These construction jobs won't exist in the next five years

A letter · September 2026

If your week is mostly a template, a spreadsheet, and a salary, you already know. You just haven't said it out loud.

Rahul Vaishnav · Ten years in mining, underground, and on the street. Five years building AI and aiming it at the same work.

If you're anything like the people I talk to, you think the cuts are a software problem.

I know a few of them. They quit. Some of them didn't get the choice. Now they're looking at traditional businesses the way you look at a door when the room behind you is on fire. Construction is on that list. So is mining. So is the company that rebuilds the street you drive on.

I get the pull. The work is real. You can stand on it.

I spent a decade next to people who do that work. In the mine. Underground. On the street. Then I spent the last five years building technology in AI, and watching what happens when you point it at how a job actually gets done. Not the poster version. The Tuesday version.

That is why I'm writing this. I've been in both rooms. I have waited on a decision that should have taken an hour. And I have watched AI finish the office work that used to fill a person's week.

So when someone tells me the project office is safe because the field is real, I don't buy it.

A lot of construction jobs are going to disappear. I'm not going to open with a list of titles. Titles are written to sound necessary. What is already clear, before any list, is that white-collar jobs get cut. Not every one of them. Enough of them that 'I work in the office' is not a five-year plan.

There's a list at the bottom. The jobs. Skip to it if that's all you came for.

I'd rather you didn't. Not because I put a lot of thought into this. Because the list is this year. The questions are how you look at any job after that, for as long as this keeps moving.

Let's begin.

I · You are not safe because the industry is real

People leaving software hear 'construction' and picture a crane. They should picture a desk with three monitors, a shared drive named after a job that finished in 2019, and a person whose whole Tuesday is moving numbers from one file into another so a meeting can happen on Wednesday.

That person is not a joke. The company needs the meeting. The company needs the file. The company has also started to notice that it is paying a professional salary for the moving.

The field is not the first cut. I want to be clear about that, because I've stood in the places people use as a metaphor. A heading does not run itself. A crew on a live street does not run itself. If your job is the ground, this letter is not about you. Not yet. Maybe not in five years.

If your job is talking about the ground, formatting the ground, logging the ground, and emailing the ground to someone who will glance at it, keep reading.

The industry can stay busy and still fire the office built to describe the work.

II · Four winds. You only need two.

Here is the picture I use when someone asks me which jobs go first. I don't start with a title. I start with the wind.

The wind diagram. A job does not have to be all four. Two or three is enough.

Repetitive means you do the same motion on new paper. The job number changes. You don't.

Boring means you would not miss the task if it vanished tomorrow. You would miss the paycheck. Be honest. You already know which hours those are.

Low effort does not mean you are lazy. It means the task stopped asking anything of you once you learned the steps. A careful new person, plus the template, can do it. If that sentence stung, good. Sting is information.

High cost means the company is paying you like a professional to do that motion. Cheap repetitive work can sit in a corner for years. Nobody is staring at it. Expensive repetitive work gets a project. You are the project.

You do not need all four winds. Two is a warning. Three is a timeline.

III · Ask the week, not the title

Don't start with the posting. Postings are written by people who need the seat to sound bigger than the week.

Start with last Tuesday. Then answer these. Out loud, if you can stand it.

1. Do you find your job a bit boring?
2. Is some part of the work repetitive? Not a task. A real slice of the week.
3. Is some part of it low effort? Again, not the whole job. A part you could hand to someone in week two.
4. Are you getting paid decently for that part?

If two or three of those are yes, you are in trouble. Not in a think-piece. On the clock that is already running.

Notice what I did not ask.

I did not ask if the company needs the outcome. Of course it does. An estimate has to exist. A drawing has to be issued. A cost report has to close. An invoice has to be coded. Needing the outcome is not the same as needing you, paid the way you are paid, to produce it by hand.

People hide inside that gap. 'Someone has to do it' is true. 'Someone with my salary has to do it the way I do it' is the part that is about to be tested.

