CoConstruct Is Shutting Down. Here's How to Pick What Comes Next.

CoConstruct is shutting down. If your firm runs on it, you already felt this coming: development stopped, support slowed, and the app stopped improving after Buildertrend bought the company in 2021. Now it's official. CoConstruct is in maintenance mode, you can't start new projects in it after April 1, 2027, and migrations to Buildertrend have to begin by June 30, 2027. Your historical project data stays accessible, but the tool your team runs jobs on every day is going away.

That's the bad news. The good news is that a forced move is also a rare chance to make a better choice than you made last time. Here's how to think it through.

What actually happens to CoConstruct users

Three things are locked in:

• No new projects after April 1, 2027. You can finish the jobs you have open.
• Migrations to Buildertrend must start by June 30, 2027. That's the path Buildertrend has built for you.
• Past project data remains accessible. You won't lose your history, but you will lose your working tool.

Eighteen months sounds like a long runway. It isn't. Switching the system your whole company runs jobs on means picking the replacement, moving your data, rebuilding your templates, and retraining your field and office staff, all while the jobs keep running. Firms that wait until the deadline do this under pressure. Firms that start now do it on their own terms.

Should you just move to Buildertrend?

It's the path of least resistance, and for some firms it will be the right call. The migration is built, your data comes with you, and Buildertrend is an established product with a big feature set.

But be honest about how you got here. Buildertrend bought your software, froze it, and is now moving you onto its own product, priced in tiers that scale with your revenue and not published on the website. You didn't choose Buildertrend. It was chosen for you. Before you accept the default, it's worth asking the question nobody asked in 2021: is this the system I'd pick today, on purpose, knowing where my firm is headed?

For a growing design-build firm, where you're headed almost certainly includes AI. That changes what 'the right project management system' means.

Why this choice matters more than it did five years ago

Your project management system is not just another subscription. It's where the job lives: the schedule, the budget, the selections, the daily logs, the change orders, the client messages. Every other tool in your stack orbits it, and every person in your company touches it.

Here's the part most builders haven't priced in yet. Over the next few years, the biggest operational gains in construction won't come from switching to better software. They'll come from AI agents that work on top of the tools you already run: reading the schedule, filling in the second system so your team doesn't type things twice, assembling the draw package, catching the thing that was about to slip. We build these systems for design-build firms. It's our whole business.

And there is one requirement that decides whether any of that is possible: your project management system has to have an open door. In software terms, that door is called an API, a documented way for an outside system to read and write your data with your permission. With an open API, an AI agent can pull your schedule, update a budget line, or file a daily log the same way a person would, just without the person spending their evening on it. Without one, your data is locked inside the vendor's walls, and anything you build on top runs on copy-paste and workarounds.

When you're forced to choose a new system anyway, choose one that leaves the door open.

Two that play well with AI: Fieldwire and JobTread

Plenty of construction project management tools will court CoConstruct refugees this year. Two stand out for firms that want AI working on top of their stack, because both are strong tools in their own right and both give outside systems a documented way in.

JobTread

JobTread is built around the office side of the business: estimating, budgets, job costing, proposals, purchase orders, and keeping the financial picture of every job current. Its API is genuinely open, with public documentation, webhooks that push updates out the moment something changes, and a sandbox where integrations get tested before they touch live data. Of the two, it's the most open door in this space.

Fieldwire

Fieldwire, owned by Hilti, is built around the field: plans, tasks, punch lists, inspections, and the daily coordination between the trailer and the trades. It has a documented REST API as well, with one caveat worth knowing before you buy: API access comes with Enterprise contracts or as a paid add-on on the Pro and Business plans. The door is real, but it isn't included at the base price.

Fieldwire vs JobTread: which one fits your firm?

This isn't a case where one is better. They're aimed at different halves of the same business, so the honest question is which half of your operation carries more of the load.

Lean JobTread if your bottleneck is the office. If jobs go sideways in estimating, budget tracking, billing, and paperwork, and your field crews are relatively self-sufficient, JobTread's financial backbone will do more for you. It's also the natural pick if you want the widest-open API from day one.

Lean Fieldwire if your bottleneck is the field. If your pain lives in plan versions, punch lists, task coordination, and getting reliable daily information back from the jobsite, Fieldwire was built for exactly that, and it's the tool your superintendents are more likely to actually use.

Some firms will end up running one of these alongside their accounting system and a couple of other tools. That's normal, and it's exactly the situation where systems that don't talk to each other start costing you: the same data typed twice, the schedule in one place and the budget in another, things slipping in the gap. Which system you pick matters. What you build on top of it, so the pieces act like one system, matters just as much.

What to do next

Don't wait for the deadline. Pick your direction in the next few months, not in 2027.

• Decide where your bottleneck is, field or office, and let that point you at Fieldwire or JobTread.
• Ask every vendor one question before you sign: 'Do I get API access, and what does it cost?' The answer tells you whether your data will be yours to build on.
• Plan the migration like a project, with an owner, a schedule, and a punch list. It's the kind of work you already know how to run.

If you want a second set of eyes before you commit, that's what our Assessment is for. We look at how your jobs actually run, where the hours are going, and what your next system needs to support, and we tell you the truth about it. If we can solve your problems, we'll tell you. If not, we'll tell you that too. How It Works · Book an Assessment

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