Resilience and Perseverance It’s that time of year where we summarize the performance of the Canadian construction industry over the past year and look into our crystal ball to offer perspective on the year ahead. In our company’s 43 years, we have not been witness to as tumultuous and erratic a year as 2022, nor as challenged a task as offering a forecast of what may lie ahead. Inflation - higher labour costs, material, equipment, and other price increases - has cut into contractors’ gross margins, and supply chain and labour shortages continue to hinder productivity and extend schedules, further exacerbating pressure on profit margins. Meanwhile, surging interest rates and the resultant ballooning carrying costs of borrowing has added a new element of risk and profit erosion to the great proportion of construction businesses reliant on debt. All told, these challenges – and in particular their confluence all at the same time - would have spelled doom were it not for the continued healthy demand for construction services, and the generally robust backlogs prevalent in the industry.
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2023 | Construction Outlook