Chief Risk Officers becoming a construction industry necessity.

The editors of International Construction magazine recently conducted an extensive interview with Clay Gilge who co-authored KPMG’s 2023 Global Construction Survey. Among the topics covered was the rapidly growing trend of construction companies appointing a C-level ‘Chief Risk Officer’ to oversee risk management on both an enterprise wide and individual project level.

Among the factors cited as drivers of this trend are inflation and supply chain issues which can have significant negative impacts on fixed-price contracts. In response, risk management is increasingly embedded across the whole construction enterprise because the consequences of an unidentified issue could bankrupt the organisation.

Mr Gilge also predicted that the industry was poised to achieve significant productivity increases due, in large part, to the adoption of new technologies. He pointed to the evidence that more technologically advanced companies tended to achieve better results during the pandemic than competitors using more traditional practices.