Gilbane's parent company plans to double down on artificial intelligence and touted its combined delivery model after reporting $8.7 billion in revenue for 2025, a nearly 13% jump from the prior year. The 156-year-old, family-owned firm's strategy to offer clients end-to-end services - from design and construction to long-term building management - is fueling ambitious growth and an aggressive AI buildout, CEO Ed Broderick told Construction Dive.
Combined delivery drives growth
The firm's 2025 annual report, released privately, revealed $14 billion in construction backlog and detailed safety, sustainability, and technology goals. Broderick credited Gilbane's ability to pull together real estate development, construction, and public-private partnership expertise under one umbrella. "We have a path that we're confident will continue double-digit growth as we go," he said. The company advanced more than $2.3 billion in P3 projects in 2025, particularly in higher education and student housing. Where most projects split design, financing, and building across separate companies, Gilbane offers those pieces through a single team, which Broderick said lets the firm "package and deliver projects faster and more efficiently."
An AI backbone for project consistency
Gilbane is assembling what Broderick called an agentic AI system to link data from a project's earliest planning stages through final handover. "We see in the end an agentic AI system that will help us connect this entire platform that we have, so that we have information that comes in the front end of projects that never has to be re-entered into a project and can be found at the end of the project, so we have consistency across the delivery model," he said. The company uses Microsoft Copilot and has deployed Trunk Tools to manage tens of thousands of documents on complex jobsites. An internal AI Boost team, a group of experts building in-house AI agents, mirrors efforts at other large contractors. As part of a wider push into AI for Real Estate & Construction, Gilbane is developing the expertise to create its own AI-driven workflows rather than relying solely on external tools.
The build vs. buy equation
Assembling the Boost team lets Gilbane evaluate whether to build custom AI solutions, buy from startups, or follow a hybrid path. Broderick said the firm can now "take a good, hard look at, is this something we should build? Is this something we should buy? Or maybe it's something we should buy that eventually we're going to build." He referenced a familiar AI saying: people overestimate the immediate impact and underestimate the long-term outcomes. That mindset shapes how the firm weighs short-term vendor partnerships against long-term internal capability.
Why this matters for real estate and construction professionals
Gilbane's strategy signals that large contractors are moving beyond isolated point solutions toward AI systems that connect the full building lifecycle. The hybrid build-vs-buy approach also suggests that in-house AI literacy - knowing when to develop tools and when to integrate external products - is becoming a competitive necessity. For real estate and construction professionals, the shift points to rising demand for data consistency across project phases and for partners who can think in terms of end-to-end delivery, not just single-project execution.
Your membership also unlocks:
