All construction industry articles – Page 2
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Comment
Budget figures confirm the urgent need for new sources of investment in construction
As if in compensation for all the anticipation before and excitement during the Budget announcement, we are left with the dull thud back to reality afterwards.Certainly, for construction the Budget itself changed little of substance.Alright the first-time buyer stamp duty holiday was an eye-catching cheeky move. But we all know ...
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Comment
Comforting data ahead of the budget
As the Chancellor Alistair Darling puts his final touches to the Budget he will be relieved by the recent spate of comforting data.Last Wednesday we had employment statistics showing that the unemployment was falling.On Thursday the figures on public finances were far healthier than expected, with the Institute for Fiscal ...
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Comment
Tax, tax, tax and more tax – a rallying cry for construction
This is a rant.Why? Because I can't help myself. I tried to hold back.I read the first three chapters of the Low Carbon Construction Innovation & Growth Team emerging findings and I am now deeply saddened.I didn’t bother with the remaining chapters, but did eyeball the recommendations.I was not saddened ...
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Comment
Half a million construction jobs to go – it looks like a dead cert
Construction has now lost 213,000 jobs since the recession started to kick in the autumn of 2008, according to the latest figures. That is about 10% of the workforce.That sounds like a lot and it is. But given the severity of the fall in construction workload to date it is ...
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Comment
Official figures show construction output falling again, but devils lurk in the detail
Construction output slumped back into decline in the final quarter of 2009, after a supposed rise out of recession in summer.That is the headline story from today’s release of the construction output figures.But dig a bit deeper and we see some unsettling implications in the numbers.Firstly the statisticians now believe ...
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Comment
Growth eludes construction as economy grows –that’s how CIPS sees it
The latest set of figures from the buyers’ body CIPS shows that construction remains mired in recession and the general pattern painted by the numbers provides little scope for optimism.The level of incoming orders fell for the third month in a row, says the report. And this will be from ...
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Comment
Prepare for a double dip in construction growth – the implication of today’s GDP figures
The UK is coming out faster from recession than we thought. But the hole was deeper.That seems to be the message from the statisticians’ latest stab at the nation’s output.The increase in fourth quarter GPD was revised upward from 0.1% to 0.3%, which will cheer many not least the Chancellor.But ...
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Comment
Fewer redundancy in construction, but the future remains bleak on jobs
For the optimists in the construction industry there is much hope to be gleaned from the latest employment figures.Equally for the pessimists there is plenty within the numbers to fret about.So what should we make of the latest batch of labour market numbers that, among other things, show that 163,000 ...
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Comment
Annual orders figures reveal extent of construction freefall – a £17 billion drop in two years
The recession has ripped away from construction roughly £17 billion in annual new orders, despite £ billions more public sector sponsored work.That’s the clear message to me from the annual tot up of the new orders won by contractors released today.Forget the niceties of which sector is doing how well ...
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Comment
Will we see the return of mobile classrooms, or can construction firms find a better solution?
In a chat yesterday it was suggested I should make a note of the rapid increase in the number of babies being born and the implications for construction, or not as the case may be.This chimed with me, as I had recently been told that they will need two more ...
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Comment
We’re still in recession says CIPS, despite official figures showing construction output growth
Here’s a question I ponder quite a bit. Why do the official figures show that construction grew in the second and third quarters of last year when to everyone else construction has remained mired in the slough of a nasty recession?Puzzling isn’t it. Even more puzzling that the estimates for ...
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Comment
Is an inaccurate measure of foreign workers messing up the construction data?
Here’s a couple of graphs for stat-spotters I thought worth placing together.For some while there has been unease about both the workforce jobs figures and the repair, maintenance and improvement (RMI) sector figures in the official construction output statistics.The two sets of data are linked and there's been some concern ...
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Comment
Brighter outlook from forecasters, but severe risks remain
The forecasts from Hewes & Associates and Leading Edge sit interestingly against the other winter forecasts for construction output released over the past couple of weeks.They seem to back up the mood among other forecasters that construction workload might not fall as much was feared in the middle of last ...
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Comment
We’ll be getting off relatively lightly if the construction workforce drops by 400,000
The latest forecast from the Construction Skills Network (CSN) suggests that the current recession in construction will have led to a drop of about 400,000 in the number employed by the industry once job shedding ends in early 2011.This would mean a drop of about 15% in the workforce. That ...
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Comment
Mum: Are we out of recession yet?
You could feel the uneasiness among economists yesterday when the release of official statistics showed that the UK had just scraped enough oomph together in the final quarter of last year to stage a lacklustre return to growth.Most economists had expected the no-growth bar to be cleared by some margin. ...
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Comment
It's a long wait yet for commercial construction upswing
Each time a commercial property developer hints at making a move in the market I am confronted with the same question by those with an interest in construction work: Is this the start of the upswing?This question is usually followed by the suggestion that developers must be keen to build ...
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Comment
Forecasts point to a tough and risky road ahead for construction
The latest Experian forecast is out today and it paints a broadly similar, albeit slightly more optimistic, picture to that of the recently released forecast from the Construction Products Association.The main point of departure is on the views towards housing. Here the Experian forecasters are more bullish, if you can ...
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Comment
Number snacks: 2
Contractors won 61% less in commercial sector construction orders in cash terms in the 12 months to November last year than they did in 12 months to the end of 2007.Here is a graph of orders won for all types of new work on a 12-month rolling basis.The graph shows ...
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Comment
Why the forecast of a shallower recession is bad news for contractors
The latest forecast from the Construction Products Association suggests that the drop in future workload will not be as large as the forecasters had previously thought.The graph opposite compares the past three Construction Products Association forecasts.It clearly shows that with each progressive quarterly forecast the expected hole in construction workload ...
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Comment
Workload drops as the snow falls
When we suffered a cold snap back in February last year I looked at the impact of the great freeze of 1962/63 on construction output. In a word it was huge.So, as I walked into work this morning chipper as a child as I trudge though inches of snow and ...
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