Hasta La Ideas

The next Architecture Billings Index won’t be out from the American Institute of Architects until the 21st (and let’s hope it’s a positive one this time, following last month’s). In the interim, and perhaps more telling than the month-to-month ABI reports, is the organization’s biannual Consensus Growth Forecast, wherein they broadly estimate what’s happened and what’s going to be happening in the business of building over the span of 12 to 18 months. The latest of these reports, factoring in the first half of 2010, has just been released. The short synopsis: 2010 is going to continue to be lousy, but the AIA thinks things will finally start picking up in 2011. For the rest of this year, the numbers are disheartening at best (health care facility construction down just 6.5%), simply awful at worst (office construction and hotel building run from -29.1% growth to -43.3%, respectively). But outside of public safety and industrial projects, which the group estimates will still be suffering negative growth, just not as bad, the AIA seems pretty optimistic with their numbers for 2011. The big exception, of course, is for residential projects, but that almost goes without saying anymore. Here’s a bit from the usual go-to guy:

“There are a number of factors at play here that are contributing to one of the steepest construction downturns in generations,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “We have businesses nervous about expanding their facilities, a fragile financial sector, excess commercial space, and general unease in the international economy. Things should begin to turn around midway through next year with retail and hotels expected to see the strongest growth, along with health care and amusement and recreation facilities.”

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