An MIT and Suffolk study: AI cuts construction costs by up to 20%
Suffolk Construction and MIT have published a joint study on artificial intelligence in construction, based on a 180,000-square-foot, $180 million multifamily residential project built in San Francisco and completed in 2024.
The findings: applied to design, off-site prefabrication, permitting, scheduling, labour and the materials supply chain, AI cuts costs by 17% to 20% and schedules by 22% to 25%. The study identifies six distinct areas of intervention and notes that gains in one carry over to the others.
These figures come from a real job site, not a theoretical projection. In my day-to-day work with construction companies I see the same mechanism on a smaller scale: one process digitised properly frees up time for the next. The sum matters more than any single change.