One line from Ken Baumgartner‘s closing remarks at Advancing Preconstruction stayed with me.
Preconstruction wasn’t even a word in the 1980s.
Yet here we are — over a thousand professionals gathered in Phoenix to do exactly what the conference name promises: advance it.
The journey Ken described is remarkable. A discipline that once operated quietly in the background has become a strategic cornerstone of project delivery. Young construction professionals actively pursue preconstruction as a career path. The decisions made before the shovel hits the ground are now recognized on equal footing with execution on whether a project succeeds or struggles.
Being there as a vendor gave us a front-row seat to both sides of that story. On one side: the technology landscape has never been richer. The number of purpose-built solutions for estimating, benchmarking, scheduling, and risk analysis continues to grow. AI has expedited this evolution and that growth reflects real demand from a profession that has earned its seat at the table.
On the other side: the conversations that seem to leave people most energized are still the practitioner-to-practitioner ones. The roundtables. The sessions where someone says “we tried this and here’s what actually happened.” That peer knowledge exchange is what keeps a conference like APC grounded in the work itself.
As the field continues to mature, keeping those two things in balance — the tools and the human expertise behind them — feels like the right direction.
Grateful to have been part of it alongside the Hanson Wade Group team, and already looking ahead to 2027.