Use our industry guide to find key background information, market research, import and export guidelines, statistics, legislation, trade bodies and trade publications.
The Business & Industry Guides series is produced by the Library & Information Service for ICAEW members and ACA students.
We can compile tailored key players reports, mailing lists, market reports, benchmarking reports and industry news. Our enquiry team can also research other industry-specific information, such as taxation, for you. Call us on +44 (0)20 7920 8620 or email library@icaew.com.
Trends and forecasts
Useful links
Regional crane surveys 2021
Series of reports from Deloitte on construction activity in Belfast, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester in 2020. Includes external influences, market drivers and future outlook for construction for each city centre. Sectors covered: residential; office; student, education and research; hotel, retail and leisure.
UK, NZ, Norway to be worst hit by housing crisis
Analysis suggests that in a global housing slump, the worst hit economies would include the Nordic countries, New Zealand, Australia and the UK. Published in economia in September 2019.
Market research
Market research reports focusing on this business sector are available from a number of market research specialists. In most cases these reports are available to fee-paying subscribers or on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Some free information is available from the following market research specialists, ranging from industry news to executive summaries of the reports.
Euromonitor
A full listing of reference products and research reports for the construction industry from Euromonitor, with a range of global, country and company level reports. Each report provides a contents
listing and a useful executive summary reporting on the key trends in each country report.
IBISWorld
Business and industry research specialists offering reports on a wide range of sectors, including construction. Report snapshots, table of contents and a sample report are available. The company also
produces global industry research reports.
Glenigan
UK research company specialising in the construction industry. A monthly index analyses the market by region and sector.
Mintel
Report from Mintel covering the UK construction sector. The website includes a summary and the option to view a contents listing
Timetric
Research reports on the construction industry, examining key trends and opportunities in a wide number of countries. A summary, key highlights, table of contents and lists of tables and figures are
available for each report.
Industry news
Statistics on the UK
Office for National Statistics
The Annual Business Survey (ABS) from the Office for National Statistics collects financial information covering UK production, construction, distribution and service industries. Statistics available include:
- number of enterprises;
- total turnover;
- approximate gross value added at basic prices;
- total purchases of goods, materials and services;
- total employment – average during the year;
- total employment costs;
- total net capital expenditure;
- total net capital expenditure – acquisitions;
- total net capital expenditure – disposals;
- total stocks and work in progress – value at end of year;
- total stocks and work in progress – value at beginning of year;
- total stocks and work in progress – increase during year.
The dataset Non-financial business economy, UK: Sections A to S includes statistics for:
- Construction of buildings (41)
See Section F: Construction - Civil engineering (42)
See Section F: Construction - Specialised construction activities (43)
See Section F: Construction
The Office for National Statistics also compiles Construction Statistics, covering output price and cost indices, international comparisons, employment data and a wide range of other statistical trends.
Statistics on Europe
Eurostat
Eurostat, the EU statistics hub, collates detailed Structural Business Statistics giving the latest figures for industry, construction, trade and services by sector and country. The indicators available include:
- number of enterprises
- turnover or gross premiums written
- production value
- value added at factor cost
- gross operating surplus
- wages and salaries
- social security costs
- gross investment in tangible goods
- gross investment in land
- gross investment in existing buildings and structures
- gross investment in construction and alteration of buildings
- gross investment in machinery and equipment
- number of employees
- number of persons employed per enterprise.
Statistics within the database are available for:
- Construction of buildings (F41)
- Civil engineering (F42)
- Specialised construction activities (F43)
See database section ‘SBS – industry and construction’.
Statistics on the Americas
Associated General Contractors of America
The Associated General Contractors of America compile construction data, including statistics on:
- Construction by state
- Employment
- Construction spending
Global statistics
INDSTAT
The UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) collects and compiles industrial statistics known as INDSTAT, which give information on:
- number of employees
- number of establishments
- output
- value added
- total wages and salaries.
Statistics by country are available for:
- Builders' carpentry and joinery (2022)
- Cement, lime and plaster (2694)
- Structural metal products (2811)
- Machinery for mining and construction (2924)
UN Industrial Commodity Statistics Database
The UN provides statistics on the quantity of goods produced by country in the Industrial Commodity Statistics Database.
Figures are available for:
- Tools for working in the hand, pneumatic, hydraulic or with self-contained non-electric motor (44)
- Mechanical shovels, excavators and shovel loaders (44)
- Bulldozers, self-propelled (44)
Employment
UK
Average employment costs within this sector are available from Table 14 of the Office for National Statistics publication Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE). Average employment costs are provided for full-time employees, part-time employees and all employees.
The data includes average employment costs for:
- architects;
- building trades; and
- quantity surveyors.
Other regions
Please see individual country profile pages for links to sources of national statistics.
Legislation and regulation
UK
Gov.uk provides some information and guidance relevant to the construction industry, including:
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has a section on construction, which includes latest regulations affecting this industry.
Practical resources and guidance
Working safely during coronavirus: Construction and other outdoor work
Guidance from GOV.UK for those who work in or run outdoor working environments on how to open workplaces safely while minimising the risk of spreading COVID-19.
Coronavirus - Impact on construction
Information hub from Build UK collating advice and guidance for employers on COVID-19 and construction-specific issues.
UK business guides
Atom Content Marketing guides
The Sectors Donut from Atom Content Marketing provides practical information on starting up and running a number of small business types. Guides cover a range of areas including market research, regulations, pricing, revenue streams, costs and staffing. They include a range of businesses in the construction sector.
