Construction Orders YoY

Construction Orders YoY tracks New orders in the construction industry, the value of newly awarded contracts, for Great Britain by type of work and region. It is published by ONS, the UK national statistics institute, every quarter as National Statistics and covers England, Scotland and Wales only. It records orders won by main contractors, firms managing major projects, from Barbour ABI records used since Q2 2013, not an ONS survey. It does not measure construction output, work actually done, and should not be used as a direct predictor of future output.

Results appear quarterly, in the third month after the quarter ends, with dates pre-announced 12 months ahead. Any schedule change is published with reasons inside the monthly Construction output in Great Britain bulletin.

Each release adds monthly output estimates, Construction Output Price Indices, Tables 1 to 9 and revisions triangles for past growth rates. Raw values are never revised, only the adjusted volume series revises. Readings use change versus the prior quarter and a year earlier, with no threshold.

Total all new work splits into new housing and all other non-housing work.

• Public new housing: publicly funded new homes, rising and falling with social housing programmes.
• Private new housing: privately funded new homes, the largest housing slice.
• Infrastructure: water, sewerage, electricity, roads, railways, harbours and other civil works.
• Public other new work: schools, colleges, health, offices, entertainment, shops and other public non-housing projects.
• Private industrial: factories, warehouses, oil, steel and coal facilities.
• Private commercial: schools, health, offices, entertainment, shops and similar private non-housing projects, the largest slice.

In Q3 2024, published 15 November 2024, new orders were GBP 9,673m, down 22.0% or GBP 2,722m on the quarter and 9.4% year on year. Housing fell 32.6%, with private housing down 31.3% to GBP 1,890m and public housing down 40.5% to GBP 264m. Other new work fell 18.3%, with private commercial down 20.8% to GBP 2,986m, public other work down 28.0% and private industrial down 26.9%.

Infrastructure rose 0.8% to GBP 2,132m and 35.6% year on year, the only riser, showing that one sector is not the whole. In the same quarter construction output grew 0.8% or GBP 444m while orders collapsed, since orders value new projects and output measures work done.

1. Identify: Barbour ABI collects planning applications daily plus tenders and press, then validates projects by phone with at least 10,000 contractors a year. About 1 million in-depth calls a year support this check.
2. Filter: Keep non-residential schemes above GBP 100,000 and residential schemes of 2 or more houses, coded to a 23-type taxonomy by type and region.
3. Aggregate: Sum validated project values each quarter by sector, marking public and private work, to give current price totals.
4. Deflate: Divide totals by quarterly Construction Output Price Indices to remove price change and give constant price volumes. For example, GBP 12,000m with an index of 120.0 gives GBP 10,000m.
5. Seasonally adjust: Apply X-13-ARIMA-SEATS, a statistical seasonal adjustment method, to remove calendar and Christmas shutdown effects and give the chained volume measure.
6. Growth rates: Calculate growth versus the prior quarter and a year earlier as 100 x (V_t minus V_base) divided by V_base, unweighted for undercoverage. For example, GBP 9,900m versus GBP 11,000m gives 100 x (9,900 minus 11,000) divided by 11,000, or minus 10.0%.