Magazine

The latest engineering services sector survey shows that the majority of business owners and decision-makers expect their business performance to improve in the short term but worsen by the end of 2023. Worries about staff shortages, payment times and cashflow persist. The latest findings of the quarterly Building Engineering Business Survey, backed by trade bodies…

  The United States’ National Parks are crumbling. As is the case with the nation’s K-12 public schools, many federal government facilities and other buildings that rely on taxpayers to fund ongoing repairs and maintenance, the national parks have racked up massive backlogs of overdue facility and infrastructure repairs. The Park Service’s deferred maintenance and…

Women make up only 4.8 per cent of new apprentice registrations, indicating there are still significant opportunities in the construction industry, according to BuildForce Canada. “With the existing labour shortage, we must ensure the industry attracts more women to the construction trades and management,” says Amina Dibe, manager of government and stakeholder relations at the…

The transition to net zero is well under way, but it is not happening fast enough. Growth in key climate technologies, including wind and solar power and electric vehicles (EVs), has helped accelerate decarbonization efforts worldwide. Solutions such as green hydrogen and long-duration energy storage (LDES) are becoming available and, if scaled, could reduce global…

Middle management is a vital yet beleaguered role within organizations. Managers face pressures from above and below, they tend to be both underdeveloped and unempowered, and they face growing pressure to deliver in flatter, faster, and leaner organizational structures, all of which leads to being underutilized and unappreciated. The findings of a new McKinsey Global Survey…

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the impor­tance of digitalization in supporting access to essential healthcare services in the most remote areas. With the largest disease burden globally and the most limited healthcare resources, Africa has an opportunity to use the lessons learned during the pandemic to expand its use of digital health tools (see sidebar “What…