Challenges in Construction
The construction industry faces growing pressure from social, economic, and environmental forces. Although the symptoms are well known, the structural causes remain widely unsolved.
|1| Population growth and long-term pressure
Today there are around 8.2 B. people on earth, expected to grow to 11.2 B. by 2100 (+36%). Global population growth will continue to increase demand for affordable and quick housing and infrastructure over the coming decades. Any meaningful solution to the housing crisis must address the long-term ability to deliver housing faster, with high quality, and at increasing scale.
|2| Housing demand outpaces supply
An estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide lack access to secure, long-term housing (UN Habitat). This means nearly one in five people does not enjoy what is widely recognized as a fundamental human right: adequate shelter. Despite decades of progress in many areas of human development, housing remains one of the most unresolved global challenges.
|3| Time and scalability constraints
Construction remains a slow, largely sequential and thus inefficient process. Even a modest home can require around 1,500 labor hours using traditional methods. As housing demand grows, this time-intensive approach creates a bottleneck, limiting the industry’s ability to respond quickly toward the rising demand. Much of the time is spent on coordination, waiting, and rework rather than processes that add value.
|4| Labor and productivity mismatch
The construction sector faces a persistent shortage of skilled labor. At the same time, increasing workforce size has historically not resulted in proportional productivity gains. Unlike most industries, construction has seen little long-term productivity growth currently being negative. This is pointing to systemic inefficiencies in how labor is organized and utilized.
|5| Fragmentation and environmental impact
Construction projects typically involve many independent parties, increasing coordination effort, cost, and the risk of errors and rework. At the same time, buildings and construction account for ~40% of global CO₂ emissions and at least ~30% of solid waste, while consuming large volumes of finite resources such as sand and water.
Why Additive Manufacturing Has Not Yet Scaled
Additive manufacturing in construction (AMC) has demonstrated the highest potential to solve current challenges within construction, but its widespread implementation remains limited.
|1| High Capital Commitment
Industrial 3D concrete printing systems require significant upfront investments, often ranging from six figures to the millions. Companies must commit capital before reliable benchmarks for utilization, productivity, and return on investment are established, making adoption a high-risk decision.
|2| Skills and Workforce Transition
Automation reduces manual labor but increases the need for specialized expertise. Operating additive manufacturing systems requires interdisciplinary teams spanning design, automation, materials science, and systems engineering. These skills are scarce, and formal training pathways are emerging too slow.
|3| Limited Process Automation
Despite common perception, 3D concrete printing is not a fully autonomous process yet. Concrete is a highly variable material, sensitive to environmental conditions, batch differences, and handling. Real-time material characterization and adaptive process control are still limited, requiring continuous human intervention.
|4| Material and Supply Constraints
Printable concrete materials must be tailored to a specific system. While commercial “universal” materials exist, proprietary formulations limit process optimization and drive material costs to multiples of conventional concrete. In many regions, the lack of local material production due to highly differing base material properties further increases cost and environmental impact through international transport.
|5| Standards and System Integration
Standards for traditional construction have evolved based on experience over decades. Additive manufacturing, with a comparatively short history, lacks mature, tailored standards that fully leverage the digital process. As a result, extensive testing is often required, slowing approval and limiting scalability across the globe.
|6| Fragmented Research and Data
Additive manufacturing processes are influenced by many interdependent parameters. Research results are system-, material- and environment-specific and are thus hard to transfer, leading to duplicated research-effort and limited reuse and correlation of data. Without shared reference systems and materials and standardized frameworks, scaling research remains inefficient.
