Chain Drain: Why the Built Environment Struggles to Learn and How to Fix It — whitepaper cover Click to download the paper

Why can't the built environment sector deliver the housing, infrastructure, and climate resilience we need? Red tape receives most of the blame, but the real culprit is chain drain — the value, data, and intelligence bleeding away at each link in a complex supply chain. The result is 50 years of flat productivity.

Chain drain explains why no amount of technology or excellence by any single firm or industry is enough to solve this conundrum. The problem is structural, and only solutions aimed at tightening, breaking, or escaping the chain will succeed. Built on dozens of interviews with practitioners, owners, and investors spanning the chain, we posit four futures for the industry. Three confront chain drain directly; the fourth is in denial. One of them already describes where you work. Read the paper to find out which.

The paper is written by Bryan Boyer and Greg Lindsay. Thanks to the many research informants who are listed at the end of the document. The research database was developed by Bryan Boyer.

Cite as: Boyer, B. and Lindsay, G. (2026) Chain Drain: Why the Built Environment Struggles to Learn and How to Fix It. v1.0. White Paper. University of Michigan. https://doi.org/10.7302/dspace/30234