IV · The only question that still belongs to you

There is a second way to look at the same job. I like this one better, because it doesn't let you hide behind 'my work is important.'

You are given a description. You pull some data. You use the tools you have. A spreadsheet. A log. A spec. Now a model. You get an answer.

Then the only question that is still yours:

Can you look at that answer and say, I do not agree?

Not because a cell is broken. Because you have seen the ground. The owner. The crew. The last job that looked like this one and was not. You can name the thing the data missed, and you are willing to say it when the printout looks clean.

The job ends at the printout: The tool produces the answer. Your work is to format it, send it, and file it. If the answer is wrong in a way that matters, you would not know. You would find out when the job did.

The job starts when you disagree: The tool still produces an answer. You are paid to say no when the site, the contract, or the last failure says no. Take you out of the loop and the outcome changes. That is a job.

If you can exercise that kind of judgment, you are in much better shape. I'm not saying you are safe. I'm saying you have something a model does not have, which is a body that has been in the place the paper is about.

If you can't do that — if 'done' means the tool agreed with itself — then the tool does not need you sitting there for long. It needs someone to glance. Glancing is not a department.

V · The whole job can matter. The big parts may not.

This is where people fool themselves, and I understand why. The title is not a lie.

Someone has to keep the estimate alive. Someone has to get the drawings out. Someone has to close the cost report. The org chart is describing a real need.

Now look at the parts.

If a part of the job does not change the outcome, if the project lands in the same place whether you did that part carefully or a machine did it, that part is exposed. And some parts are bigger than the other parts. Read that again.

The repeatable half of the week can be most of the week. The hour where you actually decide something is real. It is also not enough to protect the seat, if it is only an hour.

You've heard the comforting line. AI takes tasks, not jobs. That sentence is only comforting if the tasks left behind still add up to a job the company will keep funding.

Often they don't.

Three people who can disagree, fed by a system, replace eight people who did the motion around the disagreement. That is the cut. Not a robot in a hard hat. A smaller office. Same crane.

VI · Design and engineering are not a shelter

This is the part people skip, because a stamp feels like a wall.

It isn't.

You've seen what the models are doing now. Not party tricks. Mathematical research. Work on the Euler equations, the kind of problem engineers were told was the hard part of being serious. Mathematicians are still arguing about credit. Ignore the argument for a minute. Argue about it on the weekend if you want.

If a machine is in that fight at all, your spreadsheet was never going to be the moat.

Think about the actual engineering week. Not the one on the proposal. The one in the calc package.

You open the sheet. You move numbers from the drawing into the cells. You run the same check you ran on the last bay, and the bay before that. You do a hand calc so you can say you did a hand calc. You paste the output into a PDF, put the job number in the footer, and send it to the person who stamps it.

That work mattered when the arithmetic was the scarce thing. Arithmetic is not scarce anymore. Moving numbers around a spreadsheet is not scarce. Doing the calculation by hand, as proof that a human sat with it, is becoming a ritual. Rituals get expensive. Then they get cut.

I'm not saying engineering disappears. I'm saying the part of engineering that is a procedure is about to stop being a career.

Design is the same story in a nicer font.

If your design work is this, take the template, drop it on a different building, shift the grid, update the title block, reissue the typical details, change the wall types by a number, you are in the wind. The building changed. The motion didn't.

A school in one city and a school in another are not the same building. A lot of the drawings are. The plans. The details. The notes you copied because they worked last time and nobody got hurt. That copying used to take a team of people who were good at copying carefully. Careful copying is exactly what these tools are for.

You can feel the objection coming. 'Every site is different.' Yes. That is the job that remains. It is not the job most of the hours are spent on.

The person who survives in design is the one who can look at a clean set, produced fast, looking professional, and say: this is the wrong building. The soil won't take it. The existing structure won't take it. The owner said they wanted this, and what they need is the other thing. The template is lying.

If you can't say that, the template is the employee. You are the person who places it.

One more thing about the stamp, because I've heard this used as a blanket.

