Work backlog in the engineering community.

[TNDemo]

My husband works for a consulting engineering firm, which gets their work from architects. Until about the fall of 2001 they were absolutely swamped and could barely deal with the huge volume of work. Then around fall 2001 things started getting pretty tight. Over the next year or two work dribbled in but it was pretty sparse. Since then it has picked up some and they have had enough to keep them on billable time but no real excess. They do work all over the country and not just locally. Over the last year or two the thing he has constantly heard at work is that they have a lot of work in the bag, just waiting for it to break so they can begin - but it never seems to begin. Yesterday one of the heads of the company said he had talked to several of the biggest architectural firms in the country and every one of them said they had the biggest backlog of work in the history of their company, but it just won't break loose (and don't really know how they would handle it if it did all break loose at once). Everything is a go, but they keep holding back on getting the project going. They were trying to theorize why this was happening and of course the prospect of an election came up - though I am not exactly sure why it would really impact the building of a hospital (or whatever) as to who is in the white house. I think a year ago companies were holding back because of uncertainty about the war. So what does this really mean? What is holding up all this work?

[ewagner]

1. Hearing the same thing

from a relative in the same field........not sure why....he says everybody is waiting for "the economy to improve". That makes no sense at all to me.

[Don_G]

2. Probably Because The People Actually Handling The Money

Aren't as rosy about the short-term prospects of the economy as ShrubCo and his trained media seals wants everyone to believe.

Everyone took a big hit a few years ago and they don't want to be left holding the bag this time.

[markdd]

3. Confused too

Recall that back in mid-eighties during one of those "Reagan booms" they couldn't build retail space fast enough around me in Houston. It all stood empty for years because people were leaving town in droves and few new businesses were starting up or expanding.

It's been the same in St. Louis since I got here in 2001. The paper is full of ads for engineers with HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) experience. They're even condemning prime real estate as blighted to get tax financing to build new super malls.

I used to think that it was because interest rates were low, but that wouldn't explain the mid 80's when interest rates were in the teens. Must be some sort of tax dodge.