NBS | National Building Specification | Practising for recession

NBS topic areas

Keep up to date with industry developments

NBS solutions|

Products and services for all construction projects

NBS Scheduler

NBS Scheduler enables you to write schedules of work for refurbishment, alteration and small-scale new-build projects without bills of quantities.

ReadMore on The Construction Information Service

NBS Domestic Specification

NBS Domestic Specification is a loose-leaf paper specification for use on small domestic projects.

ReadMore on NBS Domestic Specification

Practising for recession

by Andrew Wilson
NBS Technical Author

The RIBA has just produced the first issue of RIBA Focus - 'Recession news and views for RIBA members'. Part of the first issue concentrates on the 'Future trends' survey of practices, started in January 2009. The survey now has two months of data under its belt and, unsurprisingly, the figures suggest declining confidence, with a third of practices approached expecting to reduce staff within the next few months.

Uncertainty over fee income must be the key to this trend. Recent reports suggest that major projects, whether privately or publicly funded, may be curtailed with very little warning, whatever design or construction stage has been reached. With uncertainty over cash flow, the first reaction is a wish to reduce outgoings and that, most probably, can only be met by cutting staff hours, or numbers.

However, this first issue of RIBA Focus also contains a case study on a practice looking for ways to survive the situation. The short article concentrates on the strategy the practice is using to gain small domestic projects, pointing out that there must now be potential clients who have put aside, for the time being, an intention to move house and who may instead consider improvements. Each project is only likely to generate a small fee but, with the expectation that each work stage will be quickly completed, there is potential to generate fairly rapid cash flow and possibly retain staff who would otherwise have been lost.

It is clear that the number of such small domestic projects has a limit, especially given the difficulty that may arise in obtaining funding, but the principle of expanding the range of work a practice, of whatever size, might consider viable is, in the current climate, surely a good one.