Abstract:

The world is changing and the civil construction sector, with strong impact on the economy, the environment and the society as a whole, must be aware of it. The future requires optimal responses to its correlated megatrends, both in what concerns to the opportunities they offer and also to the challenges they pose. In Portugal, as other European countries, the construction sector has great weight in GDP and creates many jobs. This sector is based on a business structure where small and micro enterprises prevail. In times of crisis, it is always hard to understand how to build a sustainable market. Companies of this sector in particular suffered big difficulties since 2008 and today they are still competing, because they were able to define successful strategies. This study aims to understand, through Porter’s (1980) generic competitive strategy model, how Portuguese companies working in civil construction in the north coast of Portugal achieved sustained competitive advantage and have overcome the impact of the difficulties experienced in recent years. As conclusions the competitive advantage for most of the studied companies seems to be based on cost leadership and there is a conjugation between the competitive advantage via cost and via differentiation, since this advantage may vary according to the characteristics of each market.