Even with commercial work showing no great ups or down between now and December, architectural firms should nonetheless be plenty busy due to steady nonresidential project spending.
So suggests a new report issued by the Washington-based American Institute of Architects that is predicting a 7% increase on nonresidential spending, with the commercial and residential sectors comprising the bulk.
According to the AIA Consensus Construction Forecast, “manufacturing construction currently accounts for well over a quarter of all spending in the nonresidential building sector, a share that has doubled since 2019.”
Warehouse work now represents 9% of all commercial projects, a figure that has increased from 6% some five years ago. Data center work, meanwhile, continues to climb upward, accounting for 3% of the overall nonresidential building market, a share that is also twice as large as it was in 2019.
Altogether, manufacturing, warehouse, and data center projects make up a healthy 40% of the industry’s commercial and industrial sectors, nearly twice what they did in the year before the Covid 19 outbreak.
For that reason, notes the report, “construction sectors that typically have a different design focus – materials composition, and contractor specialization – now account for much of the gain that the industry has seen recently.”
Overall, predictive of spending trends in other industries, the pace of growth is mostly on the flat side. Not a dramatic jump off the cliff as seen during the Great Recession, nor the wild upward ride of 2020 and 2021, but just hanging in there.
Current conditions, adds the report, are anticipated to “continue this year and into 2025.”
By Garry Boulard
