People who are involved in the AEC industry are all wondering what to expect out of 2021, as well as predict the challenges that may lie ahead. Assessing the market and developing strategies around that assessment will help identify where you should be placing your investments. Several factors will complicate the market analysis and plans for 2021. The uncertainty of the entire situation of what is going on will complicate the planning.
The AEC industry will be facing a lack of state and municipal budgets due to revenue shortfalls caused by the pandemic. This means a smaller market for AEC services and more pressure on company margins.
Federal markets are different from the state and local government markets mostly because they are not required to have a budget thats balanced. Purchasing AEC services at the federal level will most likely continue but the priorities will certainly change.
A strong market for 2021 will without a doubt be life sciences. Billions of dollars are currently being invested into this sector in cities and on university campuses.
The industrial market is another one of those sectors that is going to be strong throughout 2021 and on. The increased demand for warehousing and distribution centers will only go up due to the acceleration of e-commerce that’s the result of the pandemic.
Sustainability already is a very important factor, the reality is that we are only at the beginning of increasingly rapid development. Companies moving forward will need to consider environmental impact when they are sourcing materials.
The whole planning process is critical for an AEC industry firm, one of the most critical factors for 2021 is the ability to adapt. If you can rapidly evolve and be ready for anything you already have a competitive advantage. How important is business agility though? Well, Bill Gates has his own ideas on the same principle “Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react and reinvent.”
Now with the pandemic in mind, it has set in stone a lot of factors many businesses haven’t been thinking about. One of those being survivability under strenuous situations. Moving forward from 2021 it would be within everyone’s best interest to plan for the worst in every regard because you never really know what the worst will entail. A lot of businesses need to not only plan for sustainability but at the same time plan for survivability. The best way to do that is to identify the market and create a plan around it to ensure you come out as unscathed as possible. That should be within one of your main goals moving forward.
If you want to learn more about developing proper future strategies or if you want to learn more about our business or what we do, then click here.
Glenn Ebersole is a registered professional engineer and is the Executive Director, Strategic Business Development/Marketing for RCS Construction — a woman-owned general contractor firm — in Collegeville. He can be reached at 610-415-1130 or gebersole@rcsconstruction.net.
