hows the construction industry doing

deano72_2

a local building contractor which had been going for over 30yrs employing about 10 tradies went under a few months ago.he has never addvertised & allways gained work by reputation but had to fold mainly due to price of materials going up but not his quaotes & people taking him for a ride & not paying up.not good really.if these big sites are starting to reopen there bound to 5hit out just on materials going up (were not talking one or two houses,more like thousands) alone since when they priced the job a year or two ago.

DSM

thriftybabe wrote: »

Many people within the Construction Industry are disheartened and many are leaving it and changing careers. We recently had a subcontractor leave who has been in the trade 20 years. He has had enough! He is working elsewhere for less money!

Add me to that.

Got out of civils altogether and am back in mechanical engineering and generally feeling more optimistic!

Like many construction co.s in the last decade, a lot of business has come through public sector contracts. I know a company I worked for a few years ago had a lot riding on BSF, Olympics and environment agency work and found it tough going when the Olympics stuff started to dry up, BSF was basically put on indefinate hold (more likely now canned) and the environment agency basically just shut its wallet and that was that.

As mentioned above, the whole industry got very cut throat and the atmosphere in the office was quite tense. Staff morale was rock bottom and tbh looking back, I'm so glad I got out. Fortunately I'm a mechanical engineer by trade so had this to fall back on.

My gut feeling is that there are going to be a good 5 or 6 years till we see signs of recovery (in construction generally) in which time a few of the weaker businesses and maybe one or two more biggies will fall. On reflection its only what we went through in the late 90's with engineering when the threat of redundancy seemed to loom every week....

cycles and all that....

globalds

I work in Construction but it is a bit of a niche area.
we were expecting things to dry up but up until now work has kept coming in.We only have a horizon of about 3 or 4 months so I can not help with predictions.
With the work I am specifically involved with we are seeing far fewer UK customers and now have work in that will go up in Eastern Europe or the Middle east.
The Olympics was a fare lump of our UK work and tthat is coming to a close now.

Telford ( Where I live) is all a bit weird 2 really big housing developments ,in total about 10,000 houses, any work is creeping along as slowly as the main contractors can allow without shutting down entirely.
But the town centre is going through a £150 million development.

Talking to guys from other companies that we deal with, the general view is that work is a bit too thin on the ground.

bo_drinker

I am ticking over and happy to do so judging by what you hear, batten down the hatches more misery round the corner, just when the Industry doesn't need it. People just aren't spending and when they watch the news etc they aren't going to. Could be a hard slog for a while yet. It's not a double dip, it never really went away, it is what it is. I can see more getting out in the next couple of years......

I don't come on this site as much as I did it drags you down...

vax2002

If the construction industry fails, then all the paper pushing jobs, call centres, banking, insurance, leisure will fall like one huge pack of cards.
The building trade actually produces something you can see and touch, all the others just push money around created by construction and manufacturing.
At present, the industry is shedding jobs and highly skilled workers are leaving the trade, the country is becoming one huge top heavy ship of administration and no engine room, make no mistake, it will roll over.
We are not talking about dodgy dave and his home extension bodge business here, we are talking about some of the most highly skilled and important workers in society loosing a place in society.
Those who think these are not important workers would be well reminded that without them, your clever place you sit lording it would be a field of sheep, that hospital, that school, that road bridge, all gone and that is where the future will be, gone.
Make no mistake these are highly skilled and talented workers of the up most importance to society and if they fall, those sitting at the top of the ship, better had learn to swim fast.

Jimmy_31

vax2002 wrote: »

If the construction industry fails, then all the paper pushing jobs, call centres, banking, insurance, leisure will fall like one huge pack of cards.
The building trade actually produces something you can see and touch, all the others just push money around created by construction and manufacturing.
At present, the industry is shedding jobs and highly skilled workers are leaving the trade, the country is becoming one huge top heavy ship of administration and no engine room, make no mistake, it will roll over.
We are not talking about dodgy dave and his home extension bodge business here, we are talking about some of the most highly skilled and important workers in society loosing a place in society.
Those who think these are not important workers would be well reminded that without them, your clever place you sit lording it would be a field of sheep, that hospital, that school, that road bridge, all gone and that is where the future will be, gone.
Make no mistake these are highly skilled and talented workers of the up most importance to society and if they fall, those sitting at the top of the ship, better had learn to swim fast.

