Construction industry accelerating innovation, risk management: KPMG

New Delhi [India], August 31 : After a year of upheaval, engineering and construction companies are hoping to significantly reduce project failure by transforming the way they manage risks across their portfolio, according to professional services firm KPMG.
The 13th edition of KPMG's global construction survey presents an optimistic outlook with two-thirds of project owners predicting an expansion in their capital programmes, and half of all respondents 'very' or 'somewhat' optimistic about the future direction of the construction market.
Risk management is central to improving organisational resilience. Nearly 60 per cent of survey respondents say they want to gain a more holistic view of risks by increasing integration and visibility between enterprise risk management, portfolio risk management and project risk management.
And two-thirds plan a moderate or high level of investment in risk management.
Having enjoyed some dramatic advances in remote working and digital collaboration, 43 per cent of survey respondents plan to build on this with significant investment in technologies to enhance delivery of capital programmes.
'Adoption of technology' was also rated as the second most important factor to enable engineering and construction companies to cope with disruptive events.
However, faced with a wide range of geographies, fragmented supply chains and a constant stream of new software companies can struggle to effectively integrate risk management and project management.
Only 16 per cent of the executives surveyed say their organisations have fully integrated systems and tools.
The global engineering and construction sector's efforts to adopt diversity, equity and inclusion appear to be at a nascent stage -- although owners have made greater progress than contractors.
Only 46 per cent of respondents say their organisations have a formal programme for building diverse and inclusive teams, and a mere 26 per cent have a formal supplier diversity programme.
Suneel Vora, Partner for major projects advisory at KPMG in India, said the pandemic has taught important lessons to businesses implementing capital programmes and construction projects around resilience, integrated approach to risk, portfolio management, leveraging diversity and putting technology to work.
KPMG's Global Construction Survey 2021 reflects on the views of over 186 global industry leaders to provide specific answers to these aspects.
"For Indian companies with major capital investments and construction projects, specific actions include collaborative project teams, improved risk sharing, integrated project information systems, common technology platforms and leadership level commitment to embrace diversity," said Vora.
"The time for reshaping business models for capital investments, programme and project delivery, and portfolio decisions is now."