Introductory Notes

At the end of 1998 the Federation of Master Builders looked carefully at the design of its quarterly state of trade survey, and decided to make a number of changes both to the questionnaire and to the way in which the replies are analysed. A number of questions were omitted, in order to focus more closely on those the results of which may be compared most directly with the evidence of official statistics for construction orders, output and employment compiled by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. The relatively greater changes, however, are in the methods of analysis.

One important innovation - which creates a discontinuity in the series of results of questions that feature in both the former and revised questionnaires - is the weighting of individual replies by reference to the size of the respondent firm. Although all FMB members are small or medium-sized enterprises, the annual turnover of the largest of them can be a hundred times greater than that of the smallest, and it will give a fairer impression of trends in the whole SME sector if allowance is made for these differences.

What this means for the reading of the results set out in this and subsequent reports is that, unless stated otherwise, all figures are percentages of replies weighted by size of firm, or balances of weighted percentages reporting or expecting workload, enquiries or employment to have been or to become higher or lower than before. This gives a more reliable guide to whether there has been or is expected to be an increase or improvement, indicated by a positive balance, or a decrease or deterioration, represented by a negative balance, than if each reply from each firm of different size carries the same weight.

Also, it is now possible to test for differences in trends not only between FMB regions but also between firms principally engaged in different construction trades.

A third significant innovation is a sub-division of the question on labour supply. This is to distinguish between firms experiencing difficulty in recruiting skilled operatives as direct employees or, alternatively, in hiring them as sub-contractors. This distinction is unique to the FMB survey.

Finally, the report on the survey used to end with a selection of direct quotations from the written-in comments of FMB members around the country on the state of trade in their regions. This section is now replaced by an assessment of what principal common issues facing construction SMEs are revealed by these comments.

300 FMB member firms took part in the first new survey, with an aggregate annual turnover of around £150 million, and with some 3,000 operatives working on their sites as either direct employees or sub-contractors.

First posted: 1 April 1999. Last modified: 27 July 1999.