33rd Annual Metal Construction News Contractors Survey

by Jonathan McGaha | 6 March 2014 12:00 am

By Paul Deffenbaugh

The 33rd Annual Metal Construction News Contractor Survey offers one more piece of evidence that our market is beginning to make a comeback from the extreme depths of 2009-2011.

Very few of the metrics our contractors reported are lower than last year, and one strong indicator of an improving market is the increase in the average annual gross contracting sales volume. Last year’s survey respondents told us they averaged $26,304,752 in contracting work in 2012. This year’s respondents reported that number had increased 19.4 percent to $32,645,262. The average job size barely increased during that same period, indicating the increase in sales came almost exclusively from the execution of more projects.

Contractors also report that they believe 2014 will continue to improve, and when you dig down into the kinds of projects they are reporting on-metal buildings, metal roofing, metal wall panels and metal framing-we can see that across the board, they are optimistic about more work in those areas, with the biggest projected increase coming among the metal framing segment. The number of respondents expecting to do more than 50 projects in 2014 will increase significantly, and they report a huge increase in the average size of the project, indicating that among these particular types of projects, building size is increasing.

We also like to look at the market segments our contractors are serving to see if there are any changes. Compared to 2012, among respondents who report working on metal buildings and metal roofing, we see significant decreases in two market segments: institutional and governmental. In the institutional segment, metal buildings decreased from 25 percent in 2012 to 20.5 percent in 2013. In metal roofing, the decrease was from 34 percent to 22.9 percent. In the government segment, metal buildings decreased 35.7 percent to 17.9 percent. Metal roofing showed similar decreases. Institutional projects fell to 18.6 percent from 28 percent. And government work declined to 22.9 percent from 34 percent.

This reflects market economists’ reports that there is less work in these areas. Certainly, with substantially decreased government spending at federal, state and local levels due to an increased focus on debt reduction, we can expect the government work to be slower going forward.

One bright opportunity that has been widely reported, residential work, is not showing a clear-cut improvement in our numbers. Metal building work is up in residential over 2012 but down in metal roofing, according to our respondents.