With time energy, construction, and infrastructure projects are becoming increasingly complex and are being implemented on a much larger scale.  We face many issues in every aspect of business operations; however, it is down to the business leaders to make it resilient and be able to identify, evaluate and mitigate these issues.

COVID-19 brought unprecedented challenges for us. It has had a global impact in ways we could not have foreseen, and our sector is no exception. Notably, however, the public and private sectors have demonstrated remarkable resilience and commitment in working collaboratively to ensure that we emerge from this crisis with the capability and capacity required to support the necessary economic rebuilding.

However, COVID-19 is not the only pandemic plaguing the construction and infrastructure industry. The sector is marred with costly delays, cost overruns, disputes, and liabilities. There is an increasing need to have a clear strategy on how to draft, manage and negotiate contracts in a way that protects the intended goals and objectives.

The construction sector, especially infrastructure is being challenged like never before by a range of issues that, taken together, have the potential to radically change the way the industry works. A combination of sustainability requirements, cost pressures, skills scarcity, claims & disputes, digitalization, and a new breed of players entering the sector, looks set to transform construction businesses in the years ahead.

The construction sector underpins the economy; as transport, digital, energy, and utility networks – all directly or indirectly dependent on the construction sector – are vital components for employment, business, and general economic growth. This means that they also have a profound impact on people’s daily lives. Hence, governments globally, ceaselessly plan and wish to deliver an infrastructure revolution. Taking a closer look at the infrastructure and development of the Pakistan Government, a general trend of a radical improvement in the quality of the infrastructure to help improve the country, strengthen trade, and put Pakistan on the path to economic success up North towards the Karakoram Highway and down South to Gwadar and via Superhighway to Karachi Port.

Infrastructure is long-term. CPEC investment has seen unprecedented upskilling in our industry. Decisions taken today on new rail lines, power plants, or road upgrades, will affect lives and livelihoods for decades to come. But infrastructure investment also has an important short-term role to help support jobs and stimulate the economy. This Strategy brings together the government’s long-term goals with the short-term imperative to rebuild the economy following the COVID-19 pandemic

As the government helps the economy to recover it will also seek to address the long-term issues that have held back Pakistan’s infrastructure. These issues include ‘stop-start’ public investment, insufficient funding for regions outside of major cities, slow adoption of new technology, policy uncertainty that undermines private and foreign investment, and project delivery plagued by corruption, delays, and cost overruns.

When we talk about infrastructure, I always want to clarify that we need to think beyond buildings.

The OECD distinguishes two categories of infrastructure:

Horizontal Infrastructure, which is composed mainly of:

• Transportation: roads, railways, and bridges
• Power & Communication: transmission facilities, electric lines, energy generation
• Subterranean: pipelines, sewer, waterlines.

Vertical Infrastructure, also called Social Infrastructure (buildings and spaces that facilitate the delivery of social services by governments and other service providers):

• Buildings: hospitals, public universities, public housing, etc.
• Surface: parking areas, subsurface or structured facilities
• Structure: any building foundation and site work that facilitates the delivery of buildings.

The infrastructure sector is highly diverse. As a result, the efforts around resilience, carbon mitigation, and circularity are different across sectors, markets, and stakeholders.

Although the infrastructure and building sectors vary, they are certainly interdependent and have areas of overlap, primarily:

• Interdependency in use: despite their difference in purpose, together buildings and infrastructure comprise a shared urban ecosystem.
• Shared construction supply chain: buildings and infrastructure use broadly similar materials and operate similar processes of design of construction, with a shared material supply chain.