Economics | |||||||||||||
Architecture Firms Emerge
from Six-Month Billings Downturn Project change orders account for significant share of construction costs |
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Work-on-the-Boards Survey |
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Billings at U.S. architecture firms declined in September 2001 and have declined further each month since. However . . . Inquiries for new projects continued to increase at a record pace. For each of the past three months, more than a third of firms have reported a sizeable increase in new inquiries, while about half of firms report inquiries holding stable. Only a small share is reporting declines. Strong rebound in
the East Like business conditions at architecture firms, the broader economy has shown signs of improvement recently. The employment report for March showed a modest increase in business payrolls, the first increase since last July. However, the national unemployment rate crept back up to 5.7%. The residential sector has gone through the downturn without missing a beat, and the February numbers continue this trend, with housing starts totaling 1.77 million units (when seasonally adjusted and annualized) and existing home sales totaling 5.88 million units on the same basis. And while the economy is strengthening, inflation remains under control, with consumer prices rising only very modestly and producer prices running below year-ago levels. Change orders Single-family residential projects typically were cited as the most frequent construction category for change orders (44% of firms working in this sector indicated that they were very frequent). Three institutional sectors were next in terms of perceived frequency of change orders (health care, transportation, and education), where 22%, 21% and 15% of firms respectively indicated that change orders in these sectors are very frequent. Copyright 2002 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved. |
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