The U.S. construction industry spends roughly $600 billion a year on materials. Between 10 and 20 percent of that, roughly $60 to $120 billion, disappears into inefficiency: overhead processing costs, inconsistent pricing, crew idle time waiting on deliveries, and invoice cycles that stretch past 40 days. In an industry running on 2–3% margins, that leakage directly threatens profit on every project. 

The external environment has made the problem impossible to ignore. Steel and aluminum tariffs have hit 50%. Construction input prices are up over 43% since 2020. Project abandonment surged 88% year-on-year by mid-2025 as contractors walked away from bids they could no longer hold. And with 92% of U.S. firms reporting labor shortages, every hour a foreman spends chasing deliveries (five to eight hours per week, on average) is an hour of skilled work that never gets done. 

We spent months investigating this problem. We interviewed the founders building the technology platforms reshaping procurement. We surveyed construction leaders across the U.S. and UK about what they are actually doing, what tools they use, and where the process still breaks down. We reviewed the vendor landscape, the regulatory shifts, and the AI capabilities moving from prototype to production. 

The result is How Technology is Fixing Material Procurement, a new in-depth report from Bricks & Bytes. 

The hidden costs are larger than most firms have measured. Overhead labor to process a $3,000 material order can reach $400. Average overpayment on materials runs at 5%, with regional price variances of 25–30% within the same company. Most contractors have never aggregated these costs because their current systems lack the data to do it. 

The workflow breaks at three specific points. The field-to-office handoff, delivery tracking, and invoice reconciliation account for the majority of wasted time and cost. Technology targeting these bottlenecks delivers the fastest returns. 

AI is delivering measurable results today, within defined boundaries. Document parsing, automated invoice matching, and specification-to-product matching are in production. Fully autonomous procurement remains aspirational, and the report is candid about what works and what does not. 

Implementation fails on process, not software. The five most common failure modes we identified are all preventable, and none of them are about the technology itself. 

The data advantage starts compounding on day one. Contractors who centralize purchasing through a platform begin building a structured pricing and supplier performance dataset that does not exist in spreadsheet-driven processes. That asset grows more valuable with every project. 

The report is an independent editorial assessment built for senior leaders who need to make informed decisions about procurement technology in the next 12 to 24 months. We include honest assessments of where the technology has limitations, practitioner feedback that is sometimes unflattering to vendors, and a practical evaluation framework for readers who want to act on what they learn. 

The full report is available now.

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