We’re just a little bit over halfway through 2018, and overall, it’s been a good year for the construction industry. After 10 years of working out of financial crises, the global economy is improving, and with that improvement comes more change in the construction industry. Steve McGuckin, Global Head of Client Programs at Turner & Townsend explains that “the construction sector has a strong correlation with economic growth. When GDP rises above a moderate rate, construction’s share of the economy expands in greater proportion.” At the same time, he sees challenges, like the fact that “the spread of greater opportunity, higher education, and loftier aspirations is making recruitment into construction harder.”
What to Expect Moving Forward
So, what should you be looking into for the rest of 2018? According to experts, one major trend for the year is going be creating more resilient buildings. Statistics show that property owners paid nearly $400 billion last year due to the impact of disasters like:
- Hurricanes
- Heat waves
- Extreme Cold
- Wildfires
- Tornadoes
- Flooding
Naturally, different regions are going to have different risks for different disasters, but what’s clear is that people are less interested in replacement structures and more about resilient features. This could change the type of materials that your clients are asking for, so you may need to start adapting your budget and job costing for certain jobs.
Construction Still Needs More Labor
We’ve mentioned before how a major issue for the construction industry this year has been a lack of skilled labor in terms of people available to work construction jobs. Little has changed in this regard a few months later, even though the end of last year marked the best prospects since November 2008. Combine this with supply costs decreasing, and you’re probably going to need to find ways to lower costs in order to make up the difference.
If there’s one single trend you can point out at mid-year, it’s that everyone is wanting more. Workers want better pay and benefits, or they will end up looking for a different profession. Clients are demanding more forward-thinking construction, including resiliency, but also giving service to other concerns like energy efficiency. As a result, the biggest thing people should be thinking about this year is not how to tackle greater demand, but to make sure that they don’t break their budgets while doing so.
Construction Technology Key to Business Management & Increasing Profits
Wondering how to use this data to your advantage? If you want to do so, don’t forget that you also need to have your own data along with the topics that we just talked about. Doing this is the difference between basing your business on a hunch and making a properly educated move. This is why it’s essential to use tools like busybusy to help see what prospects make the most sense at points like the middle of the year. By charting how much time your employees are spending on a given job or getting essential data sent to your phone or device, you can act wisely when it comes to planning out your business for the short-term and long-term.
