The Economic Chamber of North Macedonia continues with project activities aimed at supporting companies in increasing their productivity and efficiency by implementing new technologies, with an eye to building competitive companies prepared to work in global conditions. One of the Chamber’s target sectors is construction and the building materials industry, and several activities are being currently undertaken in that regard by the project unit of the Chamber.

Representatives of the construction sector had a chance to become familiarized with the “Digital transformation is making its way to businesses – development of key performance indicators to increase sector productivity” (DIG-IN-KPI) project, under which the chambers of commerce from Slovenia, Croatia, and North Macedonia are jointly developing indicators that will measure the extent and level of digitalization of construction companies and stimulate digital transformation of the construction sector in line with the Construction 4.0 technology trends.

Construction sector is facing serious challenges in the field of digital transformation and due to its unique nature, it lags behind other industrial sectors that adopted the digitalization processes sooner and started to adapt. Such practice is evident in the European Union as well, which demonstrates the complexity and specificity of the sector, pointed out Mihajlo Donev, M.Sc., acting Operations Director for Development, Innovation, and Knowledge.

In the presentation, he clarified that the project approach plans for defining business processes and finding suitable technologies to digitalize them. To that end, 64 indicators in 11 categories were defined, covering every process. The level of digitalization will depend on the advanced technology applied. Aiming to harmonize the indicators that will be used to develop an online digitalization level self-assessment application, the participants entered into a discussion as to identifying indicators that are measurable and relevant to the digitalization objectives in the sector.

The project is supported by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ program, and DIG-IN-KPI is expected to deliver findings and a proposed set of digitalization indicators that would help construction companies, educational institutions, but also authorities in the process of issuing building permits. Results produced under the project are expected to contribute to higher productivity in the construction sector and to raising the value-added per employee at domestic construction companies to the EU average.