The new Atkins report shows that 68% of infrastructure businesses expect their organisation’s outlook to have recovered to pre-crisis levels by Q4 2021
The report ‘Infrastructure Insights: Covid Impact and Recovery‘, was carried out by the independent market research organisation Savanta ComRes on behalf of the Atkins.
It represents the first comprehensive survey of senior public and private sector decision-makers across different subsectors within infrastructure, particularly transport, property and utilities.
In total, 398 responses were completed via an online survey during June and July 2020 and 8 in-depth interviews were conducted.
Report findings
According to the new report, 95% of senior management believe that digital innovation will be increasingly important after the Covid-19 crisis.
76% of respondents believe that the sector won’t emerge from Covid-19 in the same form.
65% of senior decision-makers would like to see the Government provide a clear roadmap to help the sector with the recovery.
Only 3% believe that their organisations are not well prepared for recovery.
In the private sector, almost 7 in 10 respondents predicted a return to their organisation’s pre-crisis outlook before the end of next year.
There is general agreement that the sector will not emerge from the crisis in the same form, with the vast majority of respondents agreeing that digital innovation will be increasingly important. It’s also clear that senior decision-makers want to see digital innovations from the design, engineering and consultancy sector to help support their organisation during the Covid-19 recovery.
Clarity and confidence
Richard Robinson, Atkins UK&E CEO, said: “The findings set out in this report represent a compelling and powerful take on the sector and its path forward.
“While it’s clear that we need a finalised National Infrastructure Strategy to give us more clarity and confidence, there’s an expectation for the private sector to step up the use of technology and data to accelerate the recovery by building back smarter as well as better.”
