Contractors are better at containing cost overruns than the industry’s own folklore suggests. They’re much worse at seeing them coming.
That’s the finding buried inside the 2026 Project Controls Study, published August 5 by CMiC and Dodge Construction Network. The survey went to U.S. general contracting, construction management, heavy-civil and specialty contractor professionals in nonresidential construction, fielded online from May 15 to June 1.
The headline number, and the one under it
Fewer than half of respondents, 41%, can identify potential cost overruns while they’re still manageable on at least half their projects. Only 6% report a fully connected project controls environment. Only 35% say their scheduling data is current and reliable.
Now the counterweight: most contractors keep overruns within 3% to 5%, and seven in ten deliver at least half their projects on or ahead of schedule. Specialty contractors outperform general contractors on both counts. So the industry is landing jobs close to plan while flying with instruments it doesn’t trust.
The bottleneck has moved. It isn’t data collection anymore, it’s decision latency. Only 22% can turn a cost or schedule problem into decision-ready information within hours. Most need a full day or two, which on a job with liquidated damages is the difference between a recovery plan and a claim.
The AI number doesn’t line up
Seventy percent call project controls critical. Nineteen percent rank AI a high priority, citing lack of expertise, integration difficulty and uncertain ROI.
Put that 19% next to the 22% speed-to-decision figure and the mismatch is obvious. Decision latency is precisely what agent-based tools are sold to close, and contractors are declining the pitch. Some of that is scar tissue from a decade of software that promised integration and delivered another login. Some of it is that you can’t run inference on scheduling data that only 35% of firms consider reliable.
“Enterprises using CMiC’s project controls consistently report better visibility and fewer surprises on their projects, which is no coincidence given only 6 per cent of contractors overall have a fully connected environment,” said Steve Cangiano, CMiC’s chief product officer.
Worth stating plainly: this is vendor-commissioned research, and CMiC sells the ERP the findings imply you need. Dodge fielded it and the methodology and field dates are disclosed, which is more than most industry surveys offer.
Decision latency costs the most on jobs that can’t pause. See the Jane and John Justin Tower expansion, a $250 million vertical addition on an occupied Fort Worth hospital.