Global Perspective: New data-driven technologies to revolutionise the construction sectors of emerging countries worldwide

Around 55% of the world’s population – or 4.2bn people – lived in urban areas in 2018, up from 47% in 2000, according to the UN. Because of the rapid rate of urbanisation, this figure is expected to reach 68% by 2050, with growth concentrated in Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The shift towards the cities put the onus on the construction sector to respond to the burgeoning demand for housing, transport and supporting infrastructure.

New Technology

The global construction sector is forecast to expand by 2% in 2020 and 5% in 2021, with emerging markets leading the sustained growth. Technology will play a more significant role than ever as countries adopt building information modelling (BIM), a data-driven artificial intelligence process that is used to plan, design, construct and manage construction and infrastructure projects.

BIM generates multi-dimensional digital models of planned structures based on information gleaned from exhaustive scans of an area and its conditions. When BIM software is used, energy and material use can be reduced across the lifetime of a project, while engineering processes can also be optimised and costs lowered. North America dominates the market, and its use is compulsory for high-rise projects in some developed economies such as the UK. Emerging markets are now looking to the technology to innovate and modernise their construction sectors.

The worldwide BIM market is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 12.7% between 2019 and 2024, expanding in value from $4.9bn to $8.9bn. The increase is largely due to high power utilisation in business structures and a rise in electricity expenditure, causing firms to turn to BIM to develop power-efficient systems, ease costs and reduce the need for retrofit enhancements.

Read the full Global Perspective in The Report: Trinidad & Tobago 2020