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Tag: civil engineering

Plant hire firms continue to rebuild prices

Plant hire firms continue to rebuild prices

Plant hire firms continued on their journey of rebuilding prices throughout last year with the latest figures from the services producer prices series showing another upward tick. Prices in the final quarter of 2011 were up about 3% on a year ago. Against consumer price inflation, currently running at 3.6%, and in the face of upward pressure on costs, this hardly suggests times have got easy for the sector. But with activity recently on the up, see graph, and with firms…

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Markit/CIPS survey suggests solid growth in construction in July, was growth that solid?

Markit/CIPS survey suggests solid growth in construction in July, was growth that solid?

The latest Markit/CIPS PMI construction survey provides on the face of it reasons to be content if not cheerful in these days when gloomy news is served so liberally. Its monthly PMI indicator for July read 53.5 against 53.6 in June. This suggests sound if not spectacular growth (see the graph taken from the press release (pdf)), which seems rather at odds with the more downbeat noises coming from across the industry.

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…

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