Tactical and Information Packages
HMRC published a series of Tactical and Information Packages (TIPs), replacing Business Economic Notes in 2007, offering guidance to HMRC officers to support compliance activity in the department. The TIPs provide trade-based information with some explanation of key features and trading practices. However, they were subsequently removed from the HMRC website following a policy change.
The text of TIP 62 on the construction industry as published at this time is still available from the article Tactical Information Packages (TIPS) on the AccountingWeb website, however this should be treated with caution as this may no longer be the current version.
UK key players, ratios and trends
Valuation
UK benchmarking
We offer benchmarking reports that can be used to inform your own business strategy or help you identify value-added services to offer to your clients.
Contact the enquiry team directly on +44 (0)20 7920 8620 or at library@icaew.com for a report tailored to your own specific requirements.
Trade bodies
The websites of trade bodies in this sector are a useful source of industry overviews, contacts and statistics.
UK
- British Woodworking Federation (BWF)
- Builders Merchants Federation (BMF)
- Building Services Research and Information Association (BSRIA)
- Chartered Institute of Building
- Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering (CIPHE)
- Civil Engineering Contractors Association
- Constructing Excellence
- Construction Employers Federation (CEF)
- Construction Industry Council (CIC)
- Construction Products Association
- Home Builders Federation (HBF)
- Institute of Construction Management (ICM)
- Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE)
- Institution of Structural Engineers (ISE)
- National Federation of Builders (NFB)
- National Federation of Roofing Contractors (NFRC)
- National Platform for the Built Environment
- Painting and Decorating Association (PDA)
- Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)
- Scottish Building Federation
- Steel Construction Institute (SCI)
- Society of Construction Law
- Specialist Engineering Contractors’ (SEC) Group
- UK Contractors Group (UKCG)
Europe
Americas
Asia
Oceania
Global
Trade journals and publications
Trade journals, B2B magazines and specialist consumer magazines are another useful source of news and statistics.
Further reading
Articles and books in the Library collection
To find out how you can borrow books from the Library please see our guide to book loans.
You can obtain copies of articles or extracts of books and reports by post or email through our document supply service.
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Update History
- 01 Jan 0001 (12: 00 AM GMT)
- 01 Jan 0001 (12: 00 AM GMT)
Risks of a global housing slowdown appear to be growing. We recently looked at how a downturn could affect global growth through different channels, including wealth effects and reduced housing investment.
We use the Oxford Global Economic Model to estimate the potential impact of such a slowdown on individual economies. We identified high valuations and strong recent housing investment as two key factors that drive housing downturns. Among a sample of OECD countries, the most vulnerable, with high house price valuations and high recent rates of housing construction, look to be Sweden, Norway, New Zealand and Canada – followed by Australia, the UK and Denmark.
The least risky appear to be Portugal, Japan and Italy. Importantly, large economies such as the US and Germany also look relatively low risk. Housing upturns are more likely to end as their duration increases, consistent with the notion that housing booms represent departures from fundamentals that become increasingly hard to sustain. Over a 40-year period, the median length of housing upturns is 21 quarters and the 75th percentile is 32 quarters. On this basis, a number of economies in our sample look vulnerable: New Zealand, the US, the UK, Denmark and Korea have all enjoyed long upturns above the historical median – with the first two around the 75th percentile. For economies where prices are already falling, we also find that the average downturn lasts about four years.
So, with the exception of Italy, all the current downturns are relatively young. To model housing downturn risks, we first examine how well the cross-country pattern of (real) house price changes correlated with key risk factors during the last housing downturn between 2006 and 2013. Real house prices were clearly linked to peak house price valuations before the downturn began. The peak level of valuations explains around 35% of the cross-country pattern of real house price changes in 2006-2013. Economies with stretched valuations such as Spain, Ireland and Denmark, saw the biggest price declines peak-to-trough, while the smallest price falls were in low-valuation markets including Germany and Japan.
We have modelled two scenarios of differing severity. A pessimistic scenario simply takes the relationships between the risk factors (valuation, recent housing investment) and house prices and housing investment in the last downturn and applies these to the current levels of the risk factors for each economy.
In this scenario, house prices in our sample fall on average by 9% (with drops of up to 20% in some economies) and housing investment declines by 18% on average, relative to levels in our baseline forecast. The pessimistic scenario would be the second worst housing downturn in the last 40 years or so and is probably too severe: some factors that drove the downturn in 2006-2013, such as banking crises and acute credit crunches, look unlikely to be repeated. A more moderate scenario scales down the impacts on house prices and housing investment to a third of the levels in the pessimistic scenario, based on the fact that the 2006-2013 downturn was around three times as severe as the average of all downturns since 1981-1982.
So, on average, house prices in our sample fall around 3% and housing investment by 6%, relative to baseline. We run both scenarios through the Oxford Global Economic Model between Q3 2019 and Q4 2021. The results reflect the scale of the individual country shocks, model parameters such as the wealth effects embodied in consumption equations, the importance of consumer spending and housing investment in GDP and scope for monetary policy to adjust. For the Nordics, the UK, New Zealand and Australia, the level of GDP in 2021 is 0.5%-0.7% lower, relative to our baseline forecast in the moderate scenario and 1.5%-2.1% lower in the pessimistic scenario.
A relatively large impact in Korea reflects above-average initial housing investment levels and greater sensitivity to lower growth in key trading partners. Spain, Portugal, Japan and (importantly) the US suffer the lightest impact, with levels of GDP falling by just 0.2%-0.3% in the moderate scenario and 0.6%-0.8% (relative to baseline) in the pessimistic scenario. A key factor here is low initial levels of housing investment, in turn related to steep declines in house building in the last downturn.
Adam Slater is lead economist at Oxford Economics.Originally published in Economia on 6 September 2019.