We share below highlights from the 15th edition of KPMG’s Global Construction Survey 2025/2026, entitled “The Paradox of Progress”. This survey is the most extensive to date and gathers insights from 375 leaders in the engineering, construction and real estate sectors around the world. The information was gathered between January and March 2025, supplemented by individual interviews with experts and senior corporate executives.

_
The State of the Industry

Although sector optimism has climbed from 66% in 2023 to 71% today, it is cautious optimism, with 75% of executives saying they are as or significantly more risk averse than twelve months ago. Profitability is no longer guaranteed by volume, but by selectivity and discipline.

Current growth is colliding with three dominant pressures:

• Market Forces: Uncertainty in customer spending patterns and increasing technical complexity of projects.
• Balancing Cost and Investment: The challenge of managing the rising cost of materials and capital while financing the necessary digital transformation.
• Regulatory and Supply Chain Pressures: A fragile supply network under the scrutiny of increasingly stringent sustainability regulations.

_
Strategic Priorities: The Roadmap

To orchestrate growth in this environment, the industry is prioritizing four key areas for the next 12 months:

• Operational Efficiency and Profitability: The imperative is cost governance and productivity. Inefficiency is no longer a hidden cost, but a direct threat to survival in a tight margin industry.
• Market Expansion and Customer Focus: Growth is sought in strategic geographies and new generation sectors (Data Centers, renewable infrastructure), where agility of response is the competitive advantage.
• Technology and Innovation: It is not a matter of isolated adoption, but of digital reinvention that acts as a connective tissue between design, procurement and execution.
• Risk Management and Resilience: Transition to robust risk frameworks and collaborative contracting models that allow for an equitable distribution of contingencies.

_
Levers of Transformation: People, Technology, Models

The real transformation occurs at the intersection of these three factors:

• Talent: The digital skills gap is the main bottleneck to automation. Currently, 21% of transformation investment is allocated to people-related activities, with 82% of companies planning to increase training to prevent talent from being the bottleneck to technology.
• Technology Integration: 18% of total investment is allocated to data solutions. The goal is to migrate from isolated tools to integrated ecosystems where data flows frictionlessly from design to delivery.
• Delivery Models: Resilience requires moving away from linear transactional models to collaborative and digital frameworks that ensure speed and transparency.

_
Regional Perspectives: Differentiated Drivers of Growth

Optimism is global, but the catalysts are deeply local:

• North America (77%): Optimism driven directly by massive infrastructure modernization and the impact of the landmark US infrastructurebill (Landmark Infrastructure Bill).
• EMEA (76%): Leadership in green energy and water utilities, catalyzed by the world’s strictest and most ambitious sustainability regulations.
• APAC (74%): A strategic balance between transportation and large government programs, supported by continued urbanization and megacity development.
• South America (71%): Confidence focused on the modernization of basic services and transportation, with a pragmatic focus on utility efficiency.