Arizona Tribune - California Construction Summit Brings Industry Leaders Together at Sacramento State

SACRAMENTO, CA / ACCESS Newswire / September 22, 2026 / The California Construction Summit, co-hosted by Construction Owners, Lumber, BuilderFax, and ABC NorCal, on Sep 15, 2026, brought around 200 contractors, project owners, students, and technology leaders together last week at Sacramento State University's University Union for a full day of sessions on workforce development, jobsite technology, safety, and industry leadership. Most attendees were students, reflecting the summit's focus on building the industry's next generation of talent.

The day opened with a keynote from Stuart Binstock, founder of the Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention (CIASP) and former President & CEO of the Construction Financial Management Association, who spoke candidly on mental health and suicide prevention in construction, an issue that often goes unspoken on jobsites and in boardrooms alike. His session, "Breaking the Silence," urged the industry to recognize the warning signs and build a culture where seeking help is seen as a strength, not a weakness, setting a tone of honesty that carried through the rest of the day.

From there, programming spanned the full arc of a construction career and a construction company.

Tracy Young, CEO & Co-Founder of TigerEye and co-founder of PlanGrid, walked the attendees through her path from Sacramento State's Construction Management program to building a jobsite productivity app later acquired by Autodesk for $875 million, followed by a student Q&A.

Shelton Waggener, Chief Customer Officer at Lumber, led a CPE-eligible workshop, "The AI-Native Contractor," that gave construction leaders a hands-on framework for the moment: attendees assessed their own companies' AI readiness, identified the automation opportunities most worth pursuing, and left with the start of a practical roadmap for putting AI to work across the field and back office.

A related panel, "AI on the Jobsite: What's Actually Working (and What Isn't)," brought together Alexander Rayis (Gilbane Building Company), Chaitanya NK (Track3D), Eshan Jayamanne (Krane), and Kirk Hayes (ZeroRFI) for a candid look at which AI deployments are actually delivering results on real job sites today.

The summit also made room for the people building the industry's future."Built to Lead: Women Shaping the Future of Construction" brought together Ruth Waters-Lopez (CSU Sacramento), Alison Baker (Flatiron Construction), Sarah Mcllroy (Stantec), Melissa Barrenchea (Otto Construction), and Kimberly Braga (XL Construction) to discuss the path forward for women in the industry.

"The Construction Career Playbook: Lessons We Learned the Hard Way" featured Dillon Mitchell (Vertical Design Services), Josh Ward (Sausal Corporation), and Kevin Halfhill (Otto Construction) sharing hard-won career lessons for the next generation of construction professionals.

From there, the focus shifted to closing the gap between what construction needs and who it can keep. A fireside chat, "Built to Stay: Rethinking Recruitment, Retention, and the Next Generation of Construction Talent," brought Donny Sierra (American Asphalt), Kelley Cowan (S+B James Construction), and Daniel Groves (Construction Industry Resources) together to talk candidly about fixing construction's labor shortage from hiring through retention.

Rounding out the technology track, Angelo Jimenez (Hensel Phelps) walked through the BIM-to-field technologies, reality capture, robotics, and digital twins reshaping project execution today in "The New Construction Playbook: How the Connected Jobsite Is Becoming Reality."

The day wrapped with the Networking & Career Fair in the Expo Hall, connecting employers directly with students and jobseekers entering the trades.

"The labor shortage in construction isn't a recruitment problem; it's a retention problem," said Shreesha Ramdas, Co-Founder and CEO of Lumber. "Every conversation we had at the summit reinforced that the industry is ready to move past legacy tools and toward workforce technology built around the people actually doing the work. That's the intersection we're building for: AI, workforce management, and the future of labor."

Building on the momentum from Sacramento, the California Construction Summit series is heading to Illinois next. Contractors, project owners, and students interested in attending can join the waitlist.

About Lumber

Lumber is the industry's leading all-in-one construction workforce management platform, built for construction from the ground up. Lumber streamlines payroll, time tracking, safety, compliance, HR, and field productivity for specialty contractors and general contractors across the U.S. and Canada, backed by AI-driven automation and a support crew of real compliance experts. Learn more at www.lumberfi.com.

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Sumeetha Manikandan
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SOURCE: Lumberfi

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