Architects’ Confidence Continues

The recovery in workloads is now clearly a UK-wide phenomenon,
according to the latest results of the RIBA Future Trends survey.
Workload forecasts remain strongly positive across all regions
of the UK, with the highest balance figures in Scotland (+57) and
Northern Ireland (+67). Small practices remain positive about
the outlook for future work(balance figure +23); mediumsized
practices and large-sized practices are anticipating more
growth in workloads over the next quarter (with balance figures of
+61 and +80 respectively).

The private housing sector workload forecast remains the most positive, while the crucial commercial sector workload forecast fell back a little further from its recent highs. Overall,practices continue to be very positive about future prospects for private housing and commercial work. Survey correspondents reported strong growth in one-off housing, housing for private rental,office and hotel sectors. The retail element of the commercial sector remains more subdued.

Both the public sector workload forecast (+6) and the community
sector workload forecast (+3) saw little change this month. The
outlook for public and third-sector work currently appears to be for
stable workloads but without any dramatic increase in levels of activity in the medium term.

RIBA Director of Practice Adrian Dobson said: “This month’s
results present a slightly mixed picture; however, uncertainty
around the imminent General Election is probably contributing to
practices being more circumspect about future workload levels in the
public and third-sector work.“We have seen a steady decrease
in the number of our respondents reporting that they had personally
been under-employed in the last month, and this suggests that most of the spare capacity retained within the profession during the recession is now being productively employed. We therefore anticipate more substantial growth in overall employment levels in 2015.”