Midwest Green Industry contractors are slugging their way through the spring clean-up, start-up, and catch-up season. An annual right of passage that tests the abilities of all in the industry!
Conditions
Recent weather has been very helpful. Where I live it seemed to go from winter to summer almost overnight. Even better, property owners seem to have higher demands than last year.
Attitudes are different now than during the snowy cold winter months.  Economically there are still concerns floating around. Fall and winter saw a slowing in several economic numbers. Coupled with the weather, winter was not a good time in the construction industry.
Economics
The construction jobs reports from March shocked many observers. After 14 months of construction job gains, March saw a net loss of 1,000 jobs. Weather and reduced activity in the energy sector were blamed. ABC Chief Economist, Anirban Basu said, “The latest job report was a stunner and construction was not spared as the sector lost jobs for the first time in 15 months.”
The Current Numbers
Numbers are just now showing that we did in fact have slowing across our economy. However, predictive numbers are showing that there will be growth in several key sectors affecting Green Industry folks. One of them is the Dodge Momentum Index (DMI).
The DMI increased to 126.3, up 4.3% from January and up 17% from one year ago. The DMI is a monthly measure of projects moving from planning to construction. It tends to give an indicator of activity for up to a year in advance. The index has been on the rise since 2012, but is still only about halfway back to its highest point reached in 2007-2008. Hey, an increase is an increase! Analysts are confident the index will continue its slow but steady rise from the depths of 2011.
Another predictor is the Housing Starts number. According to Reed Construction Data, the long term average has been highly elevated all winter into the Spring. The Census Bureau says non-residential building in February accounted for 65 percent of the total construction put in place.
Falling commodities prices might be a factor helping boost construction spending. Because of lower building material costs owner can get a little relief to build. In fact the Engineering & Construction Cost index is at its lowest level ever.
A lackluster global economy has slowed demand for raw materials. It is being said low commodity prices will be with us for all of 2015. For us that means the price of pipe and wire should be steady.
Irrigation Industry
The International Code Council and the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers announced the latest version of an ANSI standard for irrigation. Specifically the standard is referred to as “ASABE/ICC 802-2014 Landscape Irrigation Sprinkler and Emitter Standard”.
The standard for landscape irrigation systems specifies;
- Classifications of sprinkler and micro irrigation systems
- Uniform testing procedures
- Minimum design requirements
- Minimum performance standards
The Irrigation Association worked with the industry and governmental groups, such as EPA, to help craft the new standards. IA Development Director, Brent Mecham stated, “Because the process included a diverse group of stakeholders and allowed for a public input and review, the standard should be recognized as supporting best practices for efficient irrigation in the urban environment.”
The EPA WaterSense program will likely be adopting the standard to drive their conservation efforts. Something for irrigators to take note of, you will be affected by it in the coming years.