A license means someone has to own the call. It does not mean five people have to produce the call by hand so one person can own it. Companies will keep the person who can refuse a clean answer. They will stop hiring the people who feed that person sheets. If you are the feed, the stamp in the other room is not your shield. It is the reason they only need one of you, not six.

VII · Put the descriptions on the table

I took common descriptions from four places this work actually lives. Design and engineering. Pre-construction. Operations. Procurement and admin.

I put a check where I think the impact lands. This is my reading. Not a survey. A check is not a verdict on the person in the seat. It is a verdict on the description, if the description stays what it is today.

If your description is different from the one in the row, good. Use the questions, not my check.

High — I would not bet a career on this still being a full job. Medium — the repetitive half goes. A thinner job may remain. Very low — the judgment, or the place the work happens, is the job.

Design and engineering

• High — Run the same member calc in a spreadsheet, bay after bay, and paste it into the package. Moving numbers. The building changed. The sheet didn't.
• High — Redo the arithmetic by hand so the calc 'was checked.' A ritual. The machine already did the arithmetic, and it doesn't get tired at line 40.
• High — Take last project's typical details and retitle them for this building. Template design. Careful copying is the whole motion.
• High — Issue plan sheets that are the previous set with the grid shifted and the notes reused. Repetitive, dull once you know the kit, and slow only because the files are heavy.
• Medium — Size the member when the loads are clean and the code path is the standard one. The sizing goes. Choosing a different system, when the standard one is wrong, does not.
• Medium — Find the clash and decide who moves when both sides have a real reason. The model finds the box. A person still has to spend the relationship.
• Very low — Kill the calc because the ground in the report is not the ground you are standing on. This is the disagree-with-the-answer job. A clean sheet can still be a lie.
• Very low — Design the building that cannot be the last building. The plan has to be invented, not placed. If the template fails here, the hours were never the template.
• Very low — Own the stamp, and say in the room that the fast, professional set is the wrong one. One owner of the call. Not a team paid to feed the stamp.

Pre-construction

• High — Pull quantities off the drawings and drop them into the estimate template. Same motion, drawing after drawing. The count is not the judgment.
• High — Assemble the bid book. Boilerplate, forms, the same front end every time. Repetitive, dull, and slow only because the files are scattered.
• High — Compare the spec to the last spec, line by line, and mark what changed. A machine is better at not missing line 400. You are paid to care about ten of them.
• High — Log subcontractor quotes into the sheet and chase the missing ones. Data entry with a phone attached. The follow-up writes itself.
• Medium — Price labor from past jobs, then defend the number in the bid review. The lookup goes. The argument about why this shaft is not the last shaft stays.
• Very low — See what the drawing does not say, and what that silence will cost in the ground. Take this out and the bid is a wish.
• Very low — Sit with an owner and tell them the risk they do not want in the number. No template covers the room. The outcome moves when you speak.

Operations

• High — Write the daily report from texts, photos, and what the foreman said at 6 a.m. Collection and formatting. The report can exist without a person retyping it.
• High — Take the minutes and chase the action items until someone replies. Boring on purpose. The value was never the typing.
• High — Keep the RFI log, send the status mail, and write 'just following up.' A queue with a calendar. High salary for a low-effort loop.
• High — Build the submittal. Cover sheet, transmittal, revision, 'please find attached.' The package is a ritual. The technical call inside it is a different job.
• High — Roll timesheets and purchase orders into the monthly cost report. If the numbers are already in the systems, a person should not be the glue.
• Medium — Update the schedule with percent complete and shift the dates that slipped. Entering progress is exposed. Deciding what the logic means is not the same task.
• Medium — Write the change-order story once the facts are already in the file. Drafting goes. Knowing which fact the other side will attack does not.
• Very low — Set the next three weeks when the material is late and the crew is already here. The plan and the site often disagree. You have to pick.
• Very low — Run the crew in the tunnel, in the mine, or on the street. Not the wind diagram. The work is physical, local, and full of judgment.
• Very low — Decide whether to fight a claim or settle it before it eats the job. Tools can brief you. They should not own the call.

