By Elia González Salas, Co-Founder and Commercial Manager & Quantity Surveyor at KOSMOS, WIB Regional Lead for Denmark
A Profession in Transition
Quantity surveyors work with cost. Architects work with space. Facility managers work with operations. For most of construction’s history, each discipline had its lane, and data was something that happened on the side. A spreadsheet here. A report there. Numbers passed between teams in formats that only made sense to the person who built them.
That is changing. And the change is significant.
Construction is becoming a data-driven industry. Not because everyone decided it should be, but because the pressure is building from multiple directions at once: regulation is increasing, clients are demanding better information, and the tools available to collect and use data have improved faster than most people expected.
The question now is not whether construction will embrace data. It already is. The question is whether we will have enough people who understand it well enough to do it properly.
From Accidental Data People to Intentional Roles
A few years ago, if you asked most construction professionals about structured data, you would have got a blank look. Data was what you put in a spreadsheet. You sent the file, the other team opened it, everyone moved on.
Then things shifted. Common data environments became standard on larger projects. Naming conventions started to matter. Parameters had to be consistent. Your data had to connect to someone else’s data. The file you sent was no longer just your file. It was a piece of a larger system, and if it did not fit, it caused problems downstream.
This created a new kind of pressure. Professionals who had never thought about data governance were suddenly expected to know what structured data meant, why it mattered, and how to produce it. Many of them figured it out on their own, out of necessity, driven by curiosity or by the demands of a specific project.
Those people became something important: the first generation of construction data professionals. And almost all of them were self-taught.
The Profiles That Are Emerging
What does a construction data professional look like? There is no single answer, which is part of the challenge.
Some came from construction and learned data on the side. They understand the industry deeply, they know what information matters and why, and they have learned enough about tools and platforms to put it to use. They are effective because they can translate between the technical and the practical.
Others came from data science or technology and moved into construction. They understand algorithms, coding, and how AI systems work. They are learning construction on the job. They become valuable when they understand enough of both worlds to ask the right questions and connect the right people.
Then there are those in between: analysts, data engineers, information managers, BIM coordinators who have expanded into broader data roles. These are the connectors. They may not be the strongest statisticians or the deepest domain experts, but they understand enough of each world to make things work.
All of these profiles are valuable. All of them are needed. And right now, there are not enough of them.
Why Passion Alone Is Not Enough
The people currently doing this work are largely doing it because they care about it. They saw a problem, they got curious, they learned, and they built something. That is genuinely impressive.
“But passion is not a system.”
And as the volume of data in construction grows, and as the decisions that depend on that data become more consequential, relying on a small group of self-motivated individuals is not a sustainable model.
The gap is not just in numbers. It is also in structure. There is currently no clear framework for what a construction data professional is responsible for. No recognised qualification that says: this person understands data governance, data security, and how to apply data tools responsibly within a construction context. No body that defines the scope of the role or holds practitioners accountable.
In other words, we have the people before we have the profession. “And that creates risk.”
The Risk Nobody Is Talking About Enough
AI tools have made it easier than ever to process and analyse data quickly. Someone with no formal data training can now run analyses that would have required a specialist a few years ago. That is genuinely useful. It fills gaps and saves time.
But it also means that people are making decisions based on outputs they may not fully understand. If you do not know how to evaluate whether an AI result is correct, you cannot know when to trust it and when to question it. And in construction, where decisions affect budgets, timelines, safety, and the built environment that people live and work in, that matters.
The risk is not that AI is being used. The risk is that it is being used without enough people who have the knowledge to set the criteria, check the outputs, and take responsibility for what happens next.
Data security adds another layer. As construction projects become more data-rich, the information inside them becomes more sensitive. Designs for airports, metro stations, public infrastructure. Health and safety data. Financial records. Intellectual property that clients have explicitly asked to protect. Someone needs to understand how that data is stored, how it is shared, and what risks come with putting it on a given platform.
Right now, that awareness is often missing. Not because people do not care, but because the skills were never part of their training.
A Positive Direction, With a Clear Gap
None of this is meant as criticism of the industry. The direction is right. Construction is moving toward better data practices, and the people leading that shift deserve real credit for building knowledge without a roadmap.
But the industry needs to move faster on two things.
First, education. Construction degrees still give very little space to data literacy, data governance, or information management. That needs to change, not just in specialist programs, but across all construction disciplines. Quantity surveyors, architects, engineers, and project managers all work with data. All of them should understand it better.
Second, structure. The industry needs recognised roles, clearer responsibilities, and eventually some form of professional framework that defines what it means to manage construction data responsibly. That does not mean bureaucracy for its own sake. It means giving the people doing this work a clear foundation to stand on, and giving the clients and projects that depend on them proper confidence.
What This Means for Women in Construction Technology
For women entering or growing in construction technology, this moment is full of possibility.
These data roles are not gatekept by decades of tradition or narrow definitions of what a construction professional looks like. They are new. They are being defined right now, by the people doing the work. And they reward exactly the kind of thinking that tends to be undervalued in more traditional construction roles: systems thinking, curiosity, the ability to connect across disciplines, and the willingness to ask why things are done the way they are.
The hybrid profiles that the industry needs most are not just technical. They require communication, judgment, and the ability to translate between worlds. That is a human skill set, not a software one.
If you are drawn to data, to making information useful, to understanding how things connect and where they break down, there is a place for you here. More than that: there is a need for you here.
The industry is building the plane while flying it. It needs more people who want to help design it properly.
