December constructsteel newsletter

The European Union has announced a multi-billion-euro plan to support construction and climate projects, in what is being seen as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The Global Gateway plan will reveal a €300 billion investment fund, to be rolled out between now and 2027. The European Commission said the plan “will focus on physical infrastructure – such as fibre optic cables, clean transport corridors, clean power transmission lines – to strengthen digital, transport and energy networks.”

Over the past year, supply chain snarls and pandemic-related uncertainty have continued to affect the construction industry, leading to high materials costs, delays and difficulty finding skilled labor. At the same time, some costs remained relatively flat, the impact of COVID-19 is easing in much of the U.S. and passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) will infuse federal money for a variety of projects. ConstructionDrive has picked up interesting graphs that illustrate some of the challenges contractors have faced and break down the machinations behind key pain points.

Investors reluctant to adopt green building practices on projects as RICS survey finds more than half of industry investors did not take biodiversity into account on schemes. Construction investors are still reluctant to adopt carbon neutral designs and building practices in projects, according to new research by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. The body’s Q3 construction survey found that nearly a quarter, 22%, of respondents said they had seen no shift at all in support towards green construction practices.

An international coalition of construction experts has published what is said to be the world’s first universal standard for reporting carbon dioxide emissions used in the building and lifecycle of structures in the industry. The International Cost Management Standard (ICMS3) sets out a methodology for construction professionals and developers to account for the amount of embodied carbon their projects will create, whether through the delivery of new roads, schools, offices, housing or railways. It is hoped that ICMS3 will help the construction sector embrace net-zero as a global, interconnected industry

Built environment can meet net zero by 2050 but only with urgent government action. Detailed roadmap launched at COP26 by coalition of architects and other construction professionals. A net zero built environment sector by 2050 is achievable – but only with urgent government action. More than 100 organisations led by the UK Green Building Council were today due to publish a Net Zero Whole Life Carbon Roadmap for the nation’s built environment detailing the necessary actions they say government and industry must take to achieve net zero across the sector

UK’s infrastructure priorities over the next three decades revealed as National Infrastructure Commission sets out nine areas most in need of government investment ahead of official report due in 2023. Hydrogen, carbon capture and renewable energy will be at the heart of the next official assessment of the UK’s long term infrastructure needs. The National Infrastructure Commission has set out the areas which are most in need of investment over the next 10 to 30 years to decarbonise the economy, protect the environment and ‘level up’ poorer regions.

The euro zone housing market is heating up, increasing the chances of a correction in both the residential and commercial segments, the European Central Bank said in a stability report. With families building up savings during pandemic and increasingly working from home, demand for property is on the rise, pushing house price growth to over 7%, its fastest rate since 2005. “Risks of price corrections over the medium term have increased substantially amid rising estimates of house price overvaluations,” the ECB said in a biannual stability report.

The average prices of new homes in China dropped 0.2% in October from September, the first such decline since March 2015. Resale prices have also fallen in 64 of 70 major cities NBS tracks. New construction starts fell 33% year-on-year in October, deepening the 14% fall seen in September.

Investment in the construction technology ecosystem reached a record level of US$4.5 billion in 2021, triple the amount of money invested in 2020. North America and Europe are the leading regions and the US is the country with the most companies in the Top 50 ConTech Startups 2021.

The governments of Canada, Germany, India, the UAE and the UK have signed a commitment to support the development of markets for low-carbon cement and concrete in their countries. The governments will create market incentives for purchasers, review and update product standards to allow low- carbon materials to be used in all safe settings and promote their use through their public sector tendering
rules.

The EU is to invest more than €1.1bn in seven large-scale projects aimed at decarbonising European industry. Coming from the EU’s Innovation Fund, the grants will support breakthrough technologies in energy-intensive industries in Belgium, Italy, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden.

