Half of the construction companies were recently forced to close the square

“The most worrying thing is that the problems are unresolved, and they are in danger of getting worse,” said Nico Demeester, CEO of Embuild, the former building consortium. The organization surveyed 317 contractors and installers. This showed that 53 percent of construction companies had already had to suspend their activities, albeit always for a short period of time. Four out of ten contractors and installers do so because of building materials delivery problems. A quarter mentions material prices as the reason and a third suspends business based on customer demand.

“There is still a lot of activity on the construction sites, but things are not going smoothly everywhere,” Demester says. “Sometimes a site is closed for a day or a week, sometimes longer. However, there are still problems with building materials that sometimes their supply and prices jump. Sometimes we also see that individuals are reluctant to move forward. They see energy prices go up and they think that Purchasing power is declining. You feel there are trust problems with the customer. We will get through it, but you notice that construction companies don’t expect the problems to go down, but rather to increase.”

Because of the expensive energy, the price of bricks, roof tiles, steel and cement is rising rapidly. The construction company cannot always pass on this additional cost to the customer. In addition, 55 percent of construction companies fear that they will have to temporarily suspend one or more sites in the next three months due to delivery problems, 42 percent due to increased material prices, 38 percent at the request of the customer and 31 percent due to High energy prices. ‘ says Demeester.