Boral CEO Vik Bansal: AI storm is on the way

Vik Bansal says it now feels like the calm before a storm with AI usage in the heavy industrial space.

Boral CEO Vik Bansal.

CEO SURVEY 2025: FULL COVERAGE

Economy

How would you rate the momentum of the Australian economy as we head into 2025? Official forecasts have Australia trimming interest rates from the first half of calendar 2025, is that consistent with your view? What are you seeing around inflation in your own business?

Cost pressures are moderating but it is important to understand that we are not going into a deflationary environment.

We should not confuse moderation in the rate of increase in costs to a deflationary environment. Costs which have not been built-in to the system, for example commodities, labour, transport are still there.

I think the rate of inflation will slow down in the coming year.

Outlook

What excites you heading into 2025? Are you likely to increase, hold steady, or trim your investment spend?

We are continuing to progress our Good to Great strategy at Boral and with an improved performance we are in a position to continue to make smart capital investment back into our business.

Reform

As we move into an election year, in your mind, what’s the single biggest lever that can/should be used to lift Australia’s competitiveness or productivity? This could be across any area from labour market, tax reform, training or other areas to encourage investment.

As a CEO, issues and decisions come to the table multiple times every day. You need to decide on which issues to intervene, which ones to influence, which ones to direct and which ones to let go. Same goes for governments. Not everything needs to be intervened.

The government’s role is to create the best eco-system for industries to flourish. Over-regulation and over-reporting takes away valuable time of good people who could be spending that productive time to create value.

Industrial relations at construction sites needs to get resolved ASAP to achieve productivity improvement.

Geopolitics

Will a Donald Trump presidency have a potential impact on your business or sector (tariffs or streamlined regulation)? Does geopolitics drive a bigger part of your decision-making?

Winston Churchill was quoted has having said ‘Americans Will Always Do the Right Thing — After Exhausting All the Alternatives’ – or something to that effect.

In my personal opinion, Americans are in an ‘America first state’ mode now, and under Trump’s Presidency they will do what’s necessary to shore up the home front which will have consequences.

During Trump’s first term, the Australian dollar experienced a drop and that of course meant an increase in import prices for Australian businesses.

We are a local company so any risks to the local economy have a direct impact on Boral.

People

Has your organisation’s approach to flexible working - including working from home - evolved during the year. Is this likely to change further into 2025?

You can’t beat the collaboration, connection and those opportunistic moments that comes from having people and teams in the office and working side by side.

Our business is primarily operational, and our front line can’t work from home.

Our office and corporate employees are there to help, guide and support our front-end employees so we settled on a position at the start of 2024 where everyone is in office at least 4 days, if not more, a week.

Technology

Where is your organisation along the AI journey – is it in the developmental stage, or are you now using the technology at scale across your business? If so, are benefits matching the promise?

We’re used to automation in our operations and fleets. Automation to generative AI needs a methodical approach due to interface challenges that can arise with older mechanical assets.

It does feels like the calm before a storm with AI usage in the heavy industrial space.