Will vs. Skill: Is Construction Prepared for the Age of AI?

By Rachael Mahoney, Chief Strategy Officer, Bulk Exchange

Our industry is no stranger to volatility. It’s long been defined by cyclicality, heavy regulation, and razor-thin margins. But today, something deeper and more permanent is reshaping the field: the acceleration of change itself.

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We don’t build buildings, bridges, or highways by winging it. Every bucket of concrete, every cut of rebar, every engineered slope, it all comes from skill. Deep, time-earned, scars-and-calluses kind of skill. Our industry runs on it. Has for generations.

Still, something to consider…is skill alone enough anymore? Not in the world we’re barreling into. And it’s time we talk about it.

The Old Game Was Mastery. The New Game Is Adaptation.

Construction has always rewarded those who could master the craft through training and repetition. You showed up, paid attention, worked hard, and you got better. You learned the feel of the excavator, the rhythm of the site, how to keep a project moving when the weather turned or a delivery ran late.

It was, and still is, a beautiful thing. But the world is shifting.

We’ve got a tidal wave of technology flooding in: AI-generated takeoffs, real-time pile data, robotic surveyors, supply chains running by algorithms instead of phone calls. At the same time, we’re watching a generational shift play out in slow motion. Young professionals who speak cloud before concrete, stepping onto job sites run by people who earned their experience the hard way. 

It’s not a bad thing. But it can be a tough thing.

Because when the world starts to change this fast, skill isn’t enough. Will is.

Will Is the New Bedrock

There’s an old saying that’s truer than ever: “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” In our case? Will beats skill when skill won’t change.

If you’ve been a plant operator for 30 years or managing crews since pagers were still a thing, your skill is gold. But gold locked in a vault won’t buy anything. The currency of tomorrow is adaptability.

Will means saying, “I don’t know this new system, but I’ll learn it.”

Will means sitting through the awkwardness of learning a new estimating tool instead of just saying, “We’ve always done it this way.”

Will also means being willing to unlearn, too…”Sacred cows make very poor gladiators” means treating old skillsets as too precious prevents asking “what won’t serve the job anymore”? 

Skill matters, but it doesn’t self-renew. Will does.

Your Team Will Follow the Standard You Set

If you lead a crew, a region, a division, or even just one young apprentice, this is on us. You don’t just owe it to yourself to evolve. You owe it to them.

It’s tempting to stay comfortable. But leadership isn’t comfort, it's an example. If your team sees you fumble through a new material sourcing app but stick with it, they’ll try. If they hear you ask questions you don’t already know the answer to, they’ll learn that not knowing isn’t weakness, it’s step one.

Think about it like a quarterback learning a new playbook. A rookie might have speed, but if they don’t learn the system, they’re toast. Meanwhile, the vet who can read defenses, adjust the cadence, teach the team, that’s who wins rings. We need to be the vets who learn new playbooks.

Business and Sports Already Know This Truth

Look at Blockbuster. Skill in curating videos didn’t save them. Netflix had the will to burn their own DVD business to the ground and rebuild for streaming.

Look at Tom Brady. He wasn’t the most athletic quarterback. But he outlasted and outadapted everyone with sheer will and discipline. He changed diets, play styles, coaching systems, and won more Super Bowls than any other player.

Look at Toyota. When lean manufacturing took hold, they didn’t scoff at the change. They leaned into it (literally), set new standards, and taught the rest of the world what continuous improvement looked like.

Construction isn’t immune. And we shouldn’t want to be. Change is scary. But stagnation is a death sentence.

So Where Do We Start?

Start with questions:

• What part of my job have I been doing the same way for too long?
  
• Where is my team relying on my past skill when they need my present will?
  
• What tech or process change am I resisting, and why?
  
• What am I modeling for the next generation, and what should I be learning from them?

You don’t have to know all the answers. But you do have to be willing to ask. And to push. And to adapt.

Because in this new era of construction, where jobsites are hybrid, tech is moving faster than the weather, and competition is just one AI feature away, it’s the builders with the will to evolve who will shape the future.