Dive Brief:
- April’s Dodge Momentum Index inched up 0.6% to 116.5, a slight uptick from its downwardly revised March number of 115.8, largely due to increased planning for commercial (0.8%) and industrial (0.4%) projects.
- Dodge Data & Analytics' Index report found that despite institutional’s month-over-month "roller coaster ride" during the last eight months, the sector is currently 7% higher on a year-over-year basis, which indicates a sustained recovery.
- Compared to the Index’s commercial planning figures from last year, that sector hasn’t budged, showing a somewhat depressed rate of activity for the last 12 months as a whole.
Dive Insight:
The Momentum Index is a monthly measure of initial reports of nonresidential building projects in planning, which usually lead nonresidential construction spending by one year. Dodge said that in the past 12 months, seven have seen increases in the Index, while five months have seen dips.
In April, six projects of more than $100 million in value entered the planning stages, according to Dodge. Among the large commercial projects entering planning in April were a $225 million hotel in Anaheim, CA, and a $200 million warehouse in Jacksonville, FL. Entering the planning stage in the institutional sector were a $500 million expansion to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles and a $163 million outpatient health center in Tahlequah, OK.
In the week prior to Dodge's Momentum Index report, CMD's May starts forecast predicted that year-over-year residential and nonresidential construction starts will increase by 7.4% in 2016 — driven by the nonresidential building sector, specifically office buildings, transportation terminals and hospitals and clinics. CMD's report also mentioned military facility construction, which the data provider said will rise by almost 30% in 2016 due to increased global conflicts.
