By: Waldo Corvera and Cory West
After recently attending the 2026 SAIA Annual Convention, we came away with a mixed impression. The scaffold and access industry is active, growing, and filled with opportunity. At the same time, it remains too often treated as a secondary consideration within the broader construction process.
There is no shortage of work. Across the country, construction continues to expand through data centers, hospitals, industrial facilities, renovations, adaptive reuse projects, concrete construction, and infrastructure improvements. Each of these creates demand for scaffolding, shoring, formwork, access systems, suspended platforms, and other temporary structures.
Yet scaffold and access planning are still frequently brought into the conversation later than it should be. It is relied upon by nearly every trade, but it is not consistently integrated into project planning with the same priority as other construction systems.
In many ways, the industry remains the stepchild of construction: essential to the work but not always included early enough in the decisions that shape how the work will be performed.
A Growing Industry Facing Growing Pains
The convention reportedly had strong attendance, but the event itself felt relatively small. There were useful conversations, familiar products, and several developments that have been building over the last few years. However, there was little that felt truly new or transformative.
That does not mean the industry is failing. It means the industry may be entering another period of growing pains. Manufacturers are improving products and solving specific problems. Contractors are managing increasing material and labor costs. Scaffold suppliers are adopting tools for inventory, estimating, planning, and logistics. Engineering firms are taking on increasingly complicated temporary-works projects.
But these developments do not yet feel connected by a common vision for where the industry is going. The most important question is not whether the industry has enough work. It clearly does. The question is whether we are improving the way that work is planned, designed, communicated, and executed.
Technology Without a Clear Application
Technology was present at the convention, but it was not at the forefront of design, constructability, or field execution. There were discussions about planning platforms, inventory systems, logistics, and estimating tools. These applications can provide real value, particularly to companies that own, rent, or manage large scaffold inventories.
However, there was very little discussion about how digital tools can improve the connection between engineering and the field. The same was true of artificial intelligence. AI was discussed almost as if it were a new material: something the industry should be aware of, but without a clear explanation of how it could be applied across the different areas of scaffold and access work.
The real opportunity is not to use AI simply because it is new. It is to identify the planning and production tasks that can be improved without reducing the role of experienced designers. Custom scaffold, shoring, and formwork design will continue to depend on professional judgment, site awareness, structural understanding, and practical experience. However, AI may help with supporting work such as reports, quantity takeoffs, document organization, standardized calculations, quality-control reviews, and drawing production.
The goal should not be to replace expertise. It should be to give experienced professionals more time to apply it.
Engineering Must Become More Visual
Walking through the exhibit hall, we expected more discussion about the engineering deliverables that contractors and field crews use every day. Instead, there was very little conversation about what was being sent to the field.
The industry spends a tremendous amount of time discussing equipment, inventory, logistics, and safety, but not enough time discussing how engineering communicates design intent to the people building the scaffold. That may be one of the industry’s greatest opportunities.
Production drawings are still primarily issued in two dimensions. Plans, elevations, sections, and details remain necessary and will continue to serve as the contractual and technical basis for construction. But increasingly complex projects require us to ask whether traditional drawings are enough by themselves. The issue is not simply whether drawings need more information. Adding more notes, dimensions, and details can sometimes make a drawing harder to understand. The real question is whether the information is organized and presented in a way that helps the crew plan, visualize, and erect the system safely. Three-dimensional models can support that goal. They can help contractors review access routes, identify clashes, understand transitions, coordinate ties and supports, visualize difficult assemblies, and discuss the erection sequence before work begins.
On a current project, SEI is receiving models of the existing structure and using them as the basis for the scaffold and shoring design. We can develop the temporary works within the same digital environment and then provide those models for review before erection begins. This allows the owner, contractor, engineering team, and field personnel to identify potential problems earlier.
That is not merely a software improvement. It is a communication improvement. The future of engineered scaffold projects is not producing more drawings. It is producing better understanding.
Expanding the Role of Engineered Scaffold
Our conversations on the exhibit floor also revealed demand beyond traditional scaffold design. Contractors asked whether engineering services were available for systems such as mast climbers, suspended platforms, swing stages, guardrails, fall-protection systems, and other access equipment.
Some of these products are pre-engineered by manufacturers, but real-world conditions rarely match a standard arrangement perfectly. Projects may require custom anchorage, support structures, tiebacks, outrigger systems, transitions, or site-specific configurations.
Engineering firms should evaluate how they can responsibly expand into these adjacent areas. Liability, qualifications, training, and internal standards must be considered carefully. Still, the need is clearly present. The market may not simply be asking for scaffold engineers. It may be asking for temporary-works engineers who understand the full range of access, support, protection, and construction systems.
The Next Step Must Come from Within
The next evolution of scaffold engineering will not come from software companies or manufacturers alone. It must come from engineers, contractors, erectors, suppliers, superintendents, and field crews working together to rethink how temporary works are planned and communicated.
Design firms need to listen more closely to those using their drawings. Contractors need to involve scaffold and access specialists earlier. Field personnel need practical ways to review models, provide feedback, and communicate changing site conditions. Industry organizations need to create more space for discussions about production drawings, constructability, digital field tools, and the real application of emerging technology.
Engineering does not end when the calculations are complete. It ends when the crew in the field fully understands what needs to be built.
The 2026 SAIA Convention did not present a dramatic technological breakthrough. Instead, it highlighted an industry with steady growth, significant demand, and unresolved opportunities. That may ultimately be more important.
We are entering a technological transition, but adapting to it will require more than purchasing software. It will require better communication, stronger collaboration, and a renewed focus on the people who turn engineering intent into safe, buildable temporary structures.
