The TechFest Awards 2026 shortlist has been published, drawing together 185 finalists across 21 categories to recognise technological innovation in construction and civil engineering. The annual event is a joint venture between Construction News and New Civil Engineer, serving as a forum for digital transformation across the sector, and this year’s field reflects both the breadth and ambition of technology adoption on major UK programmes.
Who leads the TechFest Awards 2026 shortlist
AtkinsRéalis heads the field with 21 shortlisted entries, spanning categories from Best Use of Technology: Digital Construction through to Tech and Digital Team of the Year. That volume of nominations across a single organisation points to a sustained, programme-wide approach to digital delivery rather than isolated project wins.
Laing O’Rourke follows as a contender in nine categories, while Mace and Kori Construction are each shortlisted for three awards. John Sisk & Son appears in four categories, including Digital Transport Project of the Year. For the Digital Contractor of the Year award, the field includes Kori Construction, Oktra, Reds10, Sir Robert McAlpine and Ultrabeam. The Digital Construction Project of the Year category pits the tier one Balfour Beatty Vinci joint venture against John Sisk & Son, Laing O’Rourke and Mace.
The awards ceremony, sponsored by Stantec, will be held on 25 November at Hilton Metropole London.
Technologies in the frame: robots, migration and resource savings
Beyond the headline names, the shortlisted projects illustrate the practical reach of digital tools on live programmes. According to Construction Management, one shortlisted application involves Industry X, a platform that allows operators to control robots including Boston Dynamics’ Spot and CARMA2 on site. The ability to deploy remotely operated robotics on construction and civil engineering sites represents a step-change in how hazardous or repetitive tasks can be managed, with implications for both programme risk and workforce safety.
The same source highlights a resource-saving application that delivered two hours per week per project in efficiency gains, equating to 22,540 hours saved across 200 projects. Translating that kind of operational saving into embodied and operational carbon terms is a calculation the industry is increasingly being asked to make: fewer machine hours, fewer site visits, and leaner data management all feed into a project’s broader environmental footprint, even where the primary driver is productivity.
On major infrastructure, the human scale of digital integration comes through in the detail. According to Digital Construction Awards, Emine Rachel Taylor-Unlu led a Business Collaborator server migration for HS2 Area North that involved the transfer of 10 million uploads across nine delivery teams, affecting 300 organisations and 10,000 users. A migration of that complexity, touching that many supply chain partners simultaneously, is an undertaking with significant risk exposure: version control failures, data loss or access disruption on a programme the scale of HS2 can cascade quickly into programme delay and cost.
Separately, Digital Construction Awards notes that one technology application could save Sellafield £130 million a year, a figure that underlines how digital tools on nuclear decommissioning programmes carry a financial and risk profile that goes well beyond standard commercial construction. Whether through reduced inspection cycles, improved asset management or more accurate modelling of complex plant, the scale of that potential saving reflects the particular demands of the nuclear sector.
The TechFest Awards 2026 shortlist reflects a field in which digital tools are no longer confined to design-stage BIM workflows. Robotics, large-scale data migration, platform-level efficiency and nuclear asset management are all now within scope, and the 25 November ceremony will test how the industry’s judges weigh incremental productivity gains against transformative programme-level change. Tickets and further information about the judging panel are available through the AtkinsRéalis awards page and the TechFest event site.
