Program Areas
Program Areas
Keeping in step with
industry needs
The Coalition's work is organized around an R&D framework that maps technical domains to the industry verticals we serve. From that framework, we define program areas each year alongside our members, identifying emerging challenges and shaping the research agenda together. The result is a portfolio that stays aligned with the industry's greatest opportunities as those priorities shift.
Program 1 Engineering a productivity revolution
The Challenge
Construction is one of the world's largest industries, yet productivity growth has remained largely stagnant for decades. While manufacturing, logistics, and other sectors have been transformed by automation, data, and advanced technologies, construction continues to struggle with fragmented processes, labor shortages, cost overruns, and schedule uncertainty. At the same time, demand for new infrastructure is accelerating. Data centers, advanced manufacturing facilities, energy systems, transportation networks, and resilient communities must be delivered faster than ever before.
What If
What if construction became one of the world's most productive industries? What if projects could be delivered in half the time with dramatically greater certainty, quality, and efficiency? The result would be more than better projects—it would unlock economic growth, accelerate technological innovation, strengthen national competitiveness, and enable society to build the infrastructure required for the decades ahead.
Together We Will
Increase construction productivity by integrating artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, digital twins, and advanced manufacturing into a new generation of project delivery systems. By reducing rework, improving predictability, automating routine processes, and enabling data-driven decision-making at every stage of delivery, we can fundamentally change how projects are planned, managed, and executed.
Here’s what a project sounds like:
- Creating the Autonomous Project Manager
- Building the Zero-Rework Jobsite
- Developing Real-Time Productivity Intelligence
- Demonstrating AI-Driven Project Controls
- Designing the Construction Operating System
- Measuring and Benchmarking Next-Generation Productivity
Program 2Putting the smart in construction
The Challenge
Construction projects generate enormous amounts of data, yet most decisions remain reactive, fragmented, and dependent on incomplete information. Cost overruns, schedule delays, rework, and safety incidents often emerge because project teams lack the tools to convert data into actionable intelligence. As projects become more complex and infrastructure demands continue to grow, the industry must move beyond digitization toward truly intelligent decision-making.
What If
What if every construction project could learn from every project that came before it? What if project teams could anticipate risks before they emerged, identify schedule disruptions before they occur, and make decisions with the confidence of real-time intelligence? Construction could evolve from a fragmented industry into a continuously learning system that becomes smarter with every project completed.
Together We Will
Transform construction from a data-rich but information-poor industry into one driven by intelligence. By connecting project data, digital twins, AI systems, sensing technologies, and decision-support tools, we are building the foundations for construction systems that can learn, predict, adapt, and continuously improve.
Here’s what a project sounds like:
- Creating the Construction Foundation Model
- Building AI copilots for every construction role
- Developing the Connected Project Digital Twin
- Predicting cost and schedule risk before it happens
- Creating a construction knowledge graph
- Designing the Intelligent Jobsite Dashboard
Program 3Building at the Speed of Need
The Challenge
Across the nation, critical infrastructure often takes years to move from concept to completion. Yet economic growth, technological leadership, disaster recovery, national security, and community resilience increasingly depend on the ability to deliver infrastructure faster than conventional approaches allow. As demand accelerates, construction can no longer be a bottleneck.
What If
What if communities could receive critical infrastructure in months rather than years? What if disaster recovery facilities became operational within days, manufacturing plants entered production months sooner, and data centers came online years faster? Construction could become a strategic advantage that enables society to respond rapidly to emerging opportunities and challenges.
Together We Will
Compress infrastructure delivery timelines by combining modular construction, advanced manufacturing, intelligent supply chains, and AI-enabled planning into new models of rapid project execution. Our goal is to help communities, industries, and governments deliver critical infrastructure when it is needed rather than years after demand emerges.
Here’s what a project sounds like:
- Demonstrating the 90-Day Data Center
- Building the 30-Day Disaster Recovery Facility
- Creating AI-powered project scheduling
- Designing parallelized construction systems
- Building autonomous supply chains
- Accelerating permitting and regulatory workflows
Program 4Conducting the Autonomous Jobsite
The Challenge
Construction sites are becoming increasingly complex, generating vast amounts of information and requiring coordination among workers, equipment, materials, and specialized trades. Yet many jobsite decisions remain manual, disconnected, and difficult to optimize in real time. While autonomous technologies are rapidly advancing, the industry lacks the systems needed to safely coordinate people and machines at scale.
What If
What if workers, robots, autonomous equipment, drones, sensors, and AI systems could operate as a coordinated ecosystem? What if dangerous and repetitive tasks were increasingly performed by machines while people focused on oversight, decisionmaking, and innovation? The jobsite of the future could become safer, faster, and more adaptive than ever before.
