McKinsey Global Institute study, made in February 2021, found out that the pandemic accelerated existing trends in remote work and automation, with up to 25 percent more workers than previously estimated potentially needing to switch occupations. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted labour markets globally during 2020. The short-term consequences were sudden and often severe: Millions of people were furloughed or lost jobs, and others rapidly adjusted to working from home as offices closed. Many other workers were deemed essential and continued to work in hospitals and grocery stores, on garbage lories, and in warehouses, yet under new protocols to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus.

How would that affect the construction industry in the future?

Before COVID-19, the largest disruptions to work involved new technologies. The pandemic highlighted the importance of the physical dimension of work.

Grouping jobs according to their proximity to co-workers and customers, the frequency of interpersonal interactions involved, and if they are on-site or in office, indoor or outdoor, is the new way to look at the workforce rather than by function as we are used to.

The jobs will evolve according to levels of physical proximity, the more proximity is required the more transformation in your business models will be needed.

In 2020 we saw that the most severely disturbed jobs were when a high level of physical proximity was necessary. Construction professionals’ overall priorities are to ensure that their projects are attractive, safe, sustainable (environmentally friendly), and completed on time and within budget and require a high level of proximity.

Architects, service engineers and quantity surveyors

work is computer-based and administrative work requiring only moderate physical proximity to others and a moderate number of human interactions. These jobs have the highest potential for remote work with the right technology in place to enhance collaboration, visualisation of the design, and streamlined processes, supported by Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Augmented Reality, and Virtual reality.

Historical big data and Artificial Intellignece can discover patterns and identify probabilities of risks, so it does increase safety. By analysing weather, traffic, and environment, big data can optimise the design to improve the efficiency of the asset. Augmented and Virtual Reality help boosting productivity and eliminating waste.

• Architects and services engineers design assets. Architects design the structure, while architectural technologists ensure that the technical aspects of design work.
• Building services engineers make sure that a building has more than walls and a roof. They ensure that the lighting, power, ventilation, heating, cooling, and water systems work. They might work on the designs of a building or ensure that the designs are put into practice correctly.
• Quantity surveyors are involved in budgeting the cost of the design and comparing it with the real cost of the project.

People working on construction sites

had little impact on their jobs, during the pandemic, as the work requires low proximity and few interactions with others, and takes place mostly outdoors. With the shortage of skilled labour and the higher requirement in health and safety, the business model transformation will require the introduction of artificial intelligence, pre-fabrication, the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics and drones, immersive technologies, 3D printing.

• Civil and structural engineers tend to work either in an office on the technical aspects of designs or out on site making sure that the designs are implemented properly.
• Geotechnical engineers are responsible for structures’ foundations, they design foundations and oversee foundation work on site.
• Landscape architects aim to improve the quality of the environment by designing and managing the open spaces around us. They design and create public areas in towns, cities, and the countryside. they work a lot on-site.
• Site managers ensure things get done on a construction site. They make sure that the building work is finished on time, within budget, and to a high standard, managing teams of workers. Their work is mainly on-site but for administrative work, they mostly are office-based.
• Trades and crafts include bricklaying, stonemasonry, carpentry, joinery, demolition work, electrical work, painting and decorating, plumbing, scaffolding, steeplejack, and wall and floor work. Their work is on-site.

The pandemic accelerated three trends

pushing companies to rapidly adopt new behaviours that are likely to stay for a long time:

Remote working are likely to continue

20 to 25 percent of the workforces in the construction industry could work from home, either 5 days a week or flexibly 3 days home and 2 days in the office or on-site, four to five times more than before the pandemic.

Driving Vision would recommend that work that can technically be done remotely is best done from home. Activities requiring people interaction like negotiations, critical business decisions, brainstorming sessions, providing sensitive feedback, and onboarding new employees are less effective if done remotely.

Some companies are already planning to shift to flexible workspaces after positive experiences with remote work during the pandemic, it will reduce the overall space they need and bring fewer workers into offices each day.

A survey of 278 executives by McKinsey in August 2020 found that on average, they planned to reduce office space by 30 percent.

Virtual meetings will increase

as the home market saw a boom in people wanting to move out of large cities into suburbs and small cities.

For people living remotely, videoconferencing will reduce the travel expenses as they will be replaced by virtual meetings and other aspects of work. McKinsey’s travel practice estimates that about 20 percent of business travel, may not return.

COVID-19 will force faster adoption of automation and AI,

especially in work areas with high physical proximity.

Driving Vision may help you automate and redesign work processes in line with ISO 19650 to reduce the share of jobs involving routine tasks, waste time and material, to boost your productivity.

McKinsey surveyed 800 executives in July 2020, two-thirds said they were stepping up investment in automation and AI to reduce workplace density and be ready to cope with surges in demand of physical proximity. Their research found that jobs with high levels of human interaction are likely to see the greatest acceleration in the adoption of automation and AI.

The largest negative impact of the pandemic will fall on workers in customer sales and service roles, as well as less-skilled office support roles.

Because of the pandemic’s impact on low-wage jobs, we now estimate that almost all growth in labour demand will occur in high-wage jobs. Going forward, more than half of displaced low-wage workers may need to shift to occupations in higher wage brackets and requiring different skills to remain employed than before the pandemic

Before the pandemic, McKinsey estimated that just 6 percent of workers would need to find jobs in higher-wage occupations. In their post-COVID-19 research, they found that a larger share of workers will likely need to transition out of the bottom two wage brackets and roughly half of them will need new, more advanced skills to move to occupations one or even two wage brackets higher.

In the construction industry, the share of total work hours using physical and manual skills will decline. while time devoted to technological skills will rise.

The scale of your workforce transition increases the urgency for you to take steps to support additional training and education programs for your workers. Driving Vision through its diagnostic tools can help you to respond to the pandemic with purpose and innovation to refine your workforce for a brighter future of work.

The diagnostic will analyse what work can be done remotely by focusing on the tasks involved rather than whole jobs, retraining your workforce, focusing on the skills you need, rather than on academic degrees, and augment your diversity by hiring workers who, for family and other reasons, were unable to relocate to the large cities where talent, capital, and opportunities concentrated before the pandemic.

How can you prepare for the future of work?

The United Kingdom and the USA support businesses by expanding and enhancing the digital infrastructure. Even in advanced economies, almost 20 percent of workers in rural households lack access to the internet.

Governments should consider extending benefits and protections to independent workers and to workers working to build their skills and knowledge mid-career.

Both businesses and policymakers could collaborate to support workers migrating between occupations. can fill.

The reward of such efforts would be a more resilient, more talented, and better-paid workforce—and more robust and equitable society.

Implementing BIM can be daunting, but Driving Vision is here to help you at the pace you are comfortable with. Get started by getting in touch now