Rising costs and a lack of skilled professionals is hampering the construction industry’s progress when it comes to digitising the sector and moving towards more sustainable practices. 

In a new Royal Institute of chartered Surveyors (Rics) report, 2,500 chartered surveyors from across the globe said these were the main issues preventing them from adopting more innovative practices.

The Rics Digitalistion report found that 55% of these professionals see building information modelling (BIM) and digital replicas of physical assets and processes (‘digital twins’) as being ‘highly beneficial’ to their organisations, particularly when it comes to implementing environmental goals. 

Around 40% of companies said they were looking to adapt their business to meet future challenges, such as reducing the sector’s carbon emissions. However almost all of the firms surveyed said that one of the biggest issues was cost, with 95% citing this as a “medium to high blocker” to implementation of these plans.

Meanwhile a lack of skilled professional was another major hurdle, with 88% of firms citing this as an issue. These results were similar to those found in the Rics Global Construction Monitor results.

Whilst cost and skills remains a major hurdle, data is already being heavily used by organisations to enhance progress monitoring and health, safety and wellbeing across all or most of their projects. Almost half (44%) of respondents said this was the main way data and technology is used in the construction sector. 

At the other end of the scale however, only 23% of respondents said that they use data and technology to help measure their carbon footprint and benchmark and report on all or most of their projects.

Rics says this report highlights the advances that are being made, but says it also demonstrates the need for further initiatives across the construction sector to upskill people to help drive down costs, and enable the industry to better tackle climate change.

Rics global construction and infrastructure sector lead Anil Sawhney says: “To address the profound impact of construction on our world, the sector must move even faster to reap the benefits of BIM and digital twins. 

“Digitalisation in construction continues to gather momentum, but the adoption of such technologies is being held back by increasing costs and shortage of skilled professionals.

“The sector is agile, but with continual cost and time pressures and a lack of spending on research and development the sector runs the risk of being left behind. Whilst standards such as ICMS 3 and professional bodies upskilling members is helping, construction needs more support, whether that’s private investment or government funding or initiatives to ensure countries can continue to prosper.”

Rics global data and tech lead Andrew Knight adds: “Current supply chain issues and soaring costs are yet another aspect the sector is having to urgently address. Coupled with incorporating ESG principles, designing and measuring social value, implementing whole-life and whole-asset thinking, carbon footprint calculation, benchmarking and reporting across projects the construction sector is in the midst of a perfect storm.

“Whilst early BIM modelling is now commonplace and participants across the asset lifecycle are now sharing information more freely, especially on cost estimation and health, safety and well-being, there’s still a way to go.”