Construction Industry Sectors

Construction industry sectors

Broadly, there are three sectors of construction: buildings, infrastructure and industrial:

Building construction is usually further divided into residential and non-residential.

Infrastructure, also called 'heavy civil' or 'heavy engineering', includes large public works, dams, bridges, highways, railways, water or wastewater and utility distribution.

Industrial construction includes offshore construction (mainly of energy installations), mining and quarrying, refineries, chemical processing, mills and manufacturing plants.

The industry can also be classified into sectors or markets.[7] For example, Engineering News-Record (ENR), a US-based construction trade magazine, has compiled and reported data about the size of design and construction contractors. In 2014, it split the data into nine market segments: transportation, petroleum, buildings, power, industrial, water, manufacturing, sewage/waste, telecom, hazardous waste, and a tenth category for other projects.[8] ENR used data on transportation, sewage, hazardous waste and water to rank firms as heavy contractors.

The Standard Industrial Classification and the newer North American Industry Classification System classify companies that perform or engage in construction into three subsectors: building construction, heavy and civil engineering construction, and specialty trade contractors. There are also categories for professional services firms (e.g., engineering, architecture, surveying, project management).