Challenging times for construction but there are opportunities ahead for the infrastructure industry as global economies rebuild.
A leading construction legal expert said that construction professionals have a great responsibility on their shoulders to deliver the transformational infrastructure projects that will help the world recover from the twin challenges of the post-pandemic landscape and global economic uncertainty.
Delivering a keynote address at the FIDIC International Contract Users’ Conference in London, Keating Chambers King’s Counsel and director of the Centre of Construction Law and Dispute Resolution at King’s College, London, John Uff said that these were challenging times for the construction and infrastructure sector, but there were reasons for optimism.
“We have global political and economic uncertainty – some of which is being driven by the ongoing war in Ukraine – and also a situation where many countries around the world rightly see infrastructure investment as key to revitalising and growing their economies. So that places a pressure and a responsibility on our sector and the people who make projects happen and succeed in their aims,” said Uff.
In addition to new and current issues, Uff said that the industry also had ongoing challenges, including skills and resource shortages, the need to balance risk and reward on projects, the challenge of getting procurement right, project financing and funding issues, to name but a few.
Uff highlighted the key role of infrastructure professionals in delivering the solutions the world needs but said that skill would be needed to deliver them. “There are many competing priorities and challenges and industry practitioners and professionals will need to find the right way to balance them,” Uff said.
There was also a real need to understand world events and their effect on the industry. “We also see the industry having to deal with unforeseen or unpredicted events too like the war in Ukraine, which is having such a profound effect on the world economy and consequently on our industry too. This underlines why it is so important for practitioners to be across these issues,” said Uff.
Uff also urged his audience not to forget the growing importance of digital transformation and its impact on the way the industry is now working. “We saw the rise of digital particularly strongly during the pandemic where technology affected the work of the sector like never before. This will continue and we need to understand what this means for contracts” he said.
Concluding his address to the 200-strong audience of construction contract and legal experts, Uff highlighted what he saw as another key challenge for the industry – capacity building and training.
“I of course have a particular interest in this area, as I chair the FIDIC Certification Board which has responsibility for creating and managing qualifying courses with the objective of establishing a truly worldwide pool of expertise in all aspects of international construction projects,” he said.
“We cannot deliver the infrastructure projects the world needs unless we have the skilled people to do the work and this is an important message that our sector needs to continue to stress at every opportunity,” Uff told those assembled at the London conference.
“We may be meeting in challenging times, but challenge also offers opportunity and I hope that our discussions over the coming days will highlight that and show that the engineering, construction and infrastructure sector – and those who support it – can meet these challenges head on and show that we can deliver the infrastructure the world needs to move forward,” he concluded.
