Ashburton Guardian, Friday, June 19, 2020

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Friday, June 19, 2020

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LOCKDOWN:

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Builders set for impact By Sue Newman

sue.n@theguardian.co.nz

When work slows down for architects and draughtsmen, it’s just a matter of time before the impact is felt in the construction industry. But right now they’re busy, catching up on the backlog that built up during the Covid-19 lockdown and forging ahead with work that was already planned. But looking six months

down the track the true picture of the pandemic’s impact on the industry will be felt, says McIntosh Group managing director commercial, John McIntosh. “There’s still enough work on, you just have to be smart about it because the margins will be tighter,” he said. The commercial arm of his company is still working on projects around the South Island, but had experienced the cancel-

lation of a large-scale project in Queenstown, McIntosh said. Ross Leadley and his team are flat-tack at the moment and there is still work lined up, but six months out, he suggests there might be a bit of a pinch. He’s still working his way through jobs that were booked pre-lockdown. The work’s still there, but it’s the scale of that work that’s changed over the past few

months, says Blueprint Architectural Services owner John Gibbs. Rather than inquiry weighted towards new home design, Gibbs said there was more alteration and addition jobs coming across the design desk. The level of inquiry overall, however, had not dropped significantly – yet, he said. “Yes, there is concern out there as to how things will look going

forward, but to be fair it’s been like this for a few months, it’s been a general trend that there have been fewer new homes and consent numbers are down. We haven’t seen things grind to a halt and there’s still work out there, but it’s smaller scale work.”

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