There is no shortage of pressure in construction. Tight labor markets, rising material costs, budgets that don’t stretch far enough, schedules that change without warning—these are forces largely outside of your control.
But there is one area where contractors have total influence over the outcome: how they track and manage the tools, materials and equipment they already own.
A 2025 survey by Informa TechTarget’s AlignOps and Construction Dive’s Studio found that most construction companies waste hours every day searching for assets, repurchasing materials they have in stock but can’t locate, and letting equipment sit idle, even though they’ve already invested in technology that’s supposed to solve these problems.
The irony is hard to miss. 97% of construction companies do not have real-time visibility into their tools, materials and equipment, even with asset management systems. Almost all respondents support their equipment frequently or sometimes have to search for what they need. However, most feel at least “somewhat confident” in their organization’s ability to make data-driven asset decisions.
This gap between trust and reality is costing contractors more than they realize.
The illusion of control
Most construction companies have made real investments in asset management. The survey found that 93% use asset tags or scanners, 82% use cloud-based software, and 79% still rely on spreadsheets as backup. The tools are there. But the technology doesn’t work.
“The desire and belief in the technology is there,” says Rachel Palmer, director of product marketing at AlignOps. “But it’s likely that construction leaders don’t have solid workflows for using the technology, or employees don’t feel supported to use it. You have to make it easy, otherwise they go back to paper, spreadsheets and phone calls.”
The culprit is not lack of investment. It’s fragmentation. 79% of construction companies manage procurement, asset tracking and maintenance in three separate and disconnected systems. When each department manages their own platform, no one has a single, shared view of assets.
The result, says Walker Fenton, chief product officer at AlignOps, is a false sense of security: Modern systems are in place, so everyone assumes operations are under control. “When you don’t have real-time visibility, even basic operational decisions become reactive. Accountability breaks down and jobs grind to a halt.”
High confidence, weak data
Construction leaders regularly face high-stakes questions: repair or replace? Own or rent? The survey found that 99% of leaders report at least some confidence in their ability to compare the return on investment of owned and leased equipment. But when asked if they actually use data to make these calls, only 2% said they rely on detailed data. 79% said they rely on gut feeling along with some data. 19% said decisions are mostly based on instinct alone.
“The problem with just relying on gut feeling is that you tend to focus only on what you know in the moment,” says Palmer. “If you had the right data, you might make a different decision. Trust, but verify: Use data to validate feelings.”
What blind spots really cost
When visibility is broken, the financial consequences are predictable and avoidable. Almost all respondents say that their teams often buy assets that their company already owns, simply because no one can locate them quickly enough. Equipment downtime compounds the problem: More than half of construction companies report that equipment is not used weekly due to poor tracking, with workers wasting 30 to 60 minutes a day searching for tools.
More than half of respondents identified lost or stolen equipment as their top challenge, with most directly attributing it to poor monitoring. A large mechanical contractor was experiencing tool losses of $300,000 to $400,000 per project before running a simple tracking pilot. By barcoding each tool and scanning it from the tool crib to the job site and back, tool loss on this unique project was reduced to almost zero.
Unlike labor shortages or inflation, asset visibility is a problem you can actually solve. The data to argue the change is already here.
Download the Construction goods visibility report to explore the full findings and learn how to recover time, reduce waste and protect your margins.
