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 And since the situation is changing so quickly, what we do get is often out of date.
How have businesses dealt with the fallout from the coronavirus threat over the last month? Contractors, engineers, architects and manufacturers weigh in
Metal Construction News has conducted three surveys of its audience over the last month, tracking changing attitudes and industry conditions. We want to know how companies are coping and what they expect to happen.
The first survey was conducted from March 30 through April 2. The second was conducted from April 13 through April 16, and the final survey ran May 11 through May 14.
We conducted the third survey from Monday, May 11 through Thursday, May 14, and 109 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 in the sidebar to see the other sections as well as the reports on other surveys.
If you have questions or would like to provide feedback, please contact Paul Deffenbaugh, editorial director, pdeffenbaugh@moderntrade.com
Audience Demographics
(Note: Click on plus sign to enlarge images.)
Across all three surveys over the last three months, we have had a consistent response in terms of the types of respondents. In the final survey, though, we only had 109 respondents compared to the 365 in the first. That is probably as much a sign of complacency or fatigue about the current state of affairs.
The geographic distribution of participants has changed over the last month. In the first survey, respondents from the East made a significantly lower percentage of participants than any other region. In the final survey, it is companies from the West that are more poorly represented. It’s pure speculation about the reason for this, especially in relationship to the consistent representation in other demographic areas such as type of company and type of projects completed.
In every survey, companies from the South were the highest percentage of respondents.
It is remarkable how consistent the type of projects respondents do has been across all three surveys. Commercial (87.6%) leads the way with industrial (63.8%) and residential (47.6%) projects following behind.
About a third of the work done by respondents is new construction with slightly less than a third being remodel/retrofit work. There was no change in this from the previous two surveys.
