The recently released Global Construction 2025 report, the third in a series of major global studies of the construction and engineering industry published by Global Construction Perspectives and Oxford Economics, provides accurate and reliable forecasts to 2025 for the global construction and engineering industry as well as for key regional and country markets.

“The process manufacturing industry is facing an unprecedented challenge: from now until 2035, cumulative worldwide investments of US$38 trillion will be required for drilling, power generation, and other energy projects,” Iain Graham, director of energy and process manufacturing for Oracle’s Primavera, said in a recent webcast. He adds that process manufacturing organizations such as oil and gas, utilities, and chemicals must manage this level of investment in an environment of constrained capital markets, erratic supply and demand, aging infrastructure, heightened regulations, and declining global skills.

The current political environment facing federal agencies is one of extreme uncertainty. The economic recession is still dragging on the economy, continuing to push the question of recession or depression. As has become the norm, Congress is locked in a bipartisan battle over taxes and spending cuts, leaving agencies stuck in limbo as legislators try to pass a federal budget. This disagreement has recently reached new intensity, resulting in 1.2 million dollars in federal cuts spread across ten years, commonly referred to as the Sequester. These economic woes have made it increasingly likely that when the next round of budgets are due federal government agencies will be under tremendous scrutiny to ensure that scarce tax dollars are spent wisely. This pressure is transferred directly unto the Project Management Office (PMO), which is responsible for monitoring and administering increasingly complex, mission critical, government IT projects.

Hunter Contracting Co., an industry-leading, heavy-civil contractor serving the Southwest since 1961, was looking to reduce project risk and increase project accuracy and efficiency. Hunter needed a simple, effective way to leverage historical information to increase the accuracy of project bids. They wanted to remove multiple, manual data entry points between the field and the accounting office. Hunter also wanted to increase the transparency provided to owners looking for greater detail in their project estimates.

"By integrating Oracle’s Primavera solutions with Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and Oracle CRM On Demand, we’ve created a platform that will enable us to achieve new levels of project management precision—and competitiveness—going forward." – Justin McFarland, Director of Applications, Aegion Corp.

We are excited to introduce the Employee Kiosk (EK) module in Spectrum version 14–the latest module from Dexter + Chaney!

Whether they are in the power or process industry, owners, operators, and their E&C partners face extraordinary demands in the next 20 years. The International Energy Agency (IEA) 2012 World Market Report estimates that a cumulative investment of US$37 trillion is need in the world’s energy supply by 2035.1 Of that investment, US$19 trillion will need to go to oil and gas facilities and infrastructure and US$17 trillion to meet generation, transmission, and distribution needs with the remaining targeted at other energy solutions.

Through 2020, the Global Construction Perspectives & Oxford Economics report estimates that over US$97.7 trillion will be spent on construction projects globally. In 2010, the growth within the engineering and construction market was US$7.2 trillion and by 2020, that growth will move up 67% to US$12 trillion.

Is your company prepared to make the most of the emerging opportunities?

“Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management 8.1 drastically changed the way we run our business. We’ve reduced the number of redundant assets, streamlined project implementation and execution, and improved collaboration with our customers and contractors. Overall, the Oracle deployment helped to increase our profitability.” – Roman Aleksandrovich Naumenko, Head of Information Technology, LLC Uralelektrostroy

There are a growing number of apps available for contractors. As they become more important for the industry, it is worth spending time to understand the apps that are available, including how they are delivered and used and how they work alongside and within enterprise software systems.