Opinion Article | Jornal Construir

In the mid-19^th century, Charles Darwin taught in his book "The Origin of Species", that the species that survive are not the strongest, but those that best adapt to change. It still took us a few decades to realise that these principles of Darwinism applied to practically everything in life. Today, I emphasise Darwin's Theory to highlight this principle in business strategies, with a particular focus on the engineering and construction sector.

In one of the last reports on the construction sector, McKinsey & Company elucidated how fundamental this sector is to any economy, regardless of nationality, being in fact the largest industry in the world, representing 13% of World GDP.

Given the above importance, as well as the need to adapt in order to survive, it is difficult to explain the sector's brutal backwardness compared to other industries.

But the challenges for the sector in Portugal are of various kinds:

1.       Innovation.

Catching up with the sector is a capital issue. It is believed that COVID-19, as well as the other epidemics that may arise and that we will call the new normal, will accelerate innovation in the construction industry. We will build in a quite different way than we do today.

New materials will emerge, and we will develop existing ones, new construction systems will emerge, such as the case of massive prefabrication and 3D printing, modular construction, automation and robotisation of construction processes.

We will invest more time designing than building. To this end, it is necessary to continue developing new utilities in Building Information Modeling (BIM) work methodologies, virtual reality, as well as real-time 3D surveying.

We will explore to the maximum sensing, nanotechnology, micro and nanoelectronics, aiming at efficiency in the way structures are designed, built and exploited, always with an environmental concern at all stages of the process.

And as far as the circular economy is concerned, we need to develop products and by-products resulting from deconstruction. The way they are idealised must be with the aim that one day they will be deconstructed and reused in second or third life.

We need to anticipate the customer needs of the future, with IoT and artificial intelligence we will provide buildings with greater functionality and efficiency whose use is accessible to all.

2.       Justice

If we had only one wish, we would ask for justice. Justice so that the debtor pays quickly and does not resort to legal expedients and the inertia of the courts to delay payment. Justice so that companies receive what they have produced.

Obviously not everything comes down to these two topics, but if resolved, it would make life easier for a sector whose company turnover speaks for itself. If we look at the top 10 largest Portuguese construction companies 15 years ago and today, we can understand the turnover (because most of these companies no longer exist). And the crisis does not justify everything, but rather what they have not received from validated invoices, work done and not accepted as work to be paid for (lengthy processes in court) and the work that they have not received because of the public contracting code dictates so. In the latter case, it allows the public entity to pass on its responsibilities to third parties, which the judicial system should not allow, by not remunerating the contractor and designer for work actually done.

Greater corporatism is needed to avoid this type of (i)legal abuse, under a strategic sector for the Country.

3.       Human Resources

The installed capacity is lower than demand, resulting from the emigration of the years of crisis in the sector, combined with an ageing population.

At the end of 2021, the IEFP counted around 2,500 unfilled vacancies in construction. It was the sector with the most open opportunities.

Four months later, we are living through the perfect storm (shortage and continuous exponential rise in the price of resources in general, inflation, inversion of the trend of the Euribor rates - which are now beginning to rise, instability resulting from new "covid's" and, finally, war in Europe) which makes it difficult for us to predict the market in the medium term. There was also a growth in national GDP in the first quarter of the year, above the best expectations, which, together with the still continuous private investment (more retracted it is true, justified by the rising trends of the Euribor rates as well as by the increase in the price of resources) and public investment (encouraged by the PTRE), results in the continuous demand for labour.

To solve this situation and add value to the national productive chain, avoiding the entry of more foreign companies, the Government should foresee special measures that enable a greater speed, of course with the required criteria of rigour, in the immigration process. 

At the same time, the sector needs to be "sexy" to attract young people, involving less physical effort, be less dependent on weather conditions, be more conceptualised with the help of the described in the innovation chapter, which will also solve the problem of national productivity (below EU and OECD average).

I thus name these three strategic challenges for the sector. There are certainly other fundamental issues, such as the sector's dependence on external markets, training, the sharing economy, among many others, but by fulfilling the above three aims, we will clearly move to another stage.

Eurico Soares, general director of dst (Domingos da silva teixeira)