Fewer construction leaders believe in AI than they did a year ago. The reason is more useful than the statistic.
A recent industry report caught some attention in construction circles. The share of construction leaders who believe AI will meaningfully enhance the industry dropped from 80 percent to 68 percent over the past year. On the surface that looks like a warning sign. Dig a little deeper and it tells a more useful story.
The firms losing confidence in AI are not the ones getting results from it. They are the ones that got excited, started experimenting, and ran into the part nobody warned them about: implementation is harder than adoption, and a tool without a workflow is just an expense.
That is not a technology problem. It is an expectations problem, and it is entirely fixable.
What Happens After the Enthusiasm
The early stage of AI adoption in any organization tends to follow a predictable arc. Leadership hears enough about AI that it becomes impossible to ignore. Someone gets access to a tool, maybe several tools. There is a period of genuine excitement where the possibilities feel enormous. Then the day-to-day reality of a busy contracting operation reasserts itself, and the tools that were going to change everything start collecting digital dust.
The drop in confidence is a reflection of that arc playing out across the industry. Firms that expected AI to deliver obvious, immediate value without much structural change are discovering that it does not work that way. The technology is capable. The gap is in how it gets implemented.
This is not a reason to pull back. It is a reason to approach it differently.
The Firms That Are Still Confident
The same research that showed declining overall confidence also showed something worth paying attention to: firms classified as digital leaders, those that have moved past experimentation and built AI into actual workflows, reported significantly stronger optimism about their financial performance than firms still in the early stages.
That gap is not a coincidence. It reflects what happens when AI stops being something a firm is trying and starts being something a firm has actually built into how it operates. The estimating team uses it consistently. The project managers have a defined process for document review. The back office has tools that reduce administrative load on every active job. At that point the value is not theoretical. It shows up in capacity, in margin, and in the ability to take on more work without proportionally increasing overhead.
Getting there requires more than access to good tools. It requires someone making deliberate decisions about where AI fits, what it is supposed to do, and how the team is going to use it consistently enough that it becomes part of the operation rather than a side experiment.
What the Confidence Drop Is Really Measuring
Declining confidence in AI is not evidence that AI does not work in construction. It is evidence that dropping a tool into an organization without a plan does not work, which has always been true and will always be true regardless of the technology involved.
The firms that are going to look back on this period and wish they had moved differently are not the ones that tried AI and got frustrated. They are the ones that used that frustration as a reason to stop rather than a reason to get more deliberate about how they approached it.
The questions worth asking are specific ones. Where in your operation is the friction highest? Where is time being lost to work that should not require your best people? Where does inconsistency in documentation or process create downstream problems on jobs? Those questions have answers, and AI has practical applications for most of them.
The confidence will follow the results. The results follow the work of figuring out where AI actually belongs in your business and building the workflow to support it. That part does not happen on its own, but for firms willing to do it, the gap between where they are and where the digital leaders are operating is very closeable.
People Say
We recently had Chris Carr present to our members on behalf of Dynaimix, and it was an overwhelming success. We had a full classroom, and the engagement throughout the session was outstanding. Many attendees who initially felt intimidated by AI left feeling empowered and confident in how they can begin applying it in their work.
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Brubacher engaged Chris , founder of Dynaimix, in a two-day mind-stretching exploration of current AI capabilities, future direction, and most importantly he outlined the likely impacts to our business. He introduced us to a variety of AI tools to explore using to increase efficiency. Some participants immediately identified ways to save hours per week while others began using AI-enabled tools to offset areas in which they lack skills. Chris is high-energy, kept our attention, and has been attentive in follow-up.
We had the pleasure of having Chris Carr present at our annual planning meeting at Oliver Fire Protection & Security, which is a critical event for setting the direction of our year. Our goal was to give our strategic leadership team a stronger understanding of artificial intelligence and how it will impact our business. Chris delivered his state of AI presentation and completely blew our team away. His depth of knowledge, paired with practical, real-world examples, made the topic both clear and compelling.
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I had the opportunity to bring Chris Carr to the NECA Districts 6 and 9 Summer Conferences on the North Shore of Hawaii, where he came in locked and loaded and delivered two impactful sessions—one for each district. What I appreciate most about Chris and the Dynaimix team is his genuine passion for what he presents and his constant focus on applying AI in practical, meaningful ways for the electrical contracting industry.
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I’ve had the opportunity to see Chris’s State of AI presentation multiple times, and each experience reinforced his strong grasp of AI—where it’s going, how quickly the landscape is changing, and what that means for electrical contractors. What sets Chris apart is his ability to take an incredibly complex topic and make it both approachable and immediately relevant to our industry.
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At the 2025 WICA Annual Convention in beautiful Lake Tahoe, Chris Carr presented on the State of AI for our Insulation Contractor and Associate members. He emphasized the importance of AI literacy, the role of AI governance through an AI council, and how to effectively pair AI with custom code to drive real business impact. Chris has a gift for explaining complex topics in a way everyone can understand, and the session was engaging and highly relevant. Our members found it captivating, the feedback was excellent, and I would highly recommend Chris and the Dynaimix team.
We were extremely pleased with the Program that Dynaimix provided for our Members. From the feedback I received from our Members, it was easy to understand and provided practical grass roots education on understanding how AI could increase time saving skills and knowledge about subject matter. The process of booking the presentation was seamless and the communication with dynAimix leading up to the event was outstanding. We look forward to hosting another presentation with them in the near future.
We had the privilege of having Chris Carr present to our leadership team after first seeing him speak at a peer group event. That experience led us to bring him in for a two-day Intro to AI training where he covered the foundational elements of artificial intelligence. Prior to the training, Chris met with us to understand our business, which allowed him to tailor the content specifically to our needs. What impressed us most was his ability to explain complex concepts in a clear and easy-to-understand way.
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Partnering with Dynaimix AI has been a tremendous step forward for our organization. Their customized, in-person training reached more than 300 of our employees and consistently exceeded expectations. The sessions were engaging, practical, and highly relevant, and many team members shared that they learned far more about AI than they anticipated.
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Chris presented at our Annual Summer Membership Meeting for the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA), Northeastern Illinois Chapter, and our members were absolutely blown away. The response was so strong that his team followed up with a two-day Intro to AI training for our members, hosted at our location in Illinois. The training was led by Todd Smith, and it was incredibly powerful, highly digestible, and easy to understand.
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Chris Carr
Mark Oestreicher
Todd Smith
Dan Callahan
Erin Larkin
Andrew Pilato
Dynaimix AI Public Speaking Schedule
One of the missions of Dynaimix AI is to educate businesses, industries, and professionals about the transformative impact of the coming wave of artificial intelligence. We aim to share insights into how AI will shape the future of work and provide practical lessons, techniques, and tactics to enhance AI literacy.
Below is our public speaking schedule. Please check back regularly, as new dates and events are added each week.