An annual survey, released on March 6 by consultant Arcadis, once again found New York City to be the world’s most expensive urban construction market, due to the availability and cost of real estate and site-access challenges.

Thomas F. Prendergast, who stepped down on Jan. 30 as chairman and CEO of New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), has joined consulting firm STV.

Efforts to improve lagging construction productivity have largely failed, notably in the U.S., but skills shortages and increasing constraints on migration likely will inflate pay and force productivity improvements across the globe, according to a recent construction-industry survey and forecast by the McKinsey Global Institute.