Dodge Momentum Index fell 9.0% in October to 260.4 as commercial planning dropped 13.4%

The Dodge Momentum Index (DMI) fell 9.0% in October 2026 to 260.4, Dodge Construction Network reported on November 6. The drop is measured from September, which Dodge revised down to 286.0 from the 288.0 it first published. The index was 2.4% below October 2025, the first year-over-year decline in the 13 monthly releases opened for this post. The DMI tracks the value of nonresidential building projects entering planning as a three-month moving value, seasonally adjusted and scaled so that 2000 equals 100. October’s 260.4 is preliminary. It ties April’s revised reading as the lowest since March, and it sits 10.8 points under the 12-month average of 271.2.

What moved

Commercial planning accounted for most of the decline. The commercial index fell 13.4% to 279.4 and the institutional index fell 1.5% to 236.9, according to the table in Dodge’s release. Dodge lists data centers, warehouses, parking garages, office buildings and hotels as the commercial sectors that slowed, with retail stores the only one that grew. On the institutional side, education and religious building planning slowed while healthcare, public government and recreational buildings picked up.

Sarah Martin, Dodge’s director of economic research, put the commercial drop on weaker data center and warehouse planning. “Some volatility is to be expected, as data center activity fluctuates considerably from month to month, while mounting macroeconomic pressures continue to constrain other commercial sectors,” she said.

Over the year the halves went opposite ways. Commercial planning was 17.6% below October 2025 and institutional planning was 33.4% above it. Dodge says commercial would be down 16.6% with data centers removed, because data center planning surged in late 2025 and sets a high comparison. So institutional is now the only half above its year-ago level, though the commercial index is still the higher of the two at 279.4 against 236.9.

The count of large projects fell by about half. Dodge counted 23 projects valued at $100 million or more entering planning in October, down from 45 in September. Data centers still topped the commercial list: the $451 million Orchard Hills Data Center Campus in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the $368 million Centra Technology Data Center (Phase 1) in Des Moines, Iowa, and the $366 million Project Longhorn Data Center (Building 1) in Cedar Creek, Texas. The largest institutional projects were the $336 million Green Valley Medical Campus in Fairfield, California, the $257 million Atrium Health Acute Care Building in Cornelius, North Carolina, and a $200 million life science laboratory in San Diego.

How to use this number

Dodge says the DMI leads nonresidential building construction spending by a full year to 18 months. If that lead holds, October’s planning value bears on spending from late 2027 into spring 2028. Two ways to set it beside your own numbers:

1. If you build private commercial work other than data centers, use the ex-data-center figure. At 16.6% below a year ago, it covers the office, warehouse, hotel, retail and parking planning that the headline folds in with data centers. Compare it with the year-over-year change in your commercial bid invitations for August through October, the same three months the index averages.
2. If your backlog leans institutional, compare the 33.4% yearly gain with your count of healthcare, education and public-building pursuits this year against last. Dodge named healthcare and public government buildings among the sectors that grew in October, and two of the three largest institutional projects were medical buildings.

The DMI measures dollar value, so a few large projects can move it. The three data centers at the top of October’s list add up to $1.19 billion on their own. Check the project list before reading one month as a turn in your market. The post on September architecture billings covers a design-stage indicator with a shorter lead, and the September DMI post has the prior month’s detail.

Revisions and caveats

October’s 260.4 is preliminary. Dodge revises each month in the next release, and over the past year the revisions have mostly gone down:

1. In the 12 releases from November 2025 through October 2026, Dodge revised the prior month down nine times and up three times.
2. The revisions ranged from 0.6 points up (November 2025) to 8.7 points down (July 2026), and averaged 2.5 points down.
3. September’s revision, from 288.0 to 286.0, was 2.0 points.

October’s fall of 25.6 points is nearly three times the largest of those revisions.

Dodge’s year-over-year figures also do not line up with the levels it published a year ago. A 2.4% decline to 260.4 puts October 2025 near 266.8 in Dodge’s current data. Dodge first put October 2025 at 283.3 and revised it to 280.0 in its December 2025 release. September shows the same pattern: a 3.7% gain to 288.0 implies September 2025 near 277.7, while the November 2025 release put that month at 304.8. The releases opened for this post do not describe a restatement of 2025, so the cause could not be verified. The chart and table use each month as first revised, so their late-2025 levels likely run high. On those published levels October 2026 would be 7.0% below October 2025, against the 2.4% decline Dodge reports.

Because the index is a three-month moving value, October still carries projects that entered planning in August and September. The releases do not publish the underlying dollar totals, so the index can be compared only with itself.