How to be one of the post-pandemic winners in the engineering and construction sector.

In the engineering and construction sector around the world we are seeing projects paused and new opportunities stalled. This temporary pause in activity means you have the capacity to focus your people on rapid business improvements, avoiding layoffs in the process, says Kenny Ingram, Vice President, Engineering, Construction & Infrastructure for IFS in the US.

If you have the human capital available, now is the time to invest it in the future of your business. Remember that in a cloud environment, you can fund software via opex not capex, deferring most of the cost until after you begin realizing business value.

Challengers can seize market share

As a project-driven business, construction is anecdotal. Market leaders are determined more by the success of multiple projects and the ability to maintain project margin than any enduring intellectual property or superiority in supply chain. A recent study from IFS found that construction is ripe for disruption by challenger companies willing to go to market in innovative ways. Construction and engineering respondents were almost three times as likely to feel they had a chance to unseat the market leaders in their space than, for instance, discrete manufacturers.

According to PWC, 71 percent of contractors are concerned with the financial impacts of the pandemic, including efforts on operations, future periods of liquidity and capital resources, and 64 percent fear a global recession. Very large companies involved in major projects could effectively be hobbled, enabling aggressive technology-enabled construction challengers to move in.

Read his blog here