Across the world, trillions of dollars of capital expenditure (CapEx) is funding a new generation of energy and digital infrastructure projects.
On the HC Commodities Podcast, Erikhans Kok, Senior Partner at McKinsey, spoke to HC Group's Co-Managing Partner, Paul Chapman, about this megatrend and the talent needed to deliver CapEx programmes. Here, we share edited highlights of that conversation. You can listen to the full interview here.
This article was first published as part of HC Group's Q2 Market Review 2026.
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CapEx Drivers
Paul Chapman: We seem to be going from a world of technology companies that are infinitely scalable and asset light, to one where every vertical is investing in assets and big capital expenditure programs. Can you give us the industry overview?
Erikhans Kok: At the macro level, capital expenditure is critically important for the world. We need CapEx for energy needs - such as oil and gas and electricity; we need manufacturing capacity to produce more medicine; we need CapEx to connect us through telecoms and to build data centres to support all the analytical capabilities we're getting excited about. If I compare CapEx for the next 5-10 years compared to the last 5-10, almost every sector is going to spend more capital.
Paul: And a lot more computers are needed for the amount of computing power the world is suddenly demanding - and that's forcing money into data centres.
Erikhans: Right - you have the four hyperscalers putting massive amounts of capital in the ground. And there's a geopolitical competition element to this. And these guys are all competing against each other. Then underpinning the data centre is power. In the US, it's gas-fired power plants that are going to provide the base load for a lot of these data centres, particularly in the near-term. So there are a lot of utilities wanting to spend tens of billions of dollars to go and build gas-fired power plants.
The question for many companies becomes twofold: how do I attract talent? And how do I keep some of the knowledge corpus that those people have?
Paul: Is this a global story, or very much skewed to certain regions and sectors? And what about the scale?
Erikhans: It’s global. Infrastructure and residential builds and energy needs are all global. Think about what Europe wants to do in their electrification journey; the Middle East and Asia also have big plans, from ammonia to other green sources of electricity and power. On scale, we're seeing about an $86 trillion capital investment. Out of that, $15 trillion is in the US. We're also seeing the top 20 global pharma companies planning to spend $500 billion in the next five years or so, mostly between the US and Europe. We used to have some major projects in oil and gas – like the big LNG facilities in Australia. But now we're talking annual numbers in the tens of billion - which is just staggering.
Investing in Talent
Paul: Let's talk talent. How does that labour challenge play out and how do companies compete?
Erikhans: In the US, between 2017-2023, labour shortages close to doubled. We were short about 200,000 workers in 2017. It went to 380,000 by 2023. These are welders, electricians, pipe fitters, plumbers - all the crafts you need to engineer and construct these projects. We believe it's probably about half a million short that we are in the US between this year and next year.
So how do companies compete? Fundamentally, you go back to your contracting strategy: what is the relationship the owner has with Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC)? The trust and familiarity between executive teams and the EPC is super important.
You’ve also got to keep people on board. What are the facilities like on site? What does the meal and food package look like? Companies need to think about culture and nonmonetary compensation.
Paul: You've also got this ‘Great Retirement’ going on: people in their 50s-70s retiring with relatively rare, specialised skill sets. Those retirements are being accelerated because in the last five years, earnings have been excellent for these people. How much are these trends exacerbating these bottlenecks?
Erikhans: Retirement and the labour pool shrinking are real things. The question for many companies becomes twofold: how do I attract talent? And how do I keep some of the knowledge corpus that those people have? We're also seeing wages and per diems going up because these people are in demand. Companies will just have to pay more to attract top talent. Because if you don't get the A-players, productivity will suffer.