Nearly every large contractor in Bridgit’s new workforce planning survey says crew availability now drives which jobs it chases. In the 2026 State of Workforce Planning report released Oct. 14, 98% of respondents said they give workforce availability and capacity more weight in bid decisions, up from 60% in last year’s edition.
The Toronto-based software company surveyed 250 construction leaders at firms with at least $100 million in annual revenue across the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia. Sixty-three percent were directors and 37% were vice presidents or above, working in operations, project management and field operations.
What the workforce planning survey found
All 250 said the labor shortage affects their business, up from 93% a year ago. The share reporting higher costs because of it jumped from 43% to 68%.
The bigger shift is in how teams get built. Prior experience working together is now the top factor in staffing a project, cited by 84%, up from 44%. Experience with the specific building type fell from 59% to 27%.
Read those two numbers together and the picture is contractors keeping proven crews intact and moving them onto whatever’s next, even when it’s a project type they haven’t built much of. That’s a practical answer to a thin labor pool. It’s also a risk on specialized work like data centers, labs and healthcare, where the learning curve shows up in rework and commissioning.
Labor shortage, bidding and the vendor caveat
Bridgit sells workforce planning software, and several findings line up with its product. Ninety-nine percent of respondents now call connecting a planning tool to an HR information system a priority, up from just under a third. Eighty percent say they’ve brought AI into workforce planning, though only 30% are actively using it and the other 50% are in early implementation. More than a third said they’d accept AI that acts on its own.
Treat those as a vendor’s numbers. The release doesn’t give fieldwork dates, doesn’t break out U.S. respondents and doesn’t say whether last year’s sample matched this one, so the year-over-year swings may partly reflect who answered. We’ve made the same point about other vendor-run construction surveys: read the question before the answer.
Other recent data points in the same direction on AI and staffing, with less certainty. In BRG’s survey, 11% of firms said AI led them to cut staff while 18% added people. Neither study shows AI closing a craft labor gap yet.
What crew-driven bidding means for owners
“The labor shortage isn’t new, but what is changing is the way contractors are addressing it,” said Mallorie Brodie, Bridgit’s CEO and co-founder.
The bid finding is the one owners should notice. When 98% of large contractors screen opportunities by whether they can staff them, fewer bidders show up for jobs that land when crews are committed elsewhere, and the ones that do will price the scarcity. Schedules that bunch starts into the same quarter as a big regional data center or plant will feel that first.