Steve's Building Feature - Business is Booming.

Most of you will have seen &read about how busy the building industry is at the moment, particularly the demand for new homes. Alongside this issue there are well publicized shortages in materials such as timber and cladding. The whole supply chain is stretched from designers through to frame & truss manufacturers & the supply of roofing materials. Many suppliers have also announced significant price increases over the past few months. So what does all this mean for you as a customer & how does a business like us deal with this unprecedented situation. These are three key steps that will get us through this situation.

1. Keeping a clear head – One of the main things is for everyone in the industry to remain calm & focused particularly where there are so many things outside of our control. To draw a comparison, we have all seen images of people fighting over toilet rolls during the early days of the pandemic. This kind of scare-mongering & panic buying led to nothing but frustration & anger – in hindsight there was never an issue with the supply of toilet rolls but perception & imagination overtook common sense & reality. We cannot be allowed to go down this path in the construction industry.

2. Being Realistic - for a while now, we have been telling customers that the whole industry, not just us, is in a state of high activity & stretched resources. Our aim is to let people know that, yes we can help but we all need to be realistic about what can & can’t be achieved.

3. Managing Expectations – normally we are able to give fairly robust timeframes for the design, council & construction stages. In the current climate it is proving difficult to lock in key dates & we are having to re-evaluate things on a regular basis. The challenge over the next year will be communicating well with customers to keep them updated on progress and potentially changing timeframes.
So patience will be the key over the coming year and if we all work together, focusing on results rather than media reports and conjecture, then we will come through this with an industry in better shape than ever.


Steve Moore - KDH Director