NEWS
Engineering services confident despite rising costs
T
he latest BESA/ECA/SELECT/SNIPEF quarterly sector-wide Building Engineering Business S urvey, sponsored by Scolmore, found that
over three in four engineering services organisations (77%) say turnover increased or remained steady in Q2 2018, despite rising material and labour costs. Compared to Q