After a challenging period marked by rising costs, project delays and regulatory pressure, the UK construction industry is set for a sustained upswing. According to the Glenigan Construction Industry Forecast 2026–2027, total project-starts are expected to rebound from £63.7bn in 2025 to £68.8bn in 2026 and a forecasted £77.5bn in 2027 - an impressive 13% sector-wide increase in 2027.
This growth isn’t just broad, it spans almost every major sector:
- Private housing: +18% in 2027, following a 6% lift in 2026
- Social housing: +12% in 2027
- Industrial & logistics: +12% in 2026 and +13% in 2027 as demand for warehousing surges
- Offices: sustained growth driven by sustainable refurbishment and hybrid-working needs
This signals a clear shift: the next two years will be defined by build volume returning, regulation tightening, and clients demanding greater transparency, ESG delivery and workforce compliance.
And that’s exactly where MSite strengthens contractors’ ability to scale with confidence.
Why growth requires a new approach to workforce management
As project-starts increase, the industry faces compounding pressures:
1. A larger, more distributed workforce
More projects mean more subcontractors, more labour movement, and greater compliance risk. Glenigan highlights persistent delays linked to Building Safety Regulator (BSR) approvals and workforce shortages slowing private housing delivery.
2. Heightened regulatory environments
Across housing, civil engineering and commercial development, regulation and ESG scrutiny continues to shape investment decisions and tendering expectations.
3. Stronger demand for ESG, carbon tracking and social value
Industrial and logistics projects, for example, are expected to grow rapidly — driven by online retail and sustainability-led investment decisions.
4. A need for productivity uplift
Glenigan repeatedly notes that rising labour costs, inefficiencies and supply-chain complexity will challenge contractors as build volumes grow. Without digital workforce tools, these issues multiply.
The message is simple: Contractors that scale without digitising workforce management will struggle to meet demand, compliance obligations, and client expectations.
This is where MSite becomes mission-critical.
How MSite enables contractors to capitalise on the 2026–2027 growth cycle
MSite is engineered precisely for the challenges highlighted in the Glenigan forecast. As one of the UK’s leading site-critical workforce management platforms, MSite delivers:
1. Compliance – Essential as housing and infrastructure accelerate
With private housing and social housing starts set for double-digit growth by 2027, compliance complexity will increase dramatically.
MSite strengthens risk management through:
- Automated Right to Work and modern slavery checks
- Biometric access control preventing non-verified workers entering site
- Induction, CSCS and training verification logs
- Full audit trails for BSR, CDM and client inspections
These capabilities help contractors avoid the delays Glenigan identifies around BSR approvals and workforce readiness.
2. Productivity gains that meet the sector’s labour-shortage reality
As the forecast anticipates rising build volumes, site efficiency becomes critical.
MSite delivers measurable impacts:
- 72% reduction in workforce admin
- 18% uplift in on-site productivity
- Faster onboarding through PreSite digital inductions
- Real-time attendance, shift planning and worker-readiness data
These gains directly support sectors like industrial and logistics, where 2026–2027 demand will rise sharply and labour utilisation must be optimised.
3. ESG, carbon and social value reporting — Increasingly vital for bids & frameworks
Glenigan emphasises strong growth in sectors heavily influenced by ESG requirements, including offices, logistics, and public-sector developments.
MSite helps contractors lead here by:
- Tracking diversity, local employment and skills development
- Providing ESG dashboards for real-time reporting
- Reducing paper consumption through digital workflows
- Recording carbon-linked labour metrics such as travel mode and congestion impacts
4. A single source of truth across a growing project portfolio
With project-starts forecast to rise from £68.8bn to £77.5bn between 2026 and 2027, contractors need reliable, centralised data environments.
MSite offers:
- A unified worker database
- Integrations with Autodesk, HRIS, payroll and Power BI
- Real-time dashboards for Operations, Commercial, H&S and ESG teams
- Standardised processes across sites and regions
What this means for contractors preparing for 2026–2027
The growth trajectory is clear, and so are the risks for contractors who attempt to scale with paper processes, manual compliance workflows or fragmented systems.
The next two years will reward:
- Digitised compliance
- Standardised workforce controls
- Transparent ESG reporting
- Efficient labour utilisation
- Accurate data for decision-making and bidding
These are exactly the areas where MSite delivers proven value at scale, supporting more than 800,000 workers, 50,000 supply chain organisations, and 7,000+ projects to date.
The sector is growing
The Glenigan forecast shows a construction industry on the edge of a powerful recovery. But growth doesn’t happen automatically. It requires stronger governance, better data, safer operations and consistent digital processes.
MSite gives contractors the platform they need, delivering:
- Safer sites
- Lower risk
- Higher productivity
- Stronger ESG performance
- Workforce intelligence that scales
The Glenigan forecast highlights a sector moving into a period of renewed activity, expanding pipelines, and greater opportunity across UK construction. But growth also amplifies complexity, from tighter compliance demands to larger, more fluid workforces and rising expectations around ESG, data transparency and operational efficiency.
Contractors who rely on manual processes will feel these pressures first. Contractors who digitise now will feel the benefits first.
MSite gives construction leaders the visibility, control and confidence they need to operate at scale, ensuring every worker is compliant, every site is efficient and every decision is backed by real-time data. Whether it’s accelerating onboarding, strengthening compliance, improving productivity or evidencing social value, MSite helps teams deliver safely, sustainably and with less risk.
As the industry enters this next phase of growth, the question isn’t whether contractors should modernise workforce management, it’s how quickly they can.