Walk onto almost any construction site today, and you’ll see a flurry of activity—teams on the move, equipment running, schedules posted. But what you won’t always see is what’s slowing everything down: the hours lost every week to what’s called Gray Work.
If you’re not familiar with the term yet, here’s the quick version: Gray Work in the construction project management refers to all the behind-the-scenes, non-value-added work that keeps projects moving, but drags down productivity. It’s things like chasing updates, searching through email threads, reentering the same data into multiple systems, and fixing spreadsheet errors.
And according to Quickbase’s 2025 Gray Work Report, it’s costing construction professionals’ big time.
How to Spot Gray Work
Gray Work shows up differently depending on the role, but here’s what it often looks like in the field:
- A foreman spends an hour flipping between apps trying to confirm material delivery times.
- A project manager copies handwritten notes from a jobsite walk into a spreadsheet back at the trailer, and then has to reenter that same data into another reporting tool.
- An electrician calls three different people to verify the latest version of a site plan.
- A safety lead wastes valuable time locating incident logs stored in someone's inbox.
Multiply this across every team on every project, and the scale of the problem becomes clear. It’s not that your people aren’t working hard. They’re working too hard—on the wrong things.
The results are in: Construction Sites are Drowning in Gray Work
Despite years of digital transformation efforts, Gray Work is on the rise in construction. The 2025 Gray Work Report highlights some telling statistics specific to the industry:
- 52% of construction professionals say manual work has increased over the past year
- 45% say outdated information from the back office is a top field challenge
- 35% report that data and systems are not connected, creating delays and confusion
- 26% still spend significant time on manual data entry
- 24% cite data collection errors as a recurring problem, which impacts compliance and rework
These numbers reveal that while projects may look efficient on the surface, the underlying processes are burdened by outdated workflows and disconnected systems.
More Tools, More Problems.
One might assume the problem is a lack of technology. But that’s not the case.
Across industries, including construction, at least 80% of professionals reported increased investment in productivity, work management, and collaboration software over the past year.
Yet despite that:
- 73% say using multiple project management tools makes it harder to share project information
- 75% say those tools prevent them from seeing all their data in one place
In other words, construction teams are navigating tool overload. Rather than streamlining work, these tools are often creating more fragmentation. Schedulers, field supervisors, and finance teams all operate within different platforms, and stitching those together requires even more manual effort.
This is classic Gray Work.
Losing Time. Wasting Money. Increasing Risk.
When Gray Work becomes part of your daily routine, the effects ripple across every aspect of a project. Let’s break it down:
- Time delays: Manually searching for updates or verifying data slows decision-making.
- Cost overruns: Rework from data entry errors or outdated information can lead to blown budgets.
- Safety risks: If field teams lack real-time visibility into incidents or job hazard analyses, safety practices suffer.
- Low morale: Teams know they’re wasting time doing double work, which drains motivation and focus.
The result? Only a portion of the team’s effort goes toward productive, value-generating work. The rest gets consumed by busywork.
And the numbers back it up: across industries, 50% of professionals say they’ve experienced project delays, miscommunication, duplication of work, or budget overages due to inefficiencies like these.
Four Common Sources of Gray Work
In construction, the Gray Work bottlenecks typically fall into four categories:
1. Outdated Back-Office Information
45% of construction professionals say stale or incorrect data from the back office makes it difficult to make real-time decisions on site. This lag often causes schedule disruptions or redundant work orders.
2. Disconnected Systems
35% report their systems don’t talk to each other. That means you might enter daily log data into a field app—then reenter it into a payroll tool or construction project tracker back at the trailer. This manual rework isn’t just inefficient—it’s also error-prone.
3. Manual Processes
26% still rely on repetitive, manual data entry. Field teams might jot down notes on paper or whiteboards, then spend evenings converting those to spreadsheets.
4. Data Collection Errors
24% mention issues with how data is collected—wrong formats, missing fields, or delays in syncing. Inaccurate or incomplete data creates rework and compliance headaches down the line.
These aren’t small issues. Left unchecked, they directly impact safety, quality, and profitability.
What Gray Work Is Really Costing Your Team
The impacts of Gray Work go beyond wasted hours. It’s leading to real project pain:
These aren’t minor annoyances. They’re project risks, and they add up fast.
So, how do you reduce Gray Work?
The solution isn’t to scrap your tech stack. It’s to bring it together.
Construction teams need connected, flexible tools that:
- Eliminate data silos between field and office
- Sync updates in real time
- Replace duplicative processes with automation
- Work with—not against—your existing workflows
That’s exactly where Quickbase comes in.
Quickbase is an AI-powered construction management platform built to help teams eliminate Gray Work by automating manual processes, centralizing data, and enabling real-time collaboration across every phase of a project.
At the core of this approach is the Project Hub Pro App—an all-in-one project management solution purpose-built for construction teams. The ultimate construction project visibility tool brings together budgets, schedules, field reports, daily logs, change orders, safety tracking, and more—into a single, connected platform.
It’s flexible enough to adapt to your workflows, powerful enough to integrate with the tools you already use, and smart enough to surface the data you need—right when you need it.
Once they adopted Project Hub Pro app, teams were able to automate key processes, reduce time spent on data entry, and finally get everyone working off the same real-time source of truth.
Overcoming Gray Work
Reducing Gray Work doesn’t require a massive overhaul. Start small:
- Identify one process where teams are duplicating effort, like field reporting or material tracking.
- Evaluate what tools are being used and where they overlap.
- Map out where data gets reentered or lost in handoffs.
- Pilot a connected workflow with automation in mind.
Over time, these small steps create compounding gains.
See more in the full report
This blog only scratches the surface. The full 2025 Gray Work Research Report offers deeper insights into how construction teams and other industries are navigating these challenges.
Download the report to explore:
- Year-over-year trends on software use and manual work
- The top 5 tech challenges in construction project management
- Field-specific stats on disconnected data, duplication, and lost time
- Customer stories on what’s working (and what’s not)
Whether you’re in the field or managing operations from the office, the report is a valuable resource to help rethink how your team works.
Final thoughts: It's time to reclaim your time
Gray Work may be invisible, but its impact is real. Every hour spent chasing updates, reentering data, or toggling between tools is an hour that could be spent building.
Reducing Gray Work doesn’t require a massive transformation. It starts with simplifying what’s already there, removing friction, and giving your teams a clearer way to get things done.
Download the full 2025 Gray Work Report and take the first step toward eliminating the busy work, for good.
