"If you're a techie kid there's some really interesting stuff coming," said Ms Reynolds.
The computing power to automate a lot of the construction industry, including engineering and architecture, has been slow to come but we're on verge of that being available, she said.
A peek at New Zealand's building future can be seen at Christchurch's Concision house-building factory, which is creating everything from building components to a whole house.
Ms Reynolds says million-dollar machinery run by skilled industry staff is taking the hard, physical work out of building and replacing it with precision and quality.
"It's a massive amount of equipment and it's very highly skilled but the good side of it is it's not manual labour.
"These guys don't lift anything; they're not going to wear themselves out.
"It's the sort of career you could actually do a 50-year career in."
PrefabNZ chief executive Pamela Bell said traditional construction skills will always be in demand for additions and alterations, but people working on new builds in the future might be just as likely to be working in a factory style building, completing building jobs with high-tech machiner. They may even be required to have low-level electrical or plumbing skills as well.
"For tradespeople it's an awareness of technology and how fast things are going to change and that open mindset that is needed at a very basic level.
"There will be that many more niche areas for expertise and then conversely, perhaps counter-intuitively, perhaps the opportunity to combine across plumbing and electrical in a controlled environment," said Ms Bell.
Completing some parts of building offsite is nothing new, with building trusses made off-site for several decades, said Daniel Howe, pre-nail manager at Akarana Timbers in Auckland. But where the East Tamaki business might have had six sawyers in the past, now it takes two to three staff to run a machine cutting wood for the whole factory.
For tradespeople it's an awareness of technology and how fast things are going to change and that open mindset that is needed at a very basic level.
He has four frame and truss apprentices on the shop floor among 40 other staff and two detailing apprentices in the drawing office.
Mr Howe said there will always be a place for the human element among the automation, providing the control and assurance.
"You've still got to have somebody that looks at something and says 'that looks good, that's been done to the best of everyone's ability, that is quality'.
"It's the touch, the way it feels, the way it looks and a machine won't always give you the feeling of quality."
Ruma Karaitiana, chief executive of the BCITO, which manages apprenticeships for the building industry, said carpentry qualifications were heavily revised two years ago, in consultation with builders around the country.
When it distilled down the industry feedback on what it wanted from the next generation of builders it amounted to a New Zealand certificate in problem solving, he said.
"It's not just hammering in nails," said Mr Karaitiana. "Carpenters are incredibly good problem-solvers.