Procurement and admin

• High — Cut purchase orders from requisitions someone already approved. A form with a routing rule. Low effort, repeated all week, not cheap to staff.
• High — Match the invoice to the PO, code it, and park the exceptions in a folder. The match is a machine job. The exception is a smaller job than the pile.
• High — Chase insurance certificates and warn people when a date is about to lapse. A calendar and a template. Nobody will miss doing it. Everyone will miss the lapse.
• High — Build the quote table and highlight the low number. The table is not the buy. Highlighting the low number is how bad buys happen.
• High — Chase timesheets and keep the payroll file from breaking on Friday. Necessary, repetitive, and already halfway out of a person's hands.
• High — File, rename, book the meeting, and send the pack the night before. The company will keep the outcome and drop the motion.
• Medium — Read the subcontract and know which clause hurts you in month eighteen. A checklist review is exposed. Knowing which clause matters on this job is not.
• Very low — Buy out a package when two quotes look the same on paper and are not. Scope gaps, exclusions, and who will actually man the work. That is judgment.

Read down a column, not across a department. Engineering is not safe because it is 'technical.' Admin is not doomed because it is admin. The description is the unit. The department name is decoration.

VIII · What the checks are actually saying

The high rows have a family resemblance. You could hand the description to someone in their second week, plus a folder of examples, and get a passable result. The work is real. It is also a procedure.

Procedures are what the last five years got good at. Including the messy kind. Emails. Drawings. Specs. Half-finished spreadsheets. The notes from a meeting nobody wanted to attend. The calc you used to do by hand because that was how you proved you were an engineer.

The very low rows resemble each other too. Someone has to be willing to say the printed answer is wrong, and be right often enough that people still ask them. That person has usually stood in the place the paper is about. A mine. A heading. A street that is not the street on the drawing. A site where the soil report was hopeful.

The middle is the uncomfortable one. Those jobs will not vanish on a Monday. They will shrink. The company keeps one person who can disagree with the model, and stops hiring the two who fed it.

If your week is mostly the feeding, you are in the part that goes. The title can stay on the door. The headcount behind the door will not.

IX · Do this to your own week

Don't outsource this part. A model will flatter you. It will find the one hour that sounds like judgment and call that your job. You need the ugly version.

Give it a morning. Pen. Last week's calendar. No performance.

Write Tuesday. Hour by hour. Not the title. The motion. 'Updated the log.' 'Moved the numbers.' 'Copied the detail.' 'Told them the number was wrong.'

Mark the winds. Repetitive. Boring. Low effort. Paid like it wasn't. Two marks on an hour is enough. You don't need a rubric.

Circle the hour you could have disagreed. The hour where a clean answer came back and you had a reason, from the ground or the last failure, to say no. If you cannot find that hour, do not invent one. Absence is the finding.

Look at the ratio. If the circled hour is small, and the marked hours are the rest of the page, the letter is no longer about the industry. It is about the page.

Then ask the question the title is hiding.

If the company could keep the outcome and drop the motion, which hours are left, and do they still add up to you?

If you are coming out of software and looking at construction as the sturdy alternative, do this to the posting before you do it to your pride. If the posting is mostly logging, chasing, formatting, calculating the standard case, and placing last year's details on this year's building, you are walking into the same cut you just left.

Different boots.

The work in the ground is not going away in five years. I have spent too long next to it to pretend otherwise.

A lot of the office built to talk about that work is going away. Design is not exempt because the drawings look hard. Engineering is not exempt because the spreadsheet has Greek letters in it. The jobs that remain are the ones where a person can look at a clean, confident, fast answer and refuse it.

If that is not your week, don't wait for a note from upstairs to explain it.

The description is already the note.

– Rahul

construction.live · Toronto · A letter, not a headcount study. The checks are one person's reading of common job descriptions. The math headlines are a signal, not a settled proof. What matters is the spreadsheet, the hand calc, and the template already on your desk.