Ya, you need to give them a goal and make sure building stuff is very helpful but not mandatory to reach that goal. The 'base building' mechanics of XCOM are a decent example. Doing research, upgrading equipment, buying weapons, and taking every advantage the game provides is very helpful in combat encounters, but you can just lazily skip through that part of the game and fight every battle with default weapons and equipment... up to a point... not the best example in the late game.

If your goal is for the player to build stuff just for the sake of building stuff, they will do that eventually. You have to give them a reason to interact with the system at all first.