Stable to Modestly Improving: What Boston's 2027 Construction Outlook Means for Hiring

Every autumn, clients ask us the same question: what does next year look like? For Boston, the most useful answer so far comes from ENR’s October 2026 City Scoop, and it’s a reassuring one.

Speaking to ENR, Anubhav Bhargava, who leads New England building operations at Skanska USA, described the market for the coming year in four words.

That isn’t a boom, but after a couple of uneven years in Boston it’s the kind of steady footing most contractors would welcome. More importantly, the detail behind it tells us where the work, and the hiring, is heading.

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Where the work is

Bhargava pointed to four areas that should stay strong over the next year: institutional, healthcare, housing and infrastructure. That lines up well with the national picture. The AIA’s July 2026 Consensus Construction Forecast expects healthcare building spending to grow 2.6% this year and 4.4% in 2027, one of the strongest sectors on the list.

Higher education and research are worth watching closely. Boston’s universities and research institutions have been adjusting to changes in federal funding, and ENR’s commentary expects that market to pick up as they settle on their plans. For a city with this many campuses and hospitals, that’s a big deal.

On the office and lab side, Bhargava sees early signs of improvement as existing space is gradually filled. New office construction will stay quiet for a while, but that is exactly why the next trend matters so much.

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Renovation is the real story

The clearest theme in the outlook is that owners are working with what they already have. They’re spending on deferred maintenance, HVAC upgrades, electrification, amenities and more flexible space. They’re also converting buildings rather than starting from scratch: office to residential, lab to office and even warehouse to lab.

Boston’s own office to residential conversion program shows how real this is. By December 2025 it had approved 1,517 new homes across 27 buildings, well ahead of the city’s original goals, and by March 2026 it had reached 29 buildings. The city extended the program, which offers a 75% tax abatement for up to 29 years. Applications are open until the end of 2026, and projects have to pull a full building permit and start construction by December 31, 2027.

Owners also want buildings that can adapt to future changes in use without another major renovation a few years later. That pushes more of the thinking into preconstruction and design.

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What it means for hiring

A steady market with lots of renovation work changes who contractors need. Based on what we’re seeing in our own searches, these are the people we expect to be most in demand in 2027:

Project Managers and Superintendents with renovation and conversion experience. Working in existing and occupied buildings, phasing work around live systems and dealing with what you find behind the walls is a different skill set from ground up work. The people who have done it are already being chased.

Preconstruction Managers and Estimators who can price existing buildings. Conversions and upgrades carry more unknowns. Clients want early budgets they can trust, and that takes estimators who understand existing conditions as well as new construction.

MEP focused PMs and engineers. HVAC upgrades and electrification sit at the centre of most of this work. People who can manage mechanical and electrical scopes with confidence will have options.

Healthcare and institutional specialists. With healthcare and higher education leading the way, experience on hospital, lab and campus projects will carry real weight.

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Our advice to clients

Stable markets reward the firms that plan ahead. If you know you’ll be bidding on more renovation, healthcare or conversion work in 2027, now is the time to line up the people to deliver it. The best candidates in these areas usually aren’t looking, and the hiring that happens in the first quarter tends to set up the rest of the year.

If you’d like to talk through what your team might need for 2027, or what salaries look like for these roles right now, we’re always happy to have that conversation.