Construction suppliers face new AI-driven pre-qualification hurdles amid evolving search landscape

Construction suppliers are increasingly at risk of being screened by machines before they are ever screened by people. The latest Office for National Statistics figures show that 35% of UK businesses with 10 or more employees were using at least one AI technology by June 2026, up from about 12% in September 2023, yet construction remained one of the weakest adopters at 13%. That mismatch suggests buyers may be moving faster than many of the firms trying to win a place on their tender ...

Evidence from outside construction points to how quickly the buying journey is shifting. In G2’s March 2026 survey of 1,076 B2B decision-makers, 51% said they now start their research with an AI chatbot more often than Google, while 71% said they use AI chatbots somewhere in the software research process. Buyers told G2 that chatbots were the number one source shaping their shortlist, 8 in 10 said the tools sped up purchasing, and 69% said the chatbot surfaced information that pushed them towards a different vendor than the one they expected to choose. Even among purchasing and procurement respondents, ChatGPT was the leading tool, ahead of Gemini, Copilot and Claude. The research concerns software rather than steel, fixings or fabricated assemblies, but it shows how shortlist-building is already moving into chat windows. (learn.g2.com)

Construction itself is still some distance from full AI deployment, even as expectations rise. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said in its AI in Construction 2025 findings that 45% of organisations reported no AI use at all and only 1% had scaled it across projects. At the same time, nearly 70% of project managers and quantity surveyors believed AI would help them deliver greater value, and 40% expected its biggest effect over the next five years to be in design optioneering. RICS also found that lack of skilled personnel, system integration problems and poor data quality were the main brakes on adoption. As Maureen Ehrenberg, RICS acting president-elect, put it: “The challenge now is to ensure AI is adopted responsibly, ethically and in ways that deliver real public good.” (rics.org)

The ONS numbers suggest why so many suppliers may still be poorly prepared for this shift in discovery. Among businesses already using AI, the average number of AI technologies in use has edged up only from 1.4 to 1.6 since late 2023, which the statisticians said implied “relatively limited transformative impacts to date for most AI-adopting firms”. Large language models were the most common tool, used by 18% of businesses, but only 10% of AI-using firms said they used AI extensively, and only 15% said more than half their workforce used it in daily work. Training is still thin too: only 11% of businesses said that more than half of staff had received AI-related training. (ons.gov.uk)

At the same time, the wider search environment is giving users fewer reasons to click through to a supplier’s own site. Ofcom’s discussion paper on “answer engines” found that 39% of UK internet users read search summaries “sometimes” and 5% “always”, while only 14% said they never read them. Most users rated those summaries as helpful. The regulator also found that people tended to use AI search tools most comfortably for lower-stakes tasks, such as recipes or how-to advice, while turning back to traditional search for higher-stakes subjects like health or money. Separately, SparkToro’s 2024 study using Datos clickstream data found that only 360 of every 1,000 Google searches in the US, and 374 in the EU, resulted in a click to the open web. In other words, a large share of decisions are now being shaped before a visit to a manufacturer’s website ever happens. (ofcom.org.uk)

That does not mean AI has replaced conventional search or human judgement. Gartner found in a pair of 2025 US consumer surveys, published in January 2026, that only about one-third believed GenAI chatbots were as effective as search engines for learning new information. The company also found that 31% spent more time searching because of AI summaries, compared with 16% who spent less, and that more than two-thirds continued beyond Google’s AI Overview. Emma Mathison, a senior principal in Gartner’s marketing practice, said: “Marketers cannot afford to think of AI as a replacement for traditional search.” (gartner.com)

The practical implication for industrial suppliers is less dramatic than the slogan that AI has “killed” the approved list, but more disruptive than many in the sector appear to realise. G2’s interviews with marketers found companies rewriting pages into FAQ formats, testing prompts in ChatGPT and Gemini to see whether they appeared, and pushing customers for richer reviews because AI systems were already pulling from those external trust signals. The same report said buyers still wanted “receipts”, meaning citations, reviews and corroboration rather than a slick unverified answer. (learn.g2.com)

For manufacturers, fabricators and specialist subcontractors, that means visibility is becoming another pre-qualification hurdle. Relationships, framework places and search rankings still matter, but they no longer guarantee that a buyer under time pressure will see your name first. In a market where construction’s own AI maturity remains low, the firms most likely to stay on the shortlist are likely to be those that make certifications, case studies, technical data and third-party proof easy for both people and answer engines to find, compare and trust. (ons.gov.uk)

Source: Noah Wire Services