Clients still taking time to get jobs moving, consultant adds
Bidding for new work is expected to become more competitive in the next 12 months as firms look to plug workloads, the latest tender price report from Rider Levett Bucknall has said.
The consultant said the race for jobs will get tighter as cautious clients delaying project starts while firms are still yet to see where and when the money allocated for the cancelled HS2 leg between Birmingham and Manchester will be spent.
In its report for Q1 this year, the firm said: “With the increasing flexibility of contractors and subcontractors due to the need to obtain fresh workload, expectation would be that bidding will become more competitive and projects could benefit from more widely available building resources in the marketplace.”
And it added that while inflation was falling and interest rates were easing “for the moment, uncertainty appears to be constraining some projects’ advancement to market.
“All is not yet business-as-usual because of ongoing economic and geopolitical considerations that have yet to be resolved and may continue for some time.”
It said it expected tender price inflation in the first three months of this year to be 3.19%, down from 3.79% for the same period last year.
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