Construction Labor Shortage? The Fastest Win Is Getting Your Experts Off Paperwork
Labour productivity in construction improves when your best people spend less time on admin and more in the field.
Finding experienced superintendents is hard. Don't bury the good ones you have in paperwork.
Picture the best superintendent on the job. Twenty years in. The person who can walk a floor and see a problem before it happens.
Now picture them in the trailer at 6 PM, retyping into a system what their crew already told them, because it's the only quiet hour they have.
Their experience is the scarcest resource on the site. Right now, a good share of it goes to paperwork.
Why hiring can't close the construction labor shortage fast enough
The construction labor shortage is not going away. The industry needs about 349,000 new workers in 2026 just to keep supply and demand in balance, and a majority of that demand comes from replacing retirees. The people leaving carry decades of on-the-job institutional knowledge. Their replacements are newer to the trade and need years to develop.
Training is catching up. More than 480,000 apprentices served in U.S. construction in 2025, up 28% in five years, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Applications for commercial electrical apprenticeships rose more than 70% nationwide between 2022 and 2024, according to the National Electrical Contractors Association. That growth is good news. It also means more newer workers for each experienced leader to coach, across larger areas.
Even with those gains, construction still lacks skilled workers, and you can't hire your way out of this quickly. Replacing every retiree would still mean years of training.
So the question becomes how to get your experienced people doing the work only they can do: on the floor, with the crews.
Superintendent productivity: where the day actually goes
In our research, superintendents spend a quarter to half of their day on administrative work. Industry data shows the same drag. A 2018 Autodesk and FMI survey of 599 construction leaders found that 35% of their time goes to non-optimal activities, including about 5.5 hours a week looking for project data and 3.9 hours a week dealing with mistakes and rework.
What construction admin work costs
A superintendent's fully loaded cost runs $70 to $95 an hour (based on our research). Here is what that adds up to for a contractor with ten superintendents:
10 superintendents × $80 per hour × 40 hours per week × 50 weeks × 35% of time on admin = $560,000 a year
At a quarter of the week, the figure is $400,000. At half, it is $800,000. A 40-hour week keeps the estimate conservative for people working 10-hour days.
That total leaves out what slips when the superintendent is stuck in the office: safety issues, schedule delays, and quality problems. And with the labor shortage, every admin hour costs more, because the person losing it is harder to replace.
Why most construction technology hasn't helped
One of the most common things we hear from superintendents is "not another app, another login to remember, or another form I need to fill out." They have a point. Most field technology and forms were designed for project executives to manage risk. Superintendents were also often the only salaried employees with corporate emails and devices, so all of the information had to funnel through them.
We saw this deploying AI with hourly crews: tools built for the office stall at the site gate.
Field reporting by text: how the admin goes away
Crews report by text, and the admin happens in the background.
A worker sees something on a walk, good or bad. They send a photo and a line of text, the way they already text everyone else. The AI logs it, routes it to the right person, and fills out the form. Nobody on the crew fills in a form.
The AI does the administrative work and people make the decisions. Some clients have even turned off AI-recommended corrective actions so their teams drive the process, with the AI handling only the admin in the background.
The superintendent no longer sits at a desk after a 10-hour day, reconstructing what happened from memory. They get their hours back, and they put them into hazard walkthroughs and face-to-face conversations with crews.
Proof from the field: EllisDon
EllisDon rolled out field reporting by text across four active sites. Crews sent 99.5% of the reports, and most issues closed in under a day. One supervisor stopped writing site walks by hand, because the report came from the photos and the people doing the work.
The labor shortage will be with us for years. Every hour of admin taken off an experienced superintendent puts hard-won judgment back on the site, and that is the fastest gain available right now.
See it on a real site. Book a walkthrough.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can technology help with the construction labor shortage?
Yes, when it fits how crews work. If a platform needs an app, a login, or a company device, most of the crew can't use it, so reporting still falls on a few site leaders. Field reporting by text works on any phone with no training, so the whole crew takes part and supervisors spend less time chasing updates.
What is the fastest way to improve labor productivity in construction?
Cut the time your most experienced people spend on admin. A superintendent adds the most value in the field, and when everyone on site can report what they see, information stops funneling through one person. The superintendent stops chasing updates and gets back to the work only they can do.
Does reducing admin make sites safer or better run?
Reclaimed time goes into proactive work: hazard walkthroughs, planning, and face time with crews, the things production pressure usually squeezes out. At EllisDon, crews on four sites logged nearly three examples of good work for every problem flagged, and most issues closed in under a day.