Shifting Sands and Shifting Grounds: Analysis and Implications of Shifting Dynamics in the Global Construction Industry

Abstract

The global construction industry is in a state of change. The largest construction companies are tracked annually by Engineering News Record (ENR) in the Top 225 Global Contractors list. In the late 1990s this chart was topped by Japanese firms; in the 2000s a French firm held the number-one spot for nine consecutive years. For the last three years, however, Chinese firms have held the top three largest global contractor positions on the list. This is surprising because, just 5 years earlier, none of these Chinese firms were even among the top 10 largest global contractors. To examine these shifting dynamics, the authors compiled the ENR Top 225 Global Contractor data from 1994 to 2011 into a database and analyzed the data. The data were fitted to generate a forecast of predicted changes in market leadership and industry sector shifts to understand the evolving dynamics further. The paper concludes with a discussion of the effects of these critical industry trends to help decision makers understand and react to changes in the current and near-future state of the global construction market.