The United States will lift tariffs on some steel and aluminium imports coming from Europe beginning Dec. 1 as part of an agreement to ease trade tensions between the two. The agreement sets a quota allowing a certain amount of steel and aluminium to be imported from the European Union duty-free, with anything above that level subject to existing tariffs. In response, the EU said it will remove billions of dollars worth of retaliatory tariffs on bourbon and other American-made products that were set to increase in
December.

Engineers from South Korea have invented a cement-based composite that can be used in concrete to make structures that generate and store electricity through exposure to external mechanical energy sources like footsteps, wind, rain, and waves. By turning structures into power sources, the cement will crack the problem of the built environment consuming 40% of the world’s energy.

Steel industry to play an integral role in steering India into a $5 trillion economy by 2025 according to the latest EY – CII report. “Government support in terms of logistics, ports, roads, rail and water supply amongst others is required by the steel sector for achieving the target of 300 MT steel production by 2030”. The Indian steel sector has been vibrant and growing at a CAGR of about 5% to 6% year-on-year with V-shaped demand recovery post-covid.

Modular builder CEO: ‘Katerra’s failure was spectacular’. The head of Volumetric Building Companies shares why he purchased the bankrupt firm’s California factory and how he will avoid similar pitfalls. As availability of construction materials and their costs remain volatile, Philadelphia-based modular builder Volumetric Building Companies made a move to the West Coast to ensure its customers there continue to be served. The company purchased Katerra’s assets in Tracy, California, including its state-of-the-art manufacturing facility for $21.25 million in August.

German construction manufacturer Peri and Austrian contractor Strabag have created Europe’s largest 3D-printed office space and Austria’s first 3D-printed building. The 125 sq m building was printed in 45 hours at Strabag’s asphalt mixing plant in the northern Austrian own of Hausleiten using a dry mortar supplied by Lafarge applied by a Bod2 printer made by Danish firm Cobod.

US infrastructure bill impacted the construction stocks. When markets opened, stocks of heavy-equipment manufacturer Caterpillar posted one of the biggest jumps, at more than 4%. Stocks of steel manufacturers United States Steel Corporation and Nucor Corporation also surged more than 4%. Alabama’s Vulcan Materials—the country’s largest producer of construction materials such as gravel, crushed stone, and sand—and North Carolina headquartered Martin Marietta Materials—supplier of construction aggregates and heavy building materials—were both up more than 3%.

Dallas-based technical, professional and construction services firm Jacobs Engineering group posted revenue of $3.6 billion in the Q4 2021, a 1.9% increase from Q4 2020. Jacobs’ backlog rose to a record-high $26.6 billion year-over-year, a 12% increase. Another US-based multinational contractor Fluor announced that Q3 2021 revenue fell 10% year over year to $3.1 billion, due to lower revenue streams in its business units focused on government and infrastructure work. Backlog fell as well to $21 billion, down 21% from a year ago, but basically flat from what it showed in Q2 2021. Link In the meantime, Tutor Perini, took a hit to both its revenue and profits in the third quarter due to its public sector clients not paying their bills amid funding uncertainty as the infrastructure bill languishes in Congress. The firm’s revenues fell 18% compared to a year ago. The firm’s backlog rose 11.8% compared to Q2 2021 numbers.

Holcim says it wants to reach at least 40% of sustainable financing by 2024 as it intends to put climate action, water preservation and safety at the heart of its strategy to do this. The company has linked this commitment with the completion of two new sustainability-linked financing transactions worth above Euro2.8bn. It has also joined the United Nations Global Compact Chief Financial Officers Taskforce alongside 60 companies representing a combined US$1.7Tn in market capitalisation which aligns members’ finance strategies with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Four former senior staff members at Katerra, the offsite construction firm that declared bankruptcy earlier this year, have landed new roles with a London-based construction technology company. The former Katerra directors joined U.S. operations last month at Modulous, which is opening its first U.S. office in the Seattle region. The contech company offers a digitised platform to modernise the design and construction process of modular housing – it is working with its delivery partners on five pilot multifamily housing developments in the coming 12 months in the U.K. and is looking to gain similar traction in the U.S. starting in the first and second quarter in 2022.