The construction industry in India is the second largest employer after agriculture and it represents 13% of the global GDP. Though the life-threatening wave of novel coronavirus brought all the sectors, big or small, to a complete standstill and construction industry was no different. But now, when the things are coming back to normalcy and the working force started returning to the offices, real estate sector is also booming with housing sales increased tremendously over the past few months.
Having said that, here’s take a look how the real estate sectors transformed in the post-COVID era in terms of the construction outlook:
Commercial sector
In the post-pandemic era, the phenomena of working in the corporate offices has been completely changed. Nowadays, people want to work in a flexible environment where they can enhance their productivity while maintaining a balance between their personal and professional life. Most of the companies across the world are now looking to adapt new approaches such as hybrid working model, remote working options etc, leading to a heavier investment in technology.
This palpable shift could also be seen in the infrastructure of the modern offices. Therefore, moving ahead in future, the concept of smart buildings, comprising flexible tables and desks, meeting rooms, activity rooms would see a greater fraction while the old-school workstations will get tweaked.
Nowadays, corporates are realigning their office spaces owing to the growing need for deploying technology as well as conforming the social distancing protocols.
Many commercial property consultants have also reported a noticeable shift in the sector due to the pandemic.
Residential
Though the entire real estate industry witnessed an extremely volatile period in 2020, residential sector was impacted the most. Rigid lockdown restrictions, rising cost of construction material, people being migrated due to unemployment, all these reasons caused an adverse effect on the construction outlook of the residential real estate. However, the housing industry has been bounced back as the new launches of residential units rose 75 per cent to 2.14 lakh units in 2021 compared to the 1.22 lakh units in the preceding year.
Notably, lower home loan rates and growing home ownership sentiments supported the recent surge in housing sales.
Besides this, several real estate consultancies like real estate consultancy in Delhi, real estate consultancy in Noida, real estate consultancy in Ghaziabad, real estate consultancy in Gurgaon, are expecting a huge growth in the residential property sales this year.
Industrial & Logistics (I&L)
For the I&L sector, the facilities like manufacturing workshops, warehouses, distribution centres and others were immensely disrupted due to the pandemic caused by novel coronavirus across the world. As people started giving more preference to e-commerce websites, manufacturing and distribution sections worked tirelessly to meet their demands.
When it comes to the industrial section, although the use of technology was growing even before the pandemic era, the accelerated adoption of automated machines, analytics and software-based logistics, eventually became the part of the new normal. Therefore, the construction of smarter warehouses with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other tech-based facilities will be an important factor significantly improve supply chain efficiencies in future.
Data Centres
As the COVID-19 lockdown had forced everyone to stay at home, the demand for digitally-enabled services rose. This eventually led to an exponential growth of Data Centres across the country. However, the current safety norms around social distancing have been impacting the construction work of DCs.
However, the on-site social distancing challenges enabled the contractors to find innovative alternatives, such as the use of pre-fabricated structures.