The foreign trade picture in the United States has worsened considerably. The goods trade balance has deteriorated to -$1.5 trillion USD. That’s an all-time deepest level.

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The goal is clear, win the bid. The road toward this goal is full of twists and turns and may include a detour or two and it begins with an estimate. As a construction cost estimator, the ability to pivot and adjust to unexpected changes is a necessary skill.

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There’s much subject matter to be wrestled with in the pool of recent public and private sector data releases, so let’s leave our piña coladas (nonalcoholic, of course) beside our deck chairs and dive right in.

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The accompanying table records the top 10 project starts in the United States for April 2022.

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Finally, Megaprojects Galore

ConstructConnect announced today that April 2022’s volume of construction starts, excluding residential work, was $52.6 billion, an increase of +50.7% (i.e., by half) versus March’s figure of $34.9 billion (previously reported as $34.4 billion).

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Clichés are often true and it is the case that a picture can be worth a thousand words.

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Labor shortages are one of the major issues the construction industry is struggling to overcome. For many construction firms, keeping their workforce fully staffed is their biggest challenge. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in March 2022, there were 396,000 job openings in the construction industry, up from just 149,000 in December 2017.

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April was not a good period for stock markets. In North America, on a month-to-month basis, the DJI was -4.9%; the TSE -5.2%; the S&P 500, -8.8%; and NASDAQ, -13.3%.

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In construction, late payments are common, and it takes considerably longer for construction businesses to get paid. For construction businesses, the average daily sales outstanding (DSO)—the time it takes to collect on invoices—is 60 days. The general DSO average across various business sectors in the United States is 45 days.

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Turmoil in the stock markets, an inflation rate that won’t quit and interest rates that have only just begun their journey higher failed to deter robust U.S. jobs growth in April. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its April Employment Situation report, asserts that total U.S. employment climbed upwards by 428,000 positions in the latest month.

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