AECOM Takes A Bold Swing At AI Transformation With Consigli Acquisition

On November 25, 2025, AECOM’s announcement of its $390 million acquisition of Norwegian AI start-up Consigli caught the attention of the AEC industry. For decades, global services providers have taken a back seat while software vendors have set the pace of digital innovation. However, AECOM’s move signals a step change in this longstanding imbalance, where services giants are beginning to acquire AI capabilities and place innovation at the core of their business strategy.

AECOM’s strategic push to embed proprietary AI into its core design and engineering workflows provides the opportunity to reduce early-stage project risk, compress design cycles, build internal AI talent and strengthen its competitive positioning amid growing demand for speed and accuracy.

AECOM is not alone in its pursuit for AI-driven innovation, with firms recognizing the risk to their business model if they fall behind. For example, Mott MacDonald’s investment in Microsoft Azure AI Foundry aims to scale AI enablement across global operations, while Turner Construction’s two-year partnership with OpenAI reflects a similar strategy to hardwire AI into key processes. The competitive risk is most pronounced for mid-market firms that lack the ability to pursue big-ticket acquisitions, potentially widening digital capability gaps.

Despite headline-grabbing announcements, some organizations are still falling behind innovation trends and struggling to turn digital ambition into measurable outcomes. Persistent structural barriers remain:

• Hourly revenue models disincentivize automation.
  Efficiency gains and time savings can translate directly into reduced billable hours and revenue loss for organizations built on time-based income.
  
• Cultural resistance and job insecurity slow adoption.
  Cultural resistance persists due to scepticism about digital workflows and fears of displacement by technology.
  
• Organizational readiness is immature.
  Few firms have the governance, product management capabilities or integrated data infrastructure required to unlock the full value of advanced digital tools.
  
• Global organizations lack cohesion.
  Large multidisciplinary providers like AECOM often struggle to scale newly acquired technologies across regions, disciplines and business units, leading to underutilization and inconsistent processes across siloed teams.

The final factor is particularly salient for AECOM. Embedding Consigli across thousands of employees in multiple countries will be a complex and time-consuming task. Without clear product ownership, common data environments and integrated collaboration systems, the acquisition risks becoming an isolated point solution rather than an enterprise platform. In many cases, innovation failures stem not from the technology itself but from firms underestimating the scale of structural change needed. When data governance is weak, AI is more likely to magnify existing problems than correct them.

Before other organizations follow suit, they should evaluate whether their people, processes and data foundations are ready for AI integration. Without solid systems in place, even the most powerful AI tools will not deliver meaningful change.

This challenge is not unique to AI. As highlighted in the upcoming Verdantix Buyer’s Guide: Construction Management Software (CMS) (2025), lack of organizational readiness is often the stumbling block for CMS deployment. Successful integrations, therefore, depend heavily on strong implementation support, integration and configuration services, and ongoing training that helps buyers convert their investment into long-term value.