建造economists continue to dial back their forecasts for 2011. Single-family housing, public works and the institutional-building markets have all stumbled badly in 2011, says Robert Murray, McGraw-Hill Construction's chief economist. The few bright spots, such as multifamily housing, manufacturing and powerplants, “won't be able to outweigh the minuses,” he says.
穆雷估计，2011年的总建筑总数将为408亿美元，比2010年下降了4％。自Enr的第二季度成本报告以来，对住宅总工作的预测已从5％的增长到2％的下降。新利luck同样，非住宅市场从1％的增长率下降到3％，而最初的6％下降了非建筑工作的下降，进一步降低到7％的下降。
“缺乏信心[请参阅第1页。31]并担心国会如何与政府合作，使人们做出投资决策，”菲尼克斯总部位于凤凰城成本管理公司Rider Levett Bucknall Ltd的总裁朱利安·安德森（Julian Anderson）说：“对建筑成本的影响是可怕的18luck.cub。”他指出，RLB的销售价格指数开始趋向于Enr的建筑成本指数，“这是值得担心的，因为这意味着所有脂肪都已经从[出价]定价中挤出来，” A新利lucknderson补充说。
“While there is still a fair amount of work out there, it is less than it was a few years ago, and the competition for it is pretty intense,” says Karl Almstead, Turner vice president responsible for the company's building cost index. Costs will inch up very slowly, but with margins so thin it doesn't take much of an increase to put a project in jeopardy. As a result, Almstead says, there has been growing pressure on subcontractors to pass along some of the higher commodity prices they have been absorbing.
The unsteady overall economy is having an unexpected impact on some construction commodity prices, says Anirban Basu, chief economist for the Associated Builders and Contractors, Arlington, Va. “Some speculative investors are shifting to construction commodities as a hedge against the decline in stock and bonds,” says Basu. “This is causing some prices, such as copper, to increase despite weak construction demand—and that is not good for contractors with slim margins.”
Budget Battles
2009年《美国恢复和再投资法》的缩减导致了联邦资助的基础设施工作的收缩，但该公司仍有数十亿美元的联邦资金。但是，国会无法通过多年运输授权，甚至对所有联邦机构进行一年拨款，这意味着对提供多少建筑资金以及何时可用的不确定性。
交通建筑企业的措施e of good news when further extensions for surface transportation and aviation programs were signed into law on Sept. 16. The final vote in Congress came on Sept. 15, when the Senate passed the highway-transit and aviation extensions by a 92-6 vote.
Highway and transit programs as well as the motor-fuel tax collections that finance them were extended for six months, through March 31. Aviation programs, including federal airport construction grants, were extended for about four and a half months, through Jan. 31.
Stopgap funding bills have become all too familiar to construction, state transportation and airport authority officials. The new highway-transit extension is the eighth such short-term measure since September 2009; the aviation extension is the 22nd since September 2007. The last multiyear authorizations for those programs expired on those dates.
