Strip out the data centers and most of construction’s planning pipeline has been flat all year. May offered a small break in that pattern: healthcare work kicked in, and it wasn’t alone. The Dodge Momentum Index, which tracks nonresidential projects entering planning, rose 5.9% month over month in May, building on April’s 6.2% gain, according to Dodge Construction Network reporting covered by Construction Dive.
Where the healthcare construction demand showed up
On the institutional side, planning climbed 3.1% in May, and Dodge tied the uptick to healthcare projects accelerating again, with government and religious work adding to the gain. Educational and recreational planning slowed, so the institutional story isn’t uniformly strong. But hospitals and medical buildings re-entering the pipeline matter, because institutional work tends to hold up when commercial demand wobbles.
The headline number still belongs to data centers. Commercial planning jumped 41.2% year over year in May. Pull data centers out of that figure and the gain shrinks to 6.6%, which tells you how lopsided the recovery remains. Traditional office and retail planning did improve over the month, a modest sign that demand is spreading past the server-farm boom.
What the May planning data signals for 2026
Twenty-nine projects valued at $100 million or more entered planning in May. The institutional leaders included a $400 million Coast Guard Training Center modernization in Cape May, New Jersey, a $400 million Fisk University innovation center in Nashville, and a $241 million Harborview medical office in Seattle. On the commercial side, a pair of Texas data centers and a Georgia data center campus topped the list.
Healthcare’s return to the pipeline lines up with what’s already moving on the ground. New York’s $2.3 billion Memorial Sloan Kettering pavilion and a string of hospital expansions are the leading edge of a wave that planning data now suggests has more behind it. Data centers, meanwhile, keep doing the heavy lifting, as builds like the $16 billion Stargate campus in Michigan push the commercial figures to extremes.
Dodge’s own economist kept the tone cautious. Nonresidential planning continued to stabilize throughout May, said Sarah Martin, the firm’s director of economic research, who pointed to labor constraints, high material costs, and supply-chain pressure as drags on owner confidence. The index sat 33.8% above May 2025, a strong year-over-year read that mostly reflects how much data centers have skewed the baseline.
The takeaway for 2026 is narrow but real. Planning is no longer a one-sector show. Healthcare is back in the mix, office and retail are inching up, and the pipeline is broadening, even if it’s doing so under the long shadow of the data center boom.
Source: Sebastian Obando, Construction Dive, June 9, 2026.