This article is part of a blog series on supply chain issues. The impact of COVID-19 on the supply chain in the construction industry, as well as the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, is still felt in 2025. Inflation is down, but at risk of getting up again if the US cannot negotiate its tariffs, and peace is not agreed upon, the industry will experience fewer resources, both in labor and materials.
The Dodge economic outlook 2025 predicts the US economy will grow at a slow pace as inflation decreases. The 2024 Federal Reserve’s reduction in interest rates may help nonresidential construction starts in 2025. Even with lower rates, skilled labor will not improve, and the materials prices will remain high.
Nonresidential construction lags in demand for traditional office projects. While few projects move through planning rate cuts may continue into 2025, non-residential starts will grow 6% to reach $467 billion.
Nonbuilding construction will still have a future in 2025, thanks to the more than 1 trillion dollars that have become available under the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
You certainly can. Implement Building Information Modeling (BIM) culture in your company, increasing response times by sending the right information to your suppliers, adjusting requirements if necessary, and automating your inventory management.
In this article, we explore how to manage and improve your supply chain and what technologies you should implement.
Construction supply chain management, to move construction materials quickly and cost-effectively, requires that you automate and integrate your processes. System integration and best practices implementation could smooth the flow of materials on your construction site, and improve collaboration between all parties within the supply chain, such as manufacturers, suppliers, contractors, owners, etc. Your projects will then meet the owners’ requirements in terms of delivery and budget, your project will be efficiently constructed and maintained.
To manage your supply chain efficiently, bring the construction supply chain processes of your projects into one single management system. Automate your processes, integrate all your systems so they communicate seamlessly, and implement best practices to manage your equipment, materials supply, and your various teams. This will make your supply chain efficient and productive. You will be able to deliver projects on time, on budget, and meet the owner’s requirements.
We explore below some ideas you could try to improve your supply chain. Do not let your customers and/or manufacturers down! Apply the following principles to mitigate the risks of a failing supply chain.
To control your inventory, you need to know, in real-time, where the goods are, when they will be delivered, when they are assembled, and when the handover will happen. There are many tools you can use, like plannerly.
Your systems should provide easy real-time collaboration to access team updates and comments in a live online environment anywhere, anytime.
Advanced online editing permits you to add images, tables, and videos in your browser. Embed content from many web-based tools like process maps from draw.io, YouTube training videos, surveys from Typeform, slides from Google, 360 photo walkthroughs from Matterport, and even BIM360 models, it will allow you to clean formatting, helping you to standardize your content across all templates.
Your best practices should include a simple approval workflow, moving sections from “Work in progress” (WIP) to “Shared” to “Published”. This will allow your team to achieve solid, continual agreement on your projects.
The construction process of an asset uses a wide variety of materials, many of which are shipped from remote locations. Construction requires a significant input of man-hours, fuel, electricity, and materials, they carry volatile prices that should be closely monitored in the international market.
By incorporating real-time tracking tools, you can better align your demand and offer by ensuring that shipments and deliveries adhere to precise schedules. Utilizing predictive analytics, powered by AI and machine learning, can provide insights into price trends and inventory fluctuations to make more informed purchasing decisions. This approach not only minimizes waste but also creates a more resilient supply chain capable of adapting to unpredictable market conditions.
Another important element is time. In theory, estimators can break the list of materials down to exact quantities of bolts, nuts, and nails. However, this approach is time-consuming, especially in large projects. For example, Procore, a construction platform, developed a cost-estimating module that is essential for the success of 5D BIM. It allows you to access data within a 3D model for the take-off process. The system significantly boosts your estimator’s productivity. You can also view and modify a project throughout the design phase, generate multiple changes, compare different models, and automatically update the cost impacts in revised estimates.
Building real-time data into your workflow across the entire supply chain to visualize demand and supply, classify and associate products by their volatility, and monitor and provide real-time alerts to handle your volatile stock levels.
Planning and forecasting appropriately are fundamental when the supply chain is under pressure, as it is now. The supply chain planning system must run 24 hours, 7 days a week, to avoid delays in signal processing, identify supply chain issues, and quickly resolve them.
You should consider the design phase of a project as an integrated forecasting system. Planning starts during the design phase. It includes future team members for the construction and maintenance. The entire team looks at various alternatives that are desirable from all points of view, eliminating the necessity of extensive revisions and avoiding clashes.
You should have tools to help you create contracts using standard BIM templates from previous projects. Including ISO 19650 standards and guidance in your workflow, designing templates in a software framework will simplify the design process for your projects. Sharing practical tips about each ISO 19650 document type (EIR, AIR, BEP, etc.) will help you walk through steps to create OIRs, PIRs, AIRs, EIRs, BEPs, Responsibility Matrices, RACI Charts, TIDPs, and MIDPs).
Using the level of information needed approach, describe how to implement the Information Protocol for your BIM contracts by sharing online templates to create your ISO-compliant workflow.
FMI, the leading provider of consulting and investment banking to the Built Environment, said:
Optimizing digital technology is probably just what the construction industry needs. Now, in the absence of true face-to-face interactions, these tools have become essential to maintaining schedules and good communication. They have become as ubiquitous as a hammer drill or backhoe on job sites, enabling teams to close distances and utilize time more effectively.
Your management team must set goals to fully implement BIM and make sure that these goals are understood by every team member, planned for, and delivered. Your goals should identify the needs of new technologies to be integrated into your workflows, the data exchange for the enterprise system you develop, the individual training requirements, the progress of activities and tasks undertaken to achieve the necessary deliverables and milestones related to the client requirements.
In the current climate, your suppliers find it difficult to respond to the high demand with tight deadlines. The only solution to satisfy your clients is to find alternate suppliers, both locally and internationally. You will then be able to disseminate the risk among different suppliers. If you rely too much on offshore suppliers to keep your prices down, you risk having long lead times and increased delays. To mitigate this risk, you should optimize your ratio of suppliers with short and long lead times with different price models.
To succeed in a difficult economic environment, you should embrace change and be open to new opportunities. Having integrated systems, in the cloud, automating your processes, and introducing new technologies into your workflows, like Artificial Intelligence (AI) will ease your supply chain management.
To be successful, you should have a slick and well-managed supply chain. The essential principles you should follow are:
Most firms intend to establish their best practices, but work gets in the way, and they are never created. Approximately $ 300 million is wasted per year in the UK alone. As a result, there are people solving problems that others have already solved.
Driving Vision's BIM expertise diagnostic looks at how you can eliminate waste (time and material) and improve your margins and the quality of the information provided during the design and construction phases.
A Driving Vision expert will conduct the interviews online, will issue a report, and discuss our findings with you. Together, we will decide the best way to implement the solutions at your pace and according to your budget.
Implementing BIM can be daunting, but Driving Vision is here to help you at the pace you are comfortable with. Get started by getting in touch now
You minimise the level of investment required to implement BIM as we share the Research and Development costs with other client
You increase your revenue by staying ahead of the competition as BIM best practices allows you to win bigger and more rewarding projects.
You reduce your costs, more than our fees cost you, by decreasing potential litigations, rework, and errors and omissions
