Commercial and manufacturing starts could increase 4% this year, while institutional work could be up 8%. Residential is also poised for a strong year, with Dodge forecasting an 11% increase in starts to $10.4 billion. Both single family and multifamily are expected to see more new activity.

Non-building starts could be the one drag on the market, with total starts expected to drop 10%. The decrease is due largely to the highway and bridge sector, which saw a strong year in 2025 at $3.2 billion compared with the $2.5 billion forecast for this year.

Josh Schenko, preconstruction manager at Turner Construction in Atlanta, says the company has generally seen the market stay fairly stable. “We’ve seen it staying steady in our core markets of health care and higher education,” he says. “Those have been keeping very strong.”

Meanwhile, the company has seen the commercial market drop “fairly significantly,” especially given the challenging lending conditions. However, he says increased opportunities in mission critical work has filled the void with high demand for data centers. Schenko says Turner has multiple mission critical projects underway with confidential clients—and more projects are in the pipeline.

However, Schenko says Turner is committed to maintaining a balanced portfolio and “not becoming a full-time data center builder.” Due to the size of the projects, he says mission critical work is large by volume, but “in terms of quantity, we’re making sure we maintain our core clients in health care and higher education.”

Last year, the company completed the 150,000-sq-ft Braselton Tower expansion and central energy plant project at Northeast Georgia Medical Center. The company also has ongoing work with Grady Memorial Hospital.

In higher education, Turner recently completed the Tech Square 3A project at Georgia Tech. The Tech Square development brings together the Scheller College of Business and the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

Last year, the design-build project team of Turner Construction and HKS Architects completed a $45-million, two-phase renovation of Foley Field at the University of Georgia. The project began in June 2023 and was ready for opening day 2025. Schenko says Turner currently has three projects under construction at UGA.

Turner has seen some high-profile opportunities in the residential market. Last year, it topped out 1072 West Peachtree for the Rockefeller Group. When completed this spring, the 60-story mixed-use building will be the fifth-tallest skyscraper in the city and the tallest built in Atlanta in more than three decades. Set on a site that is just over an acre, the team was able to stack a 40-level residential tower on top of 10 levels of office on a base of 10 levels of parking with ground-floor retail spaces.

Schenko notes that demand for mission critical work is having an impact on other sectors, drawing labor and other resources away from institutional and commercial work. “With mission critical work driving mechanical, electrical and plumbing trade capacity, it’s causing a ripple effect across the market, which is seeing some price increases,” he adds. “That has caused a project that may have been [estimated] at $200 per square foot to now increase another $50 to $75 per square foot. That is causing some projects to slow down or not move forward.”

Increases in material prices, in part due to tariffs, is also part of the equation. Lead times on equipment are also affected by data center demand, including generators and large air handlers. While recent market uncertainty has leveled out a bit, Schenko says contractors still need to get clients “past some of the sticker shock of where the market is currently in terms of pricing.”