It's All About Infrastructure Projects in 2020

It’s all about infrastructure for 2020. With the decrease in residential construction activity and the moderate recovery of the mining sector combined with the stable nature of non-residential projects, it seems that Infrastructure projects are the only area with significant growth in the sector for 2020.

With major public failures in a number of residential projects in recent years, there will definitely be a focus on new compliance measures for this category with a suite of legislative amendments combined with updated processes and procedures to minimize risks and protect the end consumer. This combined with the continued downturn in the residential construction sector will make it a tough year for operators focusing on this segment.

With a number of capital works projects running across 2020 and beyond the challenge seems to be in finding skilled labor and minimizing the rising cost of building materials. These complex projects must now also rely more heavily on technology innovation to maintain margins and internationally benchmarked quality levels.

There has also been a continuing blowout of major infrastructure project budgets and timelines requiring operators to put in place more adaptive technologies that can give real time insight into upcoming variations and avoid some of the gaping black holes that occurred over 2015–2019. Both the public and political administrators won’t keep swallowing these blowouts lightly and with the general raising of expectations in service accuracy, logistics, reporting and delivery operators that do not adopt transparent and accurate project management/contract delivery platforms will lose out among the small hand full of top players vying for the lucrative contracts spread across the roaring 2020s.