I have already seen some of the best tradesmen i have ever worked with walk away from a lifetime in the building game, the older ones went first due to the workload being increased to a level that was going to kill them off sooner rather than later, generally in the building game the youger lads should take the harder jobs on site whilst the older fellas should get the less strenous work, thats how its supposed to work anyway, and did till firms started forcing 60 year old men to do a ridiculous amount of work just to make a basic wage.

Now we are left with the next generation of skilled tradesmen who got taught their trade the right way, we are still young enough to make a wage on the prices the firms are paying (for now) but i have not got a single spare minute to train yet another young "apprentice" who has been dumped on me to keep up appearances.

This next generation of apprentices are getting treated like dirt, they do a couple of weeks at college and then get put on a building site with self employed sub contractors who are working on a price work basis, nobody has any time to teach them anything because it would affect their pay packet through lost production and everybody is earning the bare minimum as it is.

The hardest part of the lads apprentiship is getting their photo taken by a college assessor whilst stood in front of somebody elses completed work, with a hammer in their hand and a hard hat on their head.

If you know anybody who is thinking of a life in the building game then tell them to get their correct qualification for their trade and not the mickey mouse ones that are about, and also try to find an old school tradesman to put them through their apprentiship.

If things dont get better in the construction industry soon i can see there being strikes at some point in the future, probably around winter i reckon :rotfl:its hard enough earning a wage now so i know its going to be a lot harder when its minus 5 and snowing:)

bo_drinker

Pointless s/employed striking...... who will listen, we are treated like !!!! as it is. When times were better the IR wanted everyone on the books, that has all gone quiet since the IR realise more will and have worked for cash or are lucky to be working at all. I am going to stay away from subby work if I can as the rates are a p1ss take in many places. You are breaking your back for fk all at the end of the day, is it any wonder folk are getting out of it. There will be a skills shortage in a few yrs time and guess who will fill the gaps ??? (I won't spell it out.)

Jimmy_31

bo_drinker wrote: »

Pointless s/employed striking...... who will listen, we are treated like !!!! as it is. When times were better the IR wanted everyone on the books, that has all gone quiet since the IR realise more will and have worked for cash or are lucky to be working at all. I am going to stay away from subby work if I can as the rates are a p1ss take in many places. You are breaking your back for fk all at the end of the day, is it any wonder folk are getting out of it. There will be a skills shortage in a few yrs time and guess who will fill the gaps ??? (I won't spell it out.)

Sadly the only work available to me at the moment is subbyin , every firm i work for wont take on cards in any more and some are even giving subbys contracts for x amount of work just so they can lay the cards in lads off.

Hopefully my skills will be in demand in a few years time and i can start getting some decent prices again, one of the big firms in my area that have played a big part in pushing our prices down is rumoured to be going bust anytime soon :T:T:T, Buying the housing association contracts didnt work for other firms so how this fella thought it was a good idea ill never know, i wouldnt like to be him when it goes bump, or the middle man with the back handers.

Prudent

molerat wrote: »

Round here houses are going up like mad, 3 large developments show no sign of slowing down. It is difficult to get hold of a tradesperson because they are all fully booked.

This is exactly what I find puzzling. I had a new central heating system put in this summer. The gas engineer who did it has been so inundated with work that he is only just coming back to do a few minor extras things. I am hoping he will service my OHs boiler, but he is over run with work. We are renovating OHs house to sell and really struggling to get people in to do jobs. We are not trying to skimp on costs either, we simply want the job done. We need to get some rendering done and after phoning around several local companies have had to accept there is a 4 - 6 month wait depending on the weather. Is the situation just like this in Scotland?

bo_drinker

Jimmy31.. what I should have said is I am not subbying I am doing private work. On the books is okay but not for me.
Some firms will buy work to get through a slow patch and hope for extras, if all they are doing is buying all the work then time will tell??
Prudent.. Plumbers seem to be a different breed plumbers vans everywhere until you need one, a lot pick and chose, some go it alone and struggle ... Many will put the rendering off with Winter round the corner..