The recession in construction will be longer and deeper than we thought three months ago. That is the message in the latest set of industry forecasts emerging this month. This may evoke a sense of déjà vu. Each quarter of late the forecasts have darkened. The latest set look pretty bleak as we can see from the graph.
The consensus among UK’s top construction forecasters is that things are worse than we thought. A week ago we saw Experian and Leading Edge downgrade their forecasts for construction growth. This week we see the Construction Products Association do the same and Hewes & Associates will follow suit when it is published shortly.
Tomorrow we get the first hint of how construction might perform this year when the Gross Domestic Product preliminary estimate figures for the first quarter are released. Looking at the initial data on construction output for this year, I suggest everyone should be prepared for a nasty number to emerge within the data for construction’s contribution. But while I think it likely, that doesn’t mean it will. There are things we don’t know. What will early returns for March show?…
For those who like their news good, the story in the latest construction industry forecasts is that the mood is less pessimistic than it was three months ago. The two forecasts out so far in this spring round – Experian and Hewes & Associates – both tweaked their figures upwards for output over the next three years. Looking at this year, Experian revised its forecast from -5.6% to -4.4%, while Hewes saw a case to reduce the fall from -6.5%…
I have noted from conversations I have had recently a more confident air about the future within construction this side of the New Year. And the latest Markit/CIPS survey seems to add to this anecdotal evidence with its finding that confidence in the sector in January improved “to the second-strongest degree in the survey history to reach the highest since May 2011”. I’m not sure what that actually means in numbers but it sounds like a lot of improvement.
The prospects for construction are worsening, that’s the picture painted by the latest set of main industry forecasts. Even the least pessimistic of the forecasts, from Leading Edge, at best suggests the industry now looks to be facing two years of a second dip into recession. Hewes, which remains the most pessimistic of the forecasters, finds little reason to suggest that the industry will still be plunging in 2013, while the Construction Products Association forecasters reckon the industry will not…
Hewes & Associates has once again come out with a sobering forecast for the prospects of construction that suggests a deepening recession with no end in sight within its three-year range. The graph shows how pessimistic the Hewes forecast is when compared with those of the Construction Products Association and Experian. Underlying this big difference in views between the forecasters is the view on the timing and speed at which the private sector will recover and pull construction back into…
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….
The latest forecasts have been released for construction and, while it may not look like it, they are a shade more optimistic than they were at the tail end of last year. That said the picture remains broadly the same, with the industry heading into a second dip of recession before increased buoyancy in the private sector replaces falling public sector funding and drags construction back into growth.
The latest Experian forecast on the face of it paints a picture of a rockier road for construction over the coming few years compared with its previous forecast. But on balance it is a slightly more optimistic picture of the path ahead for construction than is suggested by other forecast released recently. The impact of the economic stimulus on construction was perhaps stronger and more immediate than many might have expected and hence the withdrawal of the stimulus and the…