KPMG introduced a new concept into its Global Construction Survey 2019 earlier this year, the Future-Ready Index, a way for the industry to measure how prepared they are for the future.
The survey contains a self-assessment tool, a questionnaire which allows companies to benchmark and compare where your organization places on the Future-Ready Index compared to others.
“It’s an evolution of the previous surveys to say, ‘we know there is big change coming, what do you need to worry about as you go forward’ and we categorized the results into three major components which were people, process and technology adoption,” explained Gary Webster, national Canadian infrastructure practice leader and global head of capital projects at KPMG.
“If you look back at the very early surveys, a lot of them were around risk and controls. While that has gotten better over time as the survey has gone on, the adoption of technology was always something that was far out there but now it has become very real and there are a lot of people saying ‘what the heck am I doing.’ ”
The survey was conducted over a three-month period, with over 200 global construction and engineering companies and owners participating. The index is based upon the responses to questions covering governance and controls, innovation and technology and people.
The top 20 per cent, which we considered innovative leaders, they’ve got a strong innovation culture,
— Gary Webster
KPMG
“A combination of companies and owners were used to test these questions against and create benchmarks of what we see as some of the biggest entities around the world who are probably the ones who are more investing in these sorts of things,” said Webster. “The purpose of this was it can an organization benchmark themselves reasonably well in the three categories and it’s about how some of the leading class companies are doing and recognizing where do you fit. This is to help the industry and to bring more attention to the industry on some of the things it needs to be dealing with as we go forward.”
Some examples of the questions the survey asks to determine the future readiness score include: what is the percentage of annual voluntary employee turnover/attrition within the organization; how would you rate your ability to recruit qualified personnel; identify which of the following technologies you have already implemented or begun to implement within your organization; and over the last year, what percentage of your projects achieved their originally planned budgets.
“When we look at it from a people point of view…there are some firms that are bringing in some innovative HR that is required for the future and they start to incentivize behaviours about innovation technology and adoption and really starting to challenge their workforce into thinking about future construction and becoming more effective and more efficient,” explained Webster.
In terms of technology, not many firms have not produced a digital technology roadmap, Webster noted.
“Some have created an innovation department to look at ways of adopting some of these technologies today and how it can improve efficiency and productivity and those sorts of things,” said Webster. “There are some firms doing that but the vast majority are not.”
After taking the questionnaire and totaling up the numbers, it tells you where your business stands: the top 20 per cent, which are considered innovative leaders; the middle 60 per cent, the followers; or the bottom 20 per cent, which are behind the curve.
“The top 20 per cent, which we considered innovative leaders, they’ve got a strong innovation culture already embedded with a clear technology vision, they’ve got dedicated innovation teams headed by senior leaders, their recruitment is looking proactively recruiting for innovation — these are what some of the cutting-edge contractors are doing,” said Webster.
“It gives you a few bullets of things to consider that others are doing,” he added.
“That’s the idea of the survey, it’s a combination of these are issues that we’ve seen as we talk to people, these are ideas that others are doing and part of this is to share some of the big trends that are happening in the industry elsewhere. It’s worthwhile having a look at the survey to see how ready you are and if you’re not. Maybe you can run the same survey in a year and see if you’ve advanced in any of these areas.”
To take the self-test, visit https://home.kpmg/xx/en/home/insights/2019/04/self-test-how-future-ready-is-your-organization.html
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