Following the industry downturn, oil majors appear to be acting cautiously when considering investments in new projects and are seeking out simple, repeatable design and other contracting strategies to reduce costs.
While demand remains strong for renewable power generation and steady for natural gas, the rest of the picture for the power sector remains cloudy as government mandates are changing under the Trump administration.
Sustainability, collaboration and state-of-good-repair needs are shaping transportation designs, with less emphasis on expansion and more on enhancing existing capacity.
Major oil-and-gas companies are dispatching battalions of scientists, engineers and marketers to squeeze profits from the tightest project margins, often against fierce competition.
Block Andrews, an environmental engineer with Burns & McDonnell, says the firm’s power-sector clients need services across a wide range of
applications, including transmission, new planning, research, environment, decommissioning and more, as utility operations become more diverse.
Transportation design firms are seeing the best market conditions in years, thanks to a variety of funding initiatives that are allowing states and
localities to extend project programming horizons into the 2020s.
Several top architectural firms continue to see improving industry market conditions, enjoying large revenue gains last year and forecasting continued strength in the near future.