ENR survey shows no "happy news"

Don Mclean said it well in his 1972 anthem "American Pie" with the following lyrics:

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news,
But she just smiled and turned away.

While I didn't meet a girl who sang the blues, I was in fact looking for some happy news today when I opened up the ENR (Engineering News Record) website. The computer screen simply smiled and looked away.

ENR posted an article showing results of a market outlook survey conducted of 752 designers and contractors. A stout 86% of these firms see the current market as declining while only 11 firms out of 752 respondents thought the market was improving. I think these 11 folks were smoking the same stuff Don Mclean was back in '72 because if things are improving then my job application response ratio certainly isn't showing it.

In the chart:

brown=declining
green=stable
yellow=improving


The only good news that came out of this survey in my mind is that 76% of respondents are predicting an improving market three years from now. That's right, three years from now.

While I can't remember if I cried when I read this article, I can remember that the survey was distributed to 2000 companies with only 752 respondents. I can only hope that the 37% or so that responded were stunned with a nasty dose of pessimism while those who didn't respond were too busy with the phone ringing off the hook. The only evidence that may lead me to believe this to be true is that the ENR index is comparatively lower than the Princeton, N.J.-based Construction Financial Management Association’s CONFINDEX survey of commercial construction companies’ financial health; however, this index was most recently released in December of last year when many may have thought we were at the bottom, plus it wasn't that much better.

So why are leaders of the AEC industry so gloomy about the future? ENR suggests the very familiar continued reluctance of financial institutions to lend on projects.

“Everything we do is predicated on the availability of money, either through banks or bonds,” say Hugh McCoy, vice president and managing partner of White-Spunner Construction Inc., Mobile, Ala. He says there are a lot of projects on the boards that make sense and a lot of money is available, but financial institutions are afraid to pull the trigger on loans.

What can we do about this? I've got it! Let's drive our Chevy to the Levee.

We can fire up the Chevy all we want but if the banks don't start lending, the levee will remain dry as a bone and in need of desperate maintenance. Can the banks really take taxpayer money to keep them alive as a result of their own negligence and then stuff it in their big fat wallets while Americans are a generation lost in space?

Evidently they can.

So bye-bye Miss American Pie, if we can't somehow persuade the banks to shell out some cash we may not be seeing you for quite a while, and we might as well break out the whiskey and rye.

ENR survey shows no "happy news"