During the current coronavirus threat, information is difficult to get. And since the situation is changing so quickly, what we do get is often out of date.
Contractors, engineers, architects and manufacturers weigh in our how their businesses are doing during the coronavirus threat
Metal Construction News will conduct regular surveys of its audience to capture the latest information from the ground up. Our readers report on their attitudes toward the coronavirus, how their companies are coping and what they expect to happen.
We conducted our first survey from Monday, March 30 through Thursday, April 2, and 336 people responded. We broke our report into four areas:
- Audience characteristics
- Overall attitude
- Revenue changes
- Project and employee changes
The audience demographics are below. Follow links on the sidebar to see the other sections as well as the reports on other surveys.
We plan to do this survey every other week. If you have questions or would like to provide feedback, please contact Paul Deffenbaugh, editorial director, pdeffenbaugh@moderntrade.com
Audience Demographics
To see the second survey demographics, go here.
Contractors of all types dominated our respondent list, but a strong number of manufacturers and architect/engineering firms responded as well. We break out information by type where appropriate. The “other contractor” includes specialty subcontractors such as insulation contractors and light-gauge framing contractors. The “other” category includes educational providers, government representative, consultants and developers.
We had some unevenness among respondents by region. The East is far less represented, while the South is slightly over represented. This reflects other surveys we do, but even compared to those, respondents in the East in this survey are low. As you’ll see later in the survey, the East is an outlier in many areas, especially in the section “Project and Employee Changes.” Given the current state of the pandemic and its epicenter in New York, New Jersey and other Eastern Seaboard communities, this isn’t surprising.
In future surveys, we hope to track this to see if this phenomenon changes according to where the pandemic is most concentrated.
Regional Breakdown by States
- East (N.Y., N.J., Del, Conn., Mass., R.I., Vt., N.H., Pa., W.Va., Maine, Md., D.C.)
- South (Va., Ky., Tenn., Ark., La., Miss., Ala., Ga., N.C., S.C., Fla. Okla., Texas)
- Midwest (Minn., Iowa, Mo., Ill., Wis., Mich., Ind., Ohio, Neb., S.D., N.D., Kan.)
- West (Idaho, Mont., Utah, N.M., Ariz., Colo., Wyo., Calif., Nev., Ore., Wash., Hawaii, Alaska)
The types of projects respondents are involved in crosses the spectrum with commercial and residential leading the way. Respondents were able to check more than one response so companies working in multiple markets are fairly captured.
Most respondents participate in new construction, while just over 30% do remodel or retrofit work.