Together We Will
Create construction sites where people, machines, and intelligent systems operate as a coordinated ecosystem. By advancing robotics, machine perception, autonomous equipment, digital twins, and human-machine collaboration, we can safely scale autonomy across the construction lifecycle.
Here’s what a project sounds like:
- The Autonomous Jobsite Demonstrator
- The AI Site Conductor
- The Multi-Robot Construction Crew
- The Autonomous Equipment Fleet
- The Human-Robot Teaming Lab
- The Cyber-Physical Jobsite Testbed
Program 5From Factory to Field Innovations
The Challenge
Manufacturing has achieved extraordinary gains in productivity, quality, and consistency through automation, precision production, and standardization. Construction remains heavily dependent on customized field assembly, making projects slower, less predictable, and more difficult to scale.
What If
What if buildings and infrastructure could be delivered with the speed, precision, and predictability of modern manufacturing? What if quality was designed into the process rather than inspected afterward? Construction could become faster, safer, less wasteful, and dramatically more scalable.
Together We Will
Bring industrialized production methods into the built environment by connecting factory production, robotic fabrication, digital design, and field deployment into a seamless construction ecosystem.
Here’s what a project sounds like:
- The Factory-Built Building Challenge
- The Robotic Fabrication Facility
- The One-Day Structural Assembly Demonstration
- The Digital Factory-to-Field Platform
- The Manufacturing-Grade Quality System
- The Next Generation Modular Building Platform
Program 6Powering the AI Economy
The Challenge
Artificial intelligence is transforming industries across the globe, but its future depends on physical infrastructure. Data centers, semiconductor facilities, energy systems, and advanced manufacturing environments must be delivered at unprecedented scale and speed.
What If
What if construction was no longer the limiting factor in deploying the infrastructure that powers the digital economy? What if data centers came online in months rather than years, enabling innovation to move at the speed of technological advancement?
Together We Will
Accelerate the delivery of next-generation digital infrastructure by combining modular construction, advanced manufacturing, intelligent planning systems, and new delivery models specifically designed for AI-era infrastructure.
Here’s what a project sounds like:
- The 12-Month Data Center
- The AI Infrastructure Accelerator
- The Modular Compute Campus
- The Autonomous Commissioning Platform
- The Intelligent Power Corridor
- The Next Generation Data Center Testbed
Program 7Workforce Superpowers
The Challenge
The future of construction depends on people. Yet workforce shortages, physical demands, safety risks, and the loss of institutional knowledge threaten the industry's ability to meet growing demand.
What If
What if every worker arrived on a jobsite with instant access to decades of expertise, real-time guidance, predictive safety insights, and intelligent tools that amplified awareness, precision, and capability? What if technology could help every worker perform at their highest potential while reducing risk and physical strain?
Together We Will
Amplify human capability through AI, robotics, wearables, immersive technologies, and workforce intelligence systems. Rather than replacing workers, we are developing tools that help every worker become safer, more productive, and more effective.
Here’s what a project sounds like:
- The AI Foreman
- The Construction Exoskeleton Initiative
- The Zero-Injury Jobsite
- Capturing the Knowledge of a Million Builders
- The Wearable Safety Intelligence Network
- The Immersive Workforce Academy
Program 8Building strategic infrastructre anywhere
The Challenge
National security, disaster response, and economic resilience increasingly depend on the ability to rapidly deploy critical infrastructure in challenging environments. Traditional construction methods often struggle to meet the speed, flexibility, and logistical demands required by these missions.
What If
What if resilient infrastructure could be deployed wherever it is needed—faster, more efficiently, and under more demanding conditions than ever before? What if military facilities, disaster-response operations, and remote infrastructure systems could be delivered with unprecedented speed and adaptability?
Together We Will
Develop the technologies, materials, logistics systems, and deployment models needed to rapidly deliver infrastructure in remote, contested, and resource-constrained environments
Here’s what a project sounds like:
- The 30-Day Base Camp
- Expeditionary Infrastructure in a Box
- The Autonomous Deployment Platform
- The Rapid Energy Hub
- Additive Construction for Extreme Environments
- The Strategic Infrastructure Proving Ground
Program 9Reinventing construction from the material up
The Challenge
Many of the materials that define the built environment have changed little over the last century. Yet future demands for resilience, durability, sustainability, automation, and performance require an entirely new generation of material systems.
What If
What if buildings and infrastructure were constructed from materials that are stronger, lighter, more resilient, and more sustainable than anything available today? What if materials could become active participants in the built environment rather than passive components?
Together We Will
Accelerate the development and deployment of next-generation materials optimized for autonomous construction, resilient infrastructure, circular economies, and advanced manufacturing.
Here’s what a project sounds like:
- The Self-Healing Infrastructure Challenge
- Carbon-Storing Concrete Materials for Autonomous Construction
- The Circular Building Demonstrator
- The Next Generation Materials Foundry
- Smart Materials for Living Infrastructure