31st July 2020

Barbour ABI has published a new blog, exploring some of the ways that the Coronavirus has impacted the Construction Industry over the last couple of months. Here is an extract:

“At the start of the year, nobody could have predicted how widespread the effects of Covid-19 would be, especially within the construction industry. With no sort of contingency plans in place for this kind of event, the industry was hit hard by site closures, furloughs and redundancies and even some companies calling in the administrators. We are only now starting to the recover some of what has been lost over the last couple of months.

Project Delays
One of the biggest areas impacted by Coronavirus across the country was the number of projects that have been delayed or put on hold. Our research team has confirmed that at its peak, there were over 4,500 projects which had been delayed due to sites shutting down, a lack of funding or a decrease in resources such as workforce or materials to name a few. These delays have been spread across all construction sectors, although the greatest impacts were felt in the residential and commercial sectors. As time has gone on however, news is looking promising for the UK as the vast majority of projects have now resumed.

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Materials and Goods
An issue still being faced despite sites reopening, is the shortage of building materials readily available. Following many manufacturers and merchants shutting down in May, high demand and low availability meant sites were struggling to get the materials and goods they needed to carry on working. This resulted in a price spike that further restricted sites from opening again. Our researchers found that there were a significant number of reports on shortages for materials such as plasterboard, render and mortar to name a few. Now that businesses are starting to open again the struggle has eased for most, however there are still product shortages in some areas of the country. Fears over project inflation due to productivity issues and construction materials delays remain at the forefront of many colleagues’ minds …”

The analysis continues under the following themed headings:

Financial Difficulties
The Planning Environment
Innovation
Looking to the Future

You can continue reading on the Barbour ABI website here.

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