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Construction and Engineering

With many Western markets stagnant, the huge opportunity for construction and engineering firms often lies in emerging markets where rising incomes, rapid urbanisation and ambitious infrastructure projects promise impressive returns. However, working in such jurisdictions can also leave companies exposed to a wide array of risks. These can include those
stemming from changing legal and regulatory
environments, workforce labour rights, health
and safety issues, poor service provision and
natural hazards, and problems relating to
corruption and non-payment on the part of
public and private sector counter-parties.

In this context, Maplecroft has developed a range of products and services to enable construction and engineering firms to identify, monitor and manage such risks throughout their projects’ RIBA work stages, from initial appraisal and bidding, through execution to completion and handover. These include over 160 risk indices and interactive maps covering issues, such as corruption, security, regime stability, water stress, labour rights and natural hazards; in-depth reports and analysis covering country risks, company risk, labour rights, commodities and corruption; due diligence services; ethical supply chain management and customised risk calculators.

Maps and indices

With over 160+ risk indices and interactive maps, Maplecroft analyses the most pressing issues impacting the agro-commodities sector down to site specific levels. Indices and maps include: climate change vulnerability; natural hazards; water stress; food security; corruption; legal and regulatory risks; political risks; poverty and development; and reputational threats arising from complicity with labour rights and human rights violations in the supply chain.

Maplecroft’s indices and interactive maps are available individually or can be accessed through seven thematic risk atlases, which aggregate key issues.

Atlases

Maplecroft’s Atlases are updated annually and provide maps, indices and scorecards for up to 197 countries, as well as analysis of the key issues, methodologies and data sources.

  • Global Risks Atlas

    Assesses the strategic risks that impact the global value chains of business, as well as the ability of national institutions to mitigate them. Includes 36 risk indices and interactive maps assessing macroeconomics; security; resource security; climate change; and pandemics; governance risks and societal resilience.

  • Political Risk Atlas

    Appraisal of traditional political risks including: conflict, terrorism, rule of law and the regulatory and business environment; as well as structural challenges affecting political stability such as resource security, climate change and human rights. Includes 50 political risk indices, maps and scorecards for 197 countries.

  • Legal and Regulatory Environment Risk Atlas

    An ideal tool to help organisations identify and monitor legal and regulatory risks, such as corruption, corporate governance, regulatory framework, respect for property rights. Includes 21 indices and maps, scorecards for 173 countries, in addition to an assessment of the implementation of ten key legal instruments.

  • Human Rights Risk Atlas

    Analyses 31 different human rights violation categories – including seven composite indices covering human security, labour rights and protection, civil and political rights, access to remedy, complicity and lack of rule of law, reporting environment, and overall human rights protection – across 197 countries.

  • Climate Change and Environmental Risk Atlas

    Provides comprehensive analysis of the key risks to business in the areas of climate change vulnerability and adaption; emissions and energy use; environmental regulation; and ecosystem services. It includes 23 interactive maps and indices, which have been developed to identify, evaluate and compare climate change and environmental risks down to 25km2 worldwide and provide insight into current and emerging trends.

  • Natural Hazards Risk Atlas

    Evaluates the risks and resilience to the occurrence of natural hazard events in 197 countries. Includes indices and interactive subnational maps of 12 natural hazard risks, as well as scorecards for all countries. The Atlas also measures overall economic exposure and socio-economic resilience to natural hazards.

  • Growth Markets Atlas

    Provides an evaluation of economic performance, investment conduciveness, recent structural reforms and projected future demographic trends, including growth of middle class consumers. Maplecroft divides its scoring across the three indices evaluating Growth Performance, Growth Environment and Growth Potential. The Atlas includes 17 indices and scorecards for 173 countries.

Reports and analysis

Maplecroft’s briefings and in-depth reports help organisations in the construction and engineering sector to monitor and manage a wide variety of operational and reputational risks. These empower firms to understand the full spectrum of extra-financial risks associated with investing in, or sourcing from, a country or sub-national region.



Maplecroft monitoring and reporting system

  • Baseline in-depth reports (25+ pages): Produced at the outset of the year or at an agreed alternate annual date to provide substantive background analysis and due diligence review of key issues and risks (the governance framework; political risk and violence; the economy; the regulatory and business environment; human rights and society; and natural hazards, environment and climate change). In addition the reports integrate GIS derived, sub-national maps and provide stakeholder viewpoints on risk and key recent events.
  • Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly Monitors (1 page scorecards for key watch countries): Offering quantitative country risk scores and trends of increasing, unchanged or decreasing risk across key risk areas and qualitative analysis of significant recent events and outlooks across the core risk areas. Developed to focus on issues driving changes to risk scores and our forecast for the next quarter including implications for sectors.
  • Trigger briefings (2-4 pages): Concise analysis and forecasts that are activated when the risk within a country changes significantly, as shown in the monitor. These focus on the issues driving changes to risk scores and the implications for business.
  • In-depth update reports or tailored specific reports (25+ pages): Produced when more in-depth analysis is required on the back of the trigger briefing and pertaining to sectors or business specific

