It still looks tough for civils firms, despite fewer pessimists

It still looks tough for civils firms, despite fewer pessimists

Civils firms are still seeing their levels of work dwindle. That’s the main message from the latest survey from their trade body CECA. The survey shows firms were slightly further away from growth in this spring that they were in the winter. Rather than bore you with detail, the graph above (sourced from the CECA survey) shows the balance of civils firms saying workloads improved compared with the previous year against those that saw workload down over the past 10 years. So zero…

Read More Read More

Plant hire prices sink back after a short-lived rally

Plant hire prices sink back after a short-lived rally

Construction plant hire prices have taken a dive again after rallying at the tail end of last year, according to the latest services producer prices index. The ONS data shows how in the final quarter of last year prices perked up to a level last seen almost two years earlier. However the rally now looks short lived and prices are once again back to similar rates as were seen in 2003. The question is whether or not this may be…

Read More Read More

The Financial Times, Barbour ABI and construction prospects

The Financial Times, Barbour ABI and construction prospects

Did you see the FT piece with the Barbour ABI figures? What do you think? A bit worrying don’t you think? That set of questions in various guises came at me a few times yesterday as I was sipping a cappuccino in a sunlit Covent Garden cafe and while lunching on tapas with an old friend in Soho. My rare treat of an away day from numbers was not to be. Still. My initial reaction was: the figures may look scary, but…

Read More Read More

GDP: Everything changes, everything stays the same

GDP: Everything changes, everything stays the same

The construction component of GDP has been revised upward slightly in the latest estimate of the UK’s economic output, as expected. This did not shift the overall value of GDP in the first quarter or the 0.5% growth rate, mainly because the statisticians now reckon the business services and finance sector did slightly worse than they first thought. The index for construction component of GDP the first quarter of this year recorded in the preliminary estimate was 93.6. In the latest…

Read More Read More

Do the house building figures really show recovery? Well not really

Do the house building figures really show recovery? Well not really

The latest house building statistics published yesterday tell us practically nothing about the prospects for the industry over the year ahead, other than things don’t appear to be getting worse and that we are still a huge distance from where we were three or four years ago. Why then does our housing minister Grant Shapps feel the need to pump up the value of what really are still very flaccid figures for housing starts? He tweeted: “These better house building stats…

Read More Read More

Thank God for the bankers

Thank God for the bankers

The latest survey of construction by the surveyors’ body RICS paints a generally brighter picture of the industry’s activity and prospects albeit with some rather dark patches. A crude summation might be that commercial and housing in London and the South East is doing “good”, while everything else and everywhere else is doing “average” or “bad”. Or to put it another, perhaps more cynical way, thank God for the bankers.

Latest jobs figures look pretty upbeat – but…

Latest jobs figures look pretty upbeat – but…

A first reading of the latest set of jobs figures provides some encouragement both for the nation at large and for those engaged in construction. Nationally unemployment was down and employment was up, with the rate of those aged 16 or older rising to 70.7% from 70.5% in the three months to March. Encouragingly the improvement came from more full-time employed jobs, rather than from self-employment or part-time work.

The value of education to construction

The value of education to construction

Chatting to my good friend Martin Hewes about his latest regional forecasts he raised a point I had not really thought about that much before – the value of new orders for education work let over the past two years was twice the value for offices. In some regions the spending on education building makes the office sector look a bit like a side show. Great for those that specialise in educational building – well at least for the time being….

Read More Read More

How worrying is the latest jump in inflation?

How worrying is the latest jump in inflation?

The latest jump in CPI inflation is worrying – at least to me. Yes Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, had sought to soften views by warning with the release of the latest Inflation Report that there may be spikes ahead. And economist had been expecting a rise this month – although not this big. But looking at the hard figures, the jump of more than 1.1% in a month – a fairly rare event – seems…

Read More Read More

We need a thorough review of the construction figures new and old

We need a thorough review of the construction figures new and old

The latest release of construction output data underlines the critical importance of examining the accuracy and timing of the data, both the new series and the old. Calculations show that even slight variations to the current data can have a profound impact on the message the figures are sending to policy makers and business users. This is partly because of the high volatility in the construction market and the timing of the severe weather last winter, which brought much of…

Read More Read More