Trends in the supplier market

For the Swedish Transport Administration, it is important to understand trends that affect the building and construction market. This is a basis for us to be able to implement measures and formulate procurements that contribute to an efficient supplier market.

Trends and their consequences

Some of the trends in the building and construction market and their consequences are listed below. We see increased focus in the following areas:

Sustainability – good balance between ecological, economic and social sustainability

This trend leads to demands for green solutions, responsible supply chains, circular resource use, demands for radically reduced greenhouse gas emissions etc. The formulation of social requirements in contracts to combat wage dumping, poor working conditions, undeclared work, discrimination etc.

Societal development and maintenance debt

Sustainability issues, societal development and maintenance debt drive investment in well-built infrastructure and increase demand for sustainable buildings such as housing, hospitals, schools, roads and railways.

Innovation, risk sharing and collaboration

Demands for increased sustainability and maintenance debt require innovative solutions, which contributes to increased risk and complexity in project implementation. The need for innovative solutions increases the complexity of implementation and places higher demands on collaboration and balanced risk sharing between all project partners.

Service provision – moving from product logic to service logic

As a result, product characteristics are less important in favour of the values created for the relevant target group. Service provision leads to behaviour becoming more important than to technology.

Digitalisation and streamlining

Opportunities for digitalisation create the conditions for better and more sustainable products and life cycle processes, increased productivity, new business models, roles and value chains. Advanced technology is available today, but the challenges are largely about people, culture and coordination of, among other things, supplier and client processes and about creating continuity in information flows throughout the project phase for effective follow-up, governance and continuous improvement.

Cyber and information security

Digitalisation creates opportunities but also threats in the form of cyber intrusions and data loss. This requires increased security for everyone in the supply chain.

Internationalisation, alliances, joint ventures and takeovers

This leads to an international market, especially when it comes to large construction projects.

Increased work-related crime

The construction industry has increasingly been infiltrated by criminal actors who ignore laws, regulations and systematically commit criminal acts, which overturns trust and the rules of fair competition.

To meet the challenges, early dialogue and cooperation are needed

In order to meet societal challenges, the success factors are early dialogue in projects, cross-sectoral cooperation and dialogue with representatives from across the value chain in the form of clients, authorities, suppliers, citizens and industry.