Over the past year, the global supply chain has experienced a drastic increase in demand for goods, causing many delays and additional costs across industries. What’s more, international shipping costs are expected to keep rising during the coming year, with year-over-year increases in the 300% to 500% range.

While a secure supply chain is important across projects and industries, it’s essential in the construction field. There’s a growing and unaccounted-for risk in today’s construction projects caused by delays in receiving materials from shippers and manufacturers. There’s an even bigger concern about the increased volume of new and restarted projects following the initial response to COVID-19, resulting in a domino effect that impacts other construction projects and materials.

While there’s no way to be certain that unexpected supply chain delays won’t impact your construction project, there are mechanisms to ease the building process when it comes to material goods and your workforce. Managers can safeguard their construction project by implementing a technology-enabled, transparent, adaptable and tactical approach to both the supply chain and workforce.

Accounting for Delays

Honesty and trust are crucial factors in any successful relationship, and conversations with your suppliers should be no different. It’s important to be honest with your partners about your timeline and budget, to ensure that your needs are met on the project.

A good tip to minimizing increased construction costs from supply chain delays is to factor that time and money into your initial plan. When beginning a project, I typically incorporate a sufficient budget of both those factors to address any foreseeable delays. These extra resources are invaluable for meeting deadlines and ensuring seamless execution of a project despite a few road bumps.

The construction workforce is growing older, with the industry’s average age rising from 36.8 in 1994 to 42.9 in 2020. By 2030, it’s estimated that the average age will rise to roughly 46. With injury rates in the construction field being much higher than any other industry at 71%, project managers need keep employees safe while scaling projects for an older workforce.

Ergonomics are extremely important when physically working on a project, to ensure that workers are moving in a safe way. On construction sites, it’s common for an expert to visit for the day and give safety tips to workers. During the pandemic, virtual ergonomics visits became commonplace and helped provide counseling services to the workforce. As construction managers look to keep their aging workforces safe, the use of ergonomics experts can help reduce the likelihood of injury and setback during a project.

Appreciating your workforce financially is also key to meeting the needs of the changing construction workforce. Difficulties that many in the industry are experiencing regarding the availability of reliable and quality labor are directly related to wage levels. With an increasingly tight labor market and limited positive outlook from COVID-19, the construction industry has actually seen a 1.2% wage gain.

Minimizing Wait Times

On large construction projects, managers must deal with many touchpoints via contracts, invoices, employee logs and building material tracking. Technology can help organize and track project finances, materials, employee payments and other things needed to successfully start and finish a project. Managers can also implement artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically perform actions like paying a supplier or employee, as well as factoring in new lead times if materials aren’t received when expected.

Financial markets and constructers alike will need to keep a close eye on the remainder of 2021 for worsening supply chain issues. The resulting disruptions are inevitable with our global systems, leading to missed deadlines and associated project cost increases. A single missed shipment or deadline can swing the balance sheet, project timeline and workforce into the red, and there will be no shortage of people willing to point the finger at your link as the cause. With this new volatility in mind, it’s important for construction managers to fully understand the supply chain and work closely with partners and the workforce to maintain status in the green, ultimately leading to project success.

Justin White is vice president of specialty services and principal building consultant at Sedgwick.

Over the past year, the global supply chain has experienced a drastic increase in demand for goods, causing many delays and additional costs across industries. What’s more, international shipping costs are expected to keep rising during the coming year, with year-over-year increases in the 300% to 500% range.

While a secure supply chain is important across projects and industries, it’s essential in the construction field. There’s a growing and unaccounted-for risk in today’s construction projects caused by delays in receiving materials from shippers and manufacturers. There’s an even bigger concern about the increased volume of new and restarted projects following the initial response to COVID-19, resulting in a domino effect that impacts other construction projects and materials.

While there’s no way to be certain that unexpected supply chain delays won’t impact your construction project, there are mechanisms to ease the building process when it comes to material goods and your workforce. Managers can safeguard their construction project by implementing a technology-enabled, transparent, adaptable and tactical approach to both the supply chain and workforce.

Accounting for Delays

Honesty and trust are crucial factors in any successful relationship, and conversations with your suppliers should be no different. It’s important to be honest with your partners about your timeline and budget, to ensure that your needs are met on the project.

A good tip to minimizing increased construction costs from supply chain delays is to factor that time and money into your initial plan. When beginning a project, I typically incorporate a sufficient budget of both those factors to address any foreseeable delays. These extra resources are invaluable for meeting deadlines and ensuring seamless execution of a project despite a few road bumps.

The construction workforce is growing older, with the industry’s average age rising from 36.8 in 1994 to 42.9 in 2020. By 2030, it’s estimated that the average age will rise to roughly 46. With injury rates in the construction field being much higher than any other industry at 71%, project managers need keep employees safe while scaling projects for an older workforce.

Ergonomics are extremely important when physically working on a project, to ensure that workers are moving in a safe way. On construction sites, it’s common for an expert to visit for the day and give safety tips to workers. During the pandemic, virtual ergonomics visits became commonplace and helped provide counseling services to the workforce. As construction managers look to keep their aging workforces safe, the use of ergonomics experts can help reduce the likelihood of injury and setback during a project.

Appreciating your workforce financially is also key to meeting the needs of the changing construction workforce. Difficulties that many in the industry are experiencing regarding the availability of reliable and quality labor are directly related to wage levels. With an increasingly tight labor market and limited positive outlook from COVID-19, the construction industry has actually seen a 1.2% wage gain.

Minimizing Wait Times

On large construction projects, managers must deal with many touchpoints via contracts, invoices, employee logs and building material tracking. Technology can help organize and track project finances, materials, employee payments and other things needed to successfully start and finish a project. Managers can also implement artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically perform actions like paying a supplier or employee, as well as factoring in new lead times if materials aren’t received when expected.

Financial markets and constructers alike will need to keep a close eye on the remainder of 2021 for worsening supply chain issues. The resulting disruptions are inevitable with our global systems, leading to missed deadlines and associated project cost increases. A single missed shipment or deadline can swing the balance sheet, project timeline and workforce into the red, and there will be no shortage of people willing to point the finger at your link as the cause. With this new volatility in mind, it’s important for construction managers to fully understand the supply chain and work closely with partners and the workforce to maintain status in the green, ultimately leading to project success.

Justin White is vice president of specialty services and principal building consultant at Sedgwick.