SEATTLE — Formal presentations to underwriters can help risk managers of construction firms navigate the hardening market when buying or renewing insurance, says a broker. “We do that with several clients,” said Steven D. Davis, Birmingham, Alabama-based senior vice president and director of the construction division at McGriff, Seibels & Williams Inc. He spoke Tuesday…
Commercial insurance prices continue to rise: Marsh Matthew Lerner November 11, 2019 Average commercial insurance pricing increased 7.8% in the third quarter of 2019, the eighth consecutive quarter of average price increases, according to the Marsh Global Insurance Market Index, released Monday. The increase was also the largest since the survey began in 2012, the…
For the first eight months of 2019, the dollar value of U.S. construction starts was almost level with that of 2018, but, according to Alex Carrick, chief economist for ConstructConnect, there has been a shift in the type of projects that are moving forward. Energy-related developments of $1 billion or more with a major engineering…
Dive Brief: The Construction Industry Employee Verification Act (Act No. 75), which requires Pennsylvania construction industry employers to use the federal E-Verify system, will take effect next October. The new law, according to the bill’s co-sponsors, is modeled after similar legislation in Arizona and is designed to ensure that “unscrupulous” construction industry employers do not…
Dive Brief: A new study has found that slow payments are costing general contractors and subcontractors $64 billion a year. This is a $24 billion increase from the 2018 study from construction finance platform Rabbet, formerly Contract Simply, as the company added general contractors to the respondent mix. Rabbet conducted the study in partnership with Procore Technologies…
Construction Sector overview Trends, developments and prospects What is the general state of the construction sector in your jurisdiction, including current trends, notable recent transactions/developments and future prospects? The United States continues to be one of the largest construction markets worldwide, with $1.23 trillion worth of construction in 2017. As recently as April 2018, construction…
While no one can claim to know exactly where the U.S. economy is headed, there is no shortage of indicators that help provide a reading on the nation’s economic health. These include manufacturing indexes, the stock market, the performance of major corporations, consumer spending and interest rates. In addition to national bellwethers that are common to…
Types of damages The types of additional costs and resulting damages that are experienced by a contractor or owner because of specific events, actions or inactions are likely to vary, but typically include one or more of the following: scope changes, acceleration-related costs, delay-related costs, disruption-related costs and termination-related costs. Rarely will one type of…
Bond buyers worldwide, awash in negative-yielding debt, are crying out for fiscal spending. A seven-minute stretch in the German bund market proves it. On Aug. 8, just before 9 a.m. in New York, Reuters published a headline that blared “Germany mulls fiscal policy U-turn.” According to an anonymous senior government official, Germany was considering abandoning…
Budget structures vary by the type of construction a contractor performs. For example, subcontractors typically have a significant amount of their costs allocated to direct labor and materials while general contractors’ budgets are likely to have more subcontracted work on their books. However, despite the differences in where the budget is weighted, every contractor, no…