Making engineering a sexy career

This can be changed by training and a workforce with usable knowledge, because those who are up to date with the latest technologies can carry out the tasks they are given efficiently and quickly. "We need to give students a career model to strengthen the Hungarian economy as Hungarian engineers. So we, the operational staff, have a role and responsibility in this", he confirmed.

Engineers are badly needed

Tibor Massányi also drew attention to the shortcomings of the public procurement system. "For a company of DVM's size, it is not normal that our revenue from budgetary sources has reached roughly 1% in the last 30 years. I think that describes the problems here." He stressed:

"If we are talking today about how to make the construction industry more efficient, education is a key concept. For ten years, the number of engineers has been falling dramatically, even though they are vital to our profession - and we are actually doing nothing about it."

The extent to which a young person wants to become an engineer also depends to a large extent on what kind of career they see in construction and how "sexy" engineering is today; in other words, how respected it is in society. "I think," he stressed, "we are very badly off on that. So as a construction player, every company needs to think about how to change that."

You have to be effective instead of efficient

Gábor Papp highlighted the example of his own young company: "My company forges its competitive advantage by trying to apply value engineering as much as possible. We try to revise designs and provide alternative solutions for clients so that they can get a cheaper and faster solution."

He recalled: "István Madár's graph was very illustrative, showing the upward trajectory between 2014 and 2019. Even then, there was already talk about the need to be more efficient, but many people confused that with the word efficiency."

In the past, contractors have dealt with many problems not by working more efficiently, but more effectively, including by using more manpower to deal with difficulties. In the long term, this may not lead to results, as is now evident. "There is a serious threat to the work ethic of Hungarian workers. The recent pull of the construction economy has made the construction industry comfortable, and this has led to a situation where we cannot exercise sufficient control over construction production now that the situation is difficult", Gábor Papp explained.

Unpredictability must be resolved

dr. Csilla Rázsóné Szórádi drew attention to the lack of motivation: "As a national franchise network of construction materials producers, we see the lack of employee motivation as a very real problem.

An additional difficulty is that the domestic economic environment is cyclical, unpredictable and pulls little innovation. I am not surprised that young people are not choosing our sector, as we are not attractive to talent; but perhaps even more worryingly, we are not attractive to investors either."

He pointed out that "we see a decline in profitability and an even further deterioration in the morale. We have been using customer insurance for a long time and the first drawdowns started last October. So I cannot report an improving situation, but rather a deterioration that started last autumn."

Solving the problems with public money

András Wolf then encouraged his audience to look to the future:

"There's been a lot of talk today that there's trouble. I would like to point out that I don't think there is a problem, I think there is a task that we have to solve.