Internationalization of the construction industry

With the globalization of the world economy, today’s construction business is fast becoming an internationally interdependent marketplace. Construction yields on the order of USD4.6 trillion annually and contributed 6.6% to the global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011 (Davis Langdon 2012). A significant part of that total is attributable to international contractors. With the rise of modern industrialized countries, more and more complex civil engineering projects are being procured, and the increased scale of these projects has provided a launching pad for international construction. For instance, data published by Engineering News-Record (ENR) shows that ENR’s top 225 international contractors in 2011 earned USD453 billion in revenue from construction projects outside their home countries, which represents a four-fold increase over the USD106.5 billion recorded in 2001 and nearly 20% more than the revenue from the previous year (ENR 2012).