The $1 Trillion Squirrel

We use squirrel as a code word whenever someone starts trailing off into a completely different topic. It’s not the same as rabbit hole which means losing track of time completely while over-analyzing a single niche issue.

Construction reports often have squirrels of considerable size in them distracting us from the truth in the manufacturing sector. Right now, some are telling us that manufacturing is dying. But, how do you know they are squirrels? Don’t you have to look around them to see what’s behind them?

When you do that, manufacturing becomes a $1 trillion manufacturing pipeline for planning projects alone.

The Number That You Need to See

Here are squirrels preventing you from seeing that actual trillion dollar number from recent reports:

New Manufacturing construction fell by 77.2% in Q2 as uncertainty around industrial policies and high interest rates impact investment.
Manufacturing construction will decline sharply over the year, falling 43%. The reduction in planned capital expenditure that occurred following the announcement of the Trump Administration’s tariffs in spring 2025 are weighing on new construction this year.
Investment that was supported by federal funding is waning. New manufacturing construction will experience low and stable growth through 2030.
Nonresidential Building starts are expected to decline by 29.8% in 2026, driven by a sharp drop in Manufacturing buildings and additional weakness across several other subsectors

Those are squirrels that predict a 43% dip in manufacturing construction in 2026.

But, they are squirrels. When we dive into the data, current planning-stage manufacturing projects shows 2,497 manufacturing projects with a combined value of $1.095 trillion. That number is what you see when you bypass the squirrels. That number should generate excitement. But that number is not getting cited. If it was, it would launch sales teams into motion.

Let’s look even closer.

One hundred and twenty-two projects — less than five percent of the count — account for 83% of that total value. The Terafab Chipmaking Facility in Grimes County, Texas: $119 billion. Project Crystal Land AI Hub in Phoenix: $100 billion. Intel’s Oregon expansion: $36 billion. Samsung’s nine separate fab phases in Taylor, Texas, approaching $160 billion collectively.
These are semiconductor fabrication facilities and the mega projects we often discuss. The specification path is closed before most manufacturers even know such projects exist. The procurement is national or global. The mechanical systems are proprietary. Your rep cannot call his way into these buildings.

However, strip those projects out, and the manufacturing pipeline looks entirely different…almost has a glow about it.

What the Number Is Minus Squirrels.

There are 1,375 projects under $25 million in value. Combined, they represent $8.9 billion in construction activity. The $5M–$100M band alone contains 1,172 projects worth $32.8 billion. These are food production facilities, light industrial buildings, brick plants, logistics parks, agricultural processing expansions, manufacturing renovations.

Bridgetown Natural Foods in Lebanon, Tennessee — a production line expansion. Red Bird Farms in Denver. Brown Oak Brick in Bryan, Texas. Back of the Yards Industrial Facility in Chicago. Aspen Guard Manufacturing in Portland, Tennessee. Avon Landing in Brownsburg, Indiana.

Nobody is talking about these. No conference panel has been convened. No LinkedIn post has gone viral over the Red Bird Farms project.

Yet they are real. They are in planning. They require products, specifications, and the channel relationships your company has been building for years.

The State Picture

The accessible manufacturing market, however, is not evenly distributed. Texas alone has 407 projects under $100 million — nearly twice the next largest state. Florida and California each have 118. North Carolina has 96. Ohio has 90. Michigan, Wisconsin, Alabama, Indiana, Tennessee — all active.

If you have distribution strength in any of these states, you have a pipeline. Not a theoretical one. A real one, in planning stages, with architects and owners who have not yet made their product decisions.

The Distinction That Changes Your Sales Strategy

What most analysts read when they report that manufacturing construction is collapsing measures what is breaking ground. The planning database we’re talking about measures what is being designed. They are different. And that difference is important to your strategic planning.

Because both are true simultaneously. Manufacturing starts are declining sharply because the CHIPS Act and IRA-funded semiconductor fabs that dominated 2022-2024 are structurally complete. Those megaprojects broke ground. They got built. Their construction spending has been recorded and is now rolling off the numbers.

The 1,375 accessible projects in planning, however, have not broken ground yet. They are not in the starts data. They are not in the headlines. They are exactly where opportunity resides before it becomes obvious to everyone else.

The Part Nobody Is Doing

487 of the 2,497 manufacturing projects in this dataset are alterations — existing facilities being modified, upgraded, or expanded. Another 227 are additions. That’s nearly a third of the entire pipeline going into existing buildings, not new construction. And by the way, renovations is ALWAYS bigger than new construction, only renovations as a market isn’t tracked as well as “new.”

I want to share something from research we’ve been conducting with architects across the country — not specific findings, but a pattern that showed up consistently.

Manufacturer rep engagement is thinning. Across multiple interviews with practicing architects, in different regions, different firm sizes, different project types, the same observation surfaced repeatedly: reps come around less.

It’s not that the architect doesn’t have time for them; many said they continually reach out when the need arises. And it’s not that AI has replaced reps; though they use AI, all agree on one thing: human contact is irreplaceable.

So what’s the problem? As one architect put it: “it’s getting harder and harder to find companies that have knowledgeable in-house reps.”

In their effort to streamline things, it looks like manufacturers stream-lined themselves out of the one thing that helped them differentiate themselves from the competition: knowledge and service.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is what I call an opening.

Because architects haven’t stopped making product decisions. They haven’t stopped maintaining or deferring to specification lists. They haven’t stopped using their inhouse, home-grown specification software of things like MasterSpec and SpecLink to organize what they’ll consider on a project.

Products that make it onto that internal short list get specified. Products that don’t, don’t get considered at all — regardless of merit.

Two Questions Worth Asking Your Reps This Week

First: Are we on the short list at the architecture firms attached to these planning-stage manufacturing projects in your territory?

Second: When did someone from our company last visit their library?

The answer to both questions will tell you more about your real market position than any industry forecast.

Stop Feeding the Squirrels

The dip in manufacturing is not wrong. It is just not the entire picture.

Your truth is the 1,172 projects between $5 million and $100 million sitting in planning right now, in states where you have distribution, at a scale where your specification relationships actually matter.

The industry is staring at the $119 billion Terafab facility. That’s a mighty big squirrel.

The smart money is ignoring those mega-squirrels and going after the reality of the marketplace. Because right now, oddly, most of the firms that used to show up have stopped showing up at the very place they can do some good: at the specifier.

Time to show up. Let us know how we can help you!