Survey Reveals the Impacts of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Contractors

For the past six months, we’ve known the construction industry In the US has been highly affected by the coronavirus pandemic, but how much? A new survey conducted by Autodesk and AGC of America is giving us a deeper look into the impacts so far.

Just over 2000 firms responded to the survey, which was completed between August 4 and 26 of 2020. More than half of the respondents were involved in building construction, 25% in highway and transportation, and 23% in both federal construction projects and utility infrastructure. 66% of companies that completed the survey perform less than $50MM in projects annually, 28% perform between $50.1 and $500MM, and 6% perform over $500MM.

The results of the survey provided key takeaways, including that there have been a significant number of delayed or canceled projects, labor demand is still high, there has been an increase in the use of technology, and there is still a lot of uncertainty moving forward.

Delays and Cancellations

While not every firm has reported scheduling impacts due to the pandemic, 66% of respondents said that some of their projects have been halted, postponed, or canceled all together. Additionally, 44% said that their ongoing projects have taken longer than anticipated and another 32% have reported higher costs than anticipated.

These increases and delays could be due to a variety of factors, including increased social distancing and other safety precautions, the need to pace out workforce scheduling, increased cost of certain materials, factory shutdowns causing delay in equipment and material delivery, among others.

According to the survey, the contractors who perform $50 million of work or less annually have experienced less delays and cancellations.

Labor Demands Remains High

While not as in high demand as a year ago, many firms reported still struggling to fill both hourly and salary positions within their company. 52% of firms said they are having trouble filling hourly jobs, while 28% of firms are having problems filling salaried positions.

The survey concluded that firms are having the hardest time filling laborer, carpenter, and crane/heavy equipment operator positions.

32% the firms surveyed said that they have not seen any change in headcount year over year, while another 27% have actually added employees since 2019. In addition, over two-thirds of respondents said that did not have to furlough employees and 38% have increased base pay rate.

Increase in Technology Use

I have heard from many technology companies that they have either seen a large increase in usage of their software or an increase in customers and this survey also confirms that. 40% of respondents said they have added new technology during the pandemic, including project management, field collaboration, estimating, workforce management, and bidding programs.

21% of companies have increased their use of virtual training using online video conferencing programs like Microsoft Teams or Zoom and 13% have added augmented/mixed/virtual reality training devices,

For Autodesk products specifically, they have seen a 350% global increase in new project creations within BIM 360 Design and PlanGrid safety reports have increased 273%.

Continued Uncertainty

It’s hard to tell how much longer we’ll be dealing with the effects of the pandemic and many contractors are unsure when they’ll be able to return to 2019 levels. The geographic area where the firms were located also varied the results, with 45% of contractors in the Northeast believing that it will take them  more than 6 months to recover, compared to 34% in the West, 35% in the South, and 42% in the Midwest.

55% of contractors are also calling for help from the federal government, not only to invest in public infrastructure and facilities, but also protection from liabilities resulting from exposure to COVID-19 on site. Another 41% believe that current unemployment laws are resulting in an additional barrier for people returning to work.

The Full Report

You can find the full report on the AGC of American website.  It’s broken down into many subcategories including Region, State, Union/Open Shop, Firm Size, and Project Type.

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source https://www.constructionjunkie.com/blog/2020/9/22/survey-reveals-the-impacts-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-on-contractors