Two of construction’s most-watched gauges are pointing in opposite directions, and the gap tells the real story of mid-2026. The Dodge Momentum Index, which tracks nonresidential projects entering planning, jumped 5.9% in May to 275.7 and now sits 30.7% above where it was a year ago. The Architecture Billings Index, which measures work architects are billing today, slipped 3% on the month.
Read together, they describe a market where the pipeline keeps filling while the near-term work softens. That’s a lag, not a contradiction. Projects enter Dodge’s planning count long before they show up as billable design hours, so a swelling Momentum Index is a bet on 2027 and 2028, while the billings dip reflects what’s actually on architects’ desks right now.
Data centers are doing the heavy lifting
The Momentum gain leaned hard on one sector. Data center planning drove most of the increase, with healthcare, retail, and offices adding smaller contributions. Strip out the hyperscale pipeline and the picture is flatter, which is the same concentration risk showing up across the nonresidential market: a handful of enormous compute projects carrying the averages.
Why the billings dip matters less than it looks
A 3% monthly drop in the ABI reads alarming until you note it’s still 11.8% higher than a year ago. Architecture billings are choppy month to month, and one soft print doesn’t break a trend. The more useful signal is the direction of the two indexes over a quarter, and that still reads constructive heading into the back half of the year.
It lines up with the split-screen market Exchange described in the AGC mid-year outlook and the flat May spending numbers: big pockets of strength, thin patches everywhere else. The Dodge release has the sector breakdown.