This summer’s record-breaking temperatures caused widespread disruption for the construction industry – and climate change is now critical feature in how projects need to be planned. Dr Hugo Minney, network lead of the Association for Project Management’s Sustainability Interest Network, looks at how organisations can better prepare for the risk of extreme weather
This summer’s heatwaves didn’t just make headlines – they disrupted projects. New research from the Association for Project Management (APM), surveying 1,008 UK-based
project professionals, found that 96% said their main project was affected by the extreme heat, with almost two-thirds (64%) describing the impact as significant. Construction was among the hardest hit of all the sectors surveyed, with 99% of construction respondents reporting an impact, 62% of them significant.
The disruption was as much operational as environmental. The most commonly reported consequences were changed working hours – earlier starts, later finishes – followed by projects being postponed or paused altogether, materials or equipment affected by heat, and increased health and safety measures.
Outdoor work had to be suspended or reduced on almost a quarter of affected projects, and reduced productivity in the heat featured heavily too.
This matters because it isn’t a one-off. Climate change now shows up on site, in supply chains and in delivery schedules, this year, this summer. Construction, energy, engineering and transport all reported broadly comparable levels of disruption, which tells us this isn’t sector-specific weather noise; it’s becoming a structural feature of how UK projects need to be planned, whatever the sector.
Construction’s preparation gap
There’s an encouraging finding buried in the data too: 77% of project professionals said the heatwave had made them more confident that their organisation’s future projects will be resilient to extreme weather, against only 18% who felt less confident. Disruption, in other words, is prompting better preparation rather than paralysis – for most sectors.
Construction is the exception. Here, 24% of respondents said they were now less confident about future resilience, worse than the average. That gap deserves attention. Construction projects typically have the least flexibility once ground has been broken, with fixed sites, weather-exposed working and contracts that rarely treat heat as a foreseeable delivery risk rather than an unforeseeable one.
So what should project leaders actually do differently? There are three changes that can be made, all practical and all achievable, without waiting for new regulations.
First, build climate-specific risk assessment into the start of every project – not folded into the generic risk register but asked as its own question: what does this project look like if the site sees five consecutive days above 30C, or a month without meaningful rainfall? Most risk registers still treat weather as background noise rather than a named, quantified risk.
Second, build informed flexibility into schedules, contracts, budgets and supply chains. That means contract clauses that anticipate weather-related delay as a planning assumption rather than a force majeure surprise; budget contingency that assumes some weather disruption rather than none; and supplier relationships resilient enough to flex when one link in the chain of project delivery is affected.
Third, protect the workforce. Robust heat, safety and wellbeing plans aren’t simply a compliance box to tick; they are what keeps a project staffed and productive when conditions turn difficult. A project that loses people to heat exhaustion or heat-related absence will lose far more time than one that planned shorter, cooler working hours from the outset. And there could be many (entirely predictable) other consequences – lawsuits and audits among them.
None of this is a radical departure from good project management. It’s the same old disciplines – risk assessment, contingency planning, workforce protection – applied to a variable that used to be exceptional and is fast becoming routine. The organisations that build heat and extreme weather into scope, budget, procurement and workforce planning now will be the ones still delivering to schedule the next time the mercury climbs.
Through APM’s Sustainability Interest Network, project professionals can discover fresh thinking, practical resources and a community of peers exploring how to turn sustainability ambition into real-world project delivery – making it an ideal place to learn more, share experience and help shape more resilient, responsible projects.
Join us to create positive change! From webinars to networking events, there are countless ways you can contribute your time and skills to make a difference.
For a fuller look at how project managers can build climate resilience and regeneration into construction decisions from the outset, see my PM World Journal article, From Green Building to Timber Innovation.
