BST World’s latest AI Summit in Palm Seaside, Fla., granted attendees optimistic visions relating to future work processes and capabilities, together with combined findings from its survey specializing in the present state of AEC corporations’ total readiness for adoption of generative AI instruments.

“Our trade is within the technique of a change, one that may upend the trade’s underlying enterprise mannequin and reimagine the way forward for work,” Javier A. Baldor, BST World’s chief govt officer, informed summit attendees, including: “Make no mistake—that transformation will occur.”

How easily particular person corporations could remodel themselves is extra of an open query, although.

Citing a latest McKinsey survey, Baldor informed the viewers, “Leaders are literally 4 occasions extra more likely to cite worker readiness as a barrier to Gen AI adoption fairly than their very own points with management alignment. And just one% of leaders characterize their Gen AI rollouts as mature. That is startling.”

A brand new enterprise mannequin awaits, Baldor added, stating: “Think about when Gen AI and different rising applied sciences ship productiveness good points of 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and you’re nonetheless delivering tasks on a time-materials foundation. In my view, that is a race to the underside—and a enterprise mannequin that is utterly unsustainable.

“I firmly imagine the longer term enterprise mannequin for our trade lies in a value-driven lump-sum or gain-share mannequin,” he added. “It is the one method to notice the promise and prize of AI in our future.”

Survey Outcomes

To discern trade’s state of total readiness, BST partnered with the American Council of Engineering Firms’ expertise committee to survey AEC corporations relating to their preparation and AI adoption efforts. Additionally collaborating within the survey had been members of BST’s just lately established AI + Information Consortium group, which incorporates AECOM, AtkinsRealis, ARUP, Gensler, Parsons, Ramboll, Stantec and WSO.

The results of the survey, BST World’s AI + Data Insights 2025 report, confirmed that whereas many corporations acknowledge AI’s significance, a big share of them are nonetheless within the early phases of adoption and use. For instance, on the one hand, 82% of respondents anticipate an AI-driven trade transformation, with 78% of respondents anticipating that to occur inside 5 years.

On the similar time, the survey discovered that “solely about 20% of respondents claimed readiness at a mature or superior degree, with most indicating that their corporations are nonetheless within the pilot or exploration stage.”

Moreover, the report states that “Virtually all respondents (91%) cited ‘figuring out use instances with enterprise worth’ or ‘proving enterprise worth’ as a prime barrier to AI adoption.”

Adoption Challenges

On the summit, Nasrine Tomasi, Mott MacDonald’s head of AI, addressed the subject of “accountable AI” with perspective on the firm’s experience with AI over the previous a number of years.

Early on throughout Mott MacDonald’s technique of adopting AI instruments, she stated, “I spotted that lots of people had been really fairly involved by this AI factor. ‘What does it imply for me, for my enterprise? What does it imply for our enterprise mannequin? How will we take care of cybersecurity’ and the like?'”

On the similar time, Tomasi says, different workers had been enthusiastic about AI, which prompted the query of “How will we really speed up on (AI)? We realized that we couldn’t leverage the chance with out managing the danger. So we determined to truly deal with the danger part, managing this threat to truly work on the chance aspect of issues.”

“For enterprise worth, we needed to resolve the place we needed to place ourselves within the AEC sectors,” she stated. “What does it imply for our workforce and our technique relating to individuals?”

The variety of questions that corporations might want to ask themselves relating to their very own AI adoption efforts can be quite a few, Baldor says.

“There are such a lot of extra use instances and potentialities with these tremendous brokers to remodel mission supply and even the job web site of the longer term the place people will work seamlessly with these tremendous brokers and robots to enhance job web site security and mission outcomes,” he says. “It isn’t solely doable, it is coming in an enormous method.”