Electrifying Mission-Critical Buildings with AI-Powered Design

Mission-critical buildings (data centers, hospitals, and advanced factories) are becoming increasingly complex. A data center isn’t just a shell for servers; it powers the AI revolution, with strict requirements and multiple levels of redundancy. A hospital depends on fault-free electrical systems to keep operating rooms, lighting, and digital platforms online. Any failure has real consequences. Within these building typologies, the electrical systems are the central nervous systems that keep them operational. However, the construction industry's traditional design methods, which have remained relatively unchanged for 25 years, are struggling to keep pace with growing demand for these complex buildings. The scale and intricate requirements of these projects are overwhelming traditional processes, leading to significant inefficiencies, budget concerns, and wasted resources.Today, a shift is underway thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). AI-powered design is already at work optimizing system layouts, ensuring code compliance, and significantly reducing material waste and rework. This innovative approach offers a path for electrical contractors to overcome current hurdles and build the high-performance infrastructure our world increasingly depends on.

Perfect storm of complex demand and growing labor crisis

The pressures on the construction industry today are immense. Global construction work is projected to grow from a $13 trillion global industry today to as much as $22 trillion by 2040, according to McKinsey & Company. What’s more, Architecture World 2030 suggests the world is expected to add 2.6 trillion square feet of new floor area to the global building stock by 2060 — the equivalent of building a new New York City monthly for the next 40 years.

This surging demand for infrastructure is particularly acute for highly complex projects. Investment has poured into creating new data centers in 2025. The sector accounted for more than 70 percent of the increase in private nonresidential construction spending between March 2024 and March 2025. Projects like these, along with the growing need for new hospitals and modern factories, are stretching the limits of traditional design and construction. These challenges are compounded by a looming labor crisis. A McKinsey study estimates that major markets, including the U.S., China, and most advanced economies, will see near- or below-zero workforce projections. If current trends persist, the industry could face a cumulative productivity shortfall of $40 trillion by 2040. 

In construction, electrical work often feels the brunt of labor shortages. Electrical contracting is one of the hardest trades to master from a technical perspective, and it’s one of the most dynamic — considering electrical contractors are often the last trade to coordinate their systems and must adapt to changes from all other trades. Yet, when this group is understaffed, the repercussions are tremendous, leading to issues during construction as well as once the project is complete. For high-stakes buildings like data centers, hospitals, and factories, electrical issues can be devastating. That’s why something has to change at the design-level.

Inefficiencies of the status quo

The need for a change at the design level is paramount because the traditional process itself is failing to keep pace. The root of these inefficiencies can be traced back to the tools and methods used that often introduce risks and errors that compound over time. Contemporary computer-aided design (CAD) tools, while a significant step forward from earlier drafting environments, are not advanced enough for today’s demands. They are primarily used to document a designer's intent rather than actively participating in solving complex engineering and constructibility problems. This process pushes critical constructibility decisions downstream as contractors are left to fill in the gaps in design intent, wasting space, time, energy, manpower, and materials. For the AEC industry, these inefficiencies have caused professionals to spend about 20 percent of their time fixing errors in schematics (according to Expedition Engineering Ltd.), and that lost time contributes to 6 percent of the total cost of a building. 

These inefficiencies also contribute to a larger environmental and efficiency crisis. About 30 percent of all building materials are wasted because of over-designing and errors. This waste, compounded by informed decisions at the design phase, contributes to the industry’s place as a top global contributor to climate change, consuming 40 percent of global energy and 30 percent of the world’s resources, according to research from Schneider Electric. These systemic failures prove that incremental change is not enough; a paradigm shift is required to meet the demands of the future.

 AI-powered design as the new standard

This paradigm shift is being driven by advancements in AI and automation. The goal is to translate proven AI design principles developed for manufacturing over to construction, ultimately making the building process as efficient as manufacturing. This approach requires the industry to move beyond simply documenting designs and instead, working with AI as a design partner and letting it take a leading role in creating the solution.

AI-powered design for the built environment means creating a true digital thread between ideation and construction. Instead of drafting a single solution, contractors describe the problem — sources and loads, codes, routing preferences, performance goals — and the system generates thousands of possible solutions. It automatically filters for code compliance and constructability, generating layouts that minimize space, labor, and material use. This approach empowers teams to move automatically from an idea to a fully executable plan that is both code-compliant and offers an optimized framework to use space and materials as efficiently as possible.

For electrical contractors, this translates to significant benefits. AI-powered platforms can create fully constructible designs in hours instead of weeks, and reduce overall design time by up to 70 percent. This enables them to increase their capacity without having to add more staff in a tight labor market, effectively allowing one person to operate as a whole team. Most importantly, this technology makes sustainable building achievable for any project, allowing all new buildings to be designed as sustainably as possible from the start, regardless of the development budget or the building’s intended use. This approach empowers contractors to tackle the industry's most pressing challenges — waste, inefficiency, and labor shortages — and build the high-performance infrastructure our world needs.

Building the future, one design at a time

Electrical contractors are at the center of the industry’s most pressing challenges — labor shortages, escalating demand, and the pressure to cut waste. AI-powered design gives them leverage: a way to compress timelines, reduce errors, and increase capacity without expanding staff. If widely adopted, this shift can make mission-critical infrastructure more reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable. And, in an environment where demand outpaces capacity, that leverage will define who can deliver and who will fall behind.