Issue specific reports

  • Construction and engineering country risk reports: Maplecroft’s in-depth analysis for construction and engineering companies covers issues such as: legal and regulatory risks relating to construction and engineering projects; transparency and corruption incidence; labour and human rights challenges; incidence rates of material theft (e.g. of equipment, construction materials and fuel); and natural hazards. Reports incorporate bespoke GIS derived sub-national maps that can include overlays of key infrastructure, topographical features, population density, water-stress, corruption incidence, labour rights violations and natural hazards risks. These reports can also include competitor analysis.
  • Labour standards reports: In-depth analysis of the key labour risks facing construction and engineering companies operating in or sourcing from a country or sub-national region. Topics include: unions and industrial action, labour rights and protection, health and safety, labour rights and working conditions. They also provide key stakeholder viewpoints, recent events, country scores, trends and sub-national maps of labour rights violations. These reports help firms identify and manage operational and reputational risks, such as the production of key materials such as wood, gravel, sand and bitumen within their supply chain.
  • Maplecroft's Election Monitor: Delivered in two parts, the pre-election instalment provides background information, analysis and forecasts of results and their potential impacts on the construction and engineering sectors, while the post-election monitor analyses the results and assesses the implications for business.
  • Corruption risk briefings: These assess corruption risks in all countries. Key topics covered include the prevalence of corruption in relevant sectors, the efficiency of anti-corruption measures and legislation, and case studies of previous operators’ experiences with graft in the market. These briefings are particularly relevant to construction and engineering firms working in emerging economies where firms are obliged to interact extensively with government, or take part in public procurement or private-public partnerships.

Briefings and reports are available for all countries and issues and can be tailored to client specifications. For more details visit Maplecroft’s Global Risks Portfolio.

Interactive Tools

Maplecroft makes innovative use of technology to deliver off-the-shelf and bespoke risk management tools for companies worldwide. Custom country / sovereign risk calculators enable business to compare risk indices and empirically quantify risk for all geographies of interest. An Interactive Dashboard can also combine internal client-specific risk data with Maplecroft’s indices and maps to assist project screening, supplier risk assessment and asset management.

Services

Custom indices and commodity scoring

Maplecroft’s customised indices developed for the construction and engineering sector allow firms to measure key operational and reputational risks across 197 different countries, including for key commodities featuring in firms’ supply chains. Our indices also cover issues such as corruption, infrastructure fragility, flood risk, judicial effectiveness, regulatory burden, water stress and working conditions.



Company reports

Maplecroft’s bespoke company reports provide in-depth insights into a company’s environmental, social, governance (ESG) risk exposures, and its management proficiency. These empower clients to audit key entities in their supply chain, potential commissioning clients, joint venture partners or acquisition targets.




Corporate reporting

Maplecroft also carries out award-winning work with a number of major multinational clients on sustainability strategy and corporate reporting. This includes ‘integrated’ annual and sustainability reporting, which examines the long-term relationships between operational, financial and sustainability performance, as well as ‘traditional’ separate sustainability reporting.




Ethical supply chain services and risk calculator

Maplecroft’s supply chain management tools and services allow construction and engineering companies to comprehensively assess their supply chain risk for all countries, from a national and sub-national level down to individual suppliers. These assessments can include ethical issues (e.g. sustainable procurement and carbon foot-printing, human rights, health and safety issues), and operational and continuity risks, for instance, relating to natural disasters or logistical blockages. Firms can weight indices according to their priorities.

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01Analysing and mapping social risks for a multinational engineering company

Maplecroft currently provides a range of services to a well-known global engineering firm, which is currently developing market-leading risk management and sustainability policies.

  • Producing bespoke sector-relevant country risk reports and key region briefings. E.g. customised social risks and labour standards reports for new operating markets, particularly for the Persian Gulf and post-Arab Spring North African states, where local labour practices pose substantial reputational challenges.
  • Conducting specially formulated pre-bid social risk assessments for all proposed EPCM projects in countries where the firm does not yet have a substantial footprint.
  • Developing GIS-derived maps to help the firm understand a wide range of project-level issues, such as local land use, energy, labour, economic activity and infrastructure provision.
  • Helping the firm develop a global human rights and sustainability policy framework, including stakeholder engagement and gap analysis, production of self-assessment questionnaires, development of auditing toolkits and in-house training programmes.
  • Production of the company’s award-winning integrated annual report and guidance to help it meet the entry criteria for the FTSE4Good Index.

02Pinpointing natural hazards risk exposures for a global construction firm

A multinational construction company, looking to invest in countries that are highly vulnerable to the impacts of natural hazards, contracted Maplecroft to produce an in-depth report to pinpoint risk exposures to potential investments.

  • Maplecroft’s environmental analysts undertook extensive research to provide in-depth analysis of risks to the company’s potential investments stemming from tropical cyclones, flooding, drought and earthquakes.
  • The report utilises quantitative data from Maplecroft’s Natural Hazards Risk Atlas to provide scorecards of individual natural hazard risks at subnational levels, throughout a range of countries, to enable the comparison of risk between potential investments.
  • The locations of potential investments, as well as country infrastructure, were overlaid on Maplecroft’s subnational maps of tropical cyclones, flooding, drought and earthquakes to enable further, highly visual comparisons, which were used to communicate the levels of risk to different internal audiences.
  • Subnational mapping and country level data from Maplecroft’s Climate Change Vulnerability Index used to forecast potential risk exposures to investments over the next 30 years.

The report’s findings helped the company identify locations with varying vulnerability to natural hazards and were used to inform its investment decisions.

03Assessing operational risks in frontier markets across Sub-Saharan Africa

Maplecroft produces a suite of reports for a leading engineering firm working on large infrastructure projects across high risk environments in Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Producing in-depth country reports analysing key security risks, logistics issues, resource availability and existing infrastructure, Maplecroft’s work enables the company to assess the viability of projects and the safety to employees and assets.
  • Comprehensive assessments of the human rights situation are included to help the firm identify potential reputational risks stemming from complicity with security forces used in the protection of operations and assets.
  • The reports incorporate Maplecroft’s sub-national mapping of terrorism, conflict and political violence, human security and human rights to enable the company to pinpoint hotspots of risk.
  • The reports are supplemented by in-field assessments from Maplecroft’s highly experienced advisory services team to provide expert risk assessments at site-level.