London's Construction Industry
- greaterlondon
- Apr 18, 2015
- 3 min read
To look at construction within London you have to go back to the middle of the first century AD when the Romans set up camp alongside the Thames. Since then much has changed; conflagrations, plagues, destruction and reconstruction - all of which has altered the skyline of the capital irrevocably.
Today's London is home to some of the world's major construction projects. Construction hardly ever stops yet the current iconic silhouette that makes upthe City of London is, seemingly, changeless and dominated by buildings such as 'The Gherkin', in Aldgate, Lloyds, in Fenchurch Street, and St Pauls Cathedral, in St Pauls.
Setting the scene in terms of the importance of construction as a sector in general terms, it accounts for almost 10% of the GDP of the UK and employsaround two million people directly plus the countless thousands in tangential businesses. In terms of the numbers of businesses there are estimated to be in excess of a quarter of a million.
The major construction project of recent years has been that to support the 2012 Olympics. According to the Olympic Delivery Authority, the Olympic Stadium itself employed some 12,500 people of which 20% were from the local areas.
In the South East as a whole, the construction sector is worth around £12.5 bn, according to the Construction Skills Network and, in 2011, directly employed a total of 315,000 people. Of that number some 260,000 were employed in Greater London.
At the point of writing NLA - The Centre for London Building suggest that there are some 677 live or recently completed building projects across Greater London and 74 within the 'City' itself. Many of these are relatively small, refurbishment projects but it provides an extra dimension and perspective as to the level of construction continuously underway.
In addition, there are and have been a number of major infrastructure projects such as London 2012, Crossrail 2 (c.£15 bn.), the Thames Tideway Tunnel (c.£4.2 bn.) and a review of a lower Thames crossing. Add to these a number of major commercial projects either completed, underway or still on the drawing board and it is possible to imagine how they might once again change the London skyline. These include: the Swiss RE Tower; Heron Tower; Minerva - that was set to become London's tallest building; redevelopment of the Paddington Basin; London Bridge tower out-doing Minerva by some 250 feet and developments right across Canary Wharf.
The public sector also recently announced the inclusion of a new accident and emergency unit for the NW London Hospitals Trust - weighing in at just short of three quarters of a billion.
Overall there would appear to be no shortage of major projects underway within the M25, and even though the 'Square Mile' is a fairly tightly bounded area, that there are projects planned for it too.
Is it fair, therefore, to surmise that the future of 'bricks and mortar' projects within Greater London looks healthy - certainly so if the outlook provided by "Construction Skills" (the Sector Skills Agency for construction) is concerned. Whilst growth is shown in low-end single figures year on year, the overall scale of construction projects is not falling. Indeed, the only sector showing declines are those projects classed as public sector for housing and non-housing alike. Overall, the picture shows a sector ready for any changes to the public sector demand.
SOURCE: LINK
PHOTO: LINK
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