Thursday, 28 May 2026
Romania’s infrastructure sector is entering a period of growing complexity as transport, energy and public investment projects accelerate simultaneously. While the country has significantly improved its technical delivery capabilities over the past decade, contractors are increasingly facing pressure from fragmented coordination, labour shortages, ESG demands and the transition towards digitalised construction processes.
In a conversation with CIJ EUROPE, Bogdan Mărginean discussed the structural challenges facing Romania’s construction sector, the evolving expectations of younger engineers, the practical realities of ESG implementation and why the industry must shift from a pure delivery mentality towards long-term asset performance thinking.
Romania has announced major infrastructure ambitions across transport, energy and public buildings, but execution capacity remains under pressure. Where do you see the biggest structural bottlenecks today: financing, permitting, workforce availability or state-side project management?
I honestly think Romania has already proven that it can build at scale. If we look back even ten years, the difference in technical capability, delivery speed and project complexity is enormous. The construction sector matured significantly.
The bottleneck today is no longer one single issue. It is fragmentation.
Projects are becoming increasingly sophisticated, but the ecosystem around them is still often working in disconnected layers: permitting, financing, design, procurement, execution, utilities, local authorities, consultants and operators. When these layers move at different speeds, pressure accumulates in the execution phase where everybody expects time to be recovered.
In reality, large projects today need something much closer to orchestration than traditional project management.
Permitting still creates unpredictability. Workforce pressure is real across Europe, not only in Romania. Financing became more cautious. But I would say the biggest structural challenge is continuity of decision-making throughout the project lifecycle.
Many projects start with ambitious timelines, but complexity is still underestimated in early stages. And when coordination starts too late, execution becomes reactive instead of strategic.
The projects that perform best today are usually not the most aggressive ones. They are the ones where alignment starts early and where all stakeholders accept realistic planning from the beginning.
Construction companies are increasingly being asked to deliver projects faster, greener and at lower operational cost simultaneously. From a contractor’s perspective, where do ESG requirements genuinely improve project quality, and where do they risk becoming unrealistic administrative pressure?
ESG creates real value when it changes the quality of decisions, not when it only increases the volume of reporting.
Some of the best improvements we see today actually come from ESG-driven thinking: better energy performance, smarter material selection, lifecycle efficiency, healthier work environments, lower operational consumption, more attention to durability and adaptability.
In office construction, for example, the conversation changed completely. Five years ago, sustainability was often treated as an additional feature. Today, it directly influences financing, leasing attractiveness, operational costs and even long-term asset relevance.
So yes, ESG already shapes better projects.
But there is also another side to this discussion.
Sometimes the industry receives overlapping certification requirements, reporting frameworks and documentation obligations that are not always synchronised with execution realities. And if sustainability becomes disconnected from technical feasibility or project economics, then it risks turning into administrative inflation instead of actual progress.
Construction remains a very practical industry. Concrete, logistics, procurement, energy systems and coordination on site are physical realities.
The best ESG results usually appear when sustainability is integrated early into design and decision-making, not added later as a compliance layer.
For me personally, the key word is balance. Ambition is necessary. But realistic implementation matters just as much.
Many international contractors operating in Romania still struggle with labour shortages and retaining technical specialists. How is STRABAG adapting its workforce strategy to remain competitive over the next five years, particularly among younger engineers and project managers?
The younger generation entering construction today is very different from the one we saw fifteen or twenty years ago, and I think this is a good thing.
Young engineers are not only looking for stability anymore. They are looking for meaning, purpose, development speed, flexibility, digital environments, visibility and participation in real decision-making.
The industry sometimes still speaks to young professionals using an old vocabulary: hierarchy, control and rigid structures. But society is changing too fast for that model alone.
At STRABAG, we increasingly see that retention is connected not only to salary or benefits, but to professional experience quality.
People want to feel that they are learning, contributing and evolving. They want exposure to complex projects, technology, international know-how and multidisciplinary collaboration. They also want transparency and realistic leadership.
And I think construction companies need to become more honest about the reality of the profession itself. Construction will never become a fully comfortable office industry. It remains intense, dynamic and responsibility-driven. But at the same time, it is one of the few industries where you can still see tangible impact at the end of your work.
We build something real. Something that changes cities, mobility, energy systems and communities.
For many young professionals, that still matters immensely.
Digitalisation is transforming construction globally through BIM, predictive planning and AI-assisted project management. Which technologies are already having a measurable impact on project delivery inside STRABAG Romania, and where do you still see resistance within the industry?
Digitalisation already improves construction performance in very concrete ways. We are well beyond the stage where BIM or digital coordination are simply presentation topics.
Today, the measurable value comes from integration: clash detection before execution, better sequencing, improved transparency between disciplines, quantity control, planning predictability, document management and faster decision cycles.
The real gain is not “beautiful 3D models”. The real gain is reducing uncertainty before problems arrive on site.
And this is extremely important because modern projects have become too complex to be coordinated efficiently through fragmented communication alone.
At the same time, I think the industry still underestimates something fundamental: technology does not automatically solve cultural problems.
You can implement advanced BIM platforms or AI-supported systems, but if teams still work in silos, avoid transparency or delay decisions, digital tools will only expose inefficiency faster.
AI is especially interesting right now because it can support planning logic, reporting, risk anticipation and data analysis. But construction is still a deeply human industry. Execution depends on coordination, accountability and practical judgement in constantly changing conditions.
So, I would say the biggest resistance today is not actually technological. It is organisational.
The companies that will evolve fastest are probably not the ones buying the most software, but the ones capable of creating collaborative and data-driven working cultures.
Infrastructure discussions in Romania often focus on starting projects rather than maintaining them long term. Do you believe Romania has evolved enough in lifecycle thinking — meaning maintenance, operational resilience and long-term asset management — or is the market still too focused on initial delivery alone?
I think Romania is gradually evolving in this direction, but the market still remains heavily influenced by delivery logic.
Historically, the priority was very understandable: building fast, closing infrastructure gaps and modernising essential systems. And Romania still has major development needs in transport, energy and public infrastructure.
But as the market matures, the conversation inevitably changes.
Today, the important question is no longer only “How fast can we deliver this project?” but also “How efficiently will this asset function ten or twenty years from now?”
This changes everything: material choices, maintainability, operational costs, energy performance, adaptability, digital monitoring and resilience under intensive use.
In many ways, the industry is slowly moving from a construction mindset toward an asset-performance mindset.
And honestly, I believe this transition is essential.
Because infrastructure is not successful the day it is inaugurated. Infrastructure is successful when it continues functioning reliably years later, under real operational pressure.
That is where lifecycle thinking becomes real. Not in presentations, but in long-term performance.
As Romania continues expanding its infrastructure pipeline, the conversation around delivery is increasingly shifting beyond speed and volume towards coordination, resilience and operational efficiency. For contractors such as STRABAG, the next phase of the market will depend not only on technical capability, but also on how effectively public and private stakeholders align around realistic planning, integrated execution and long-term asset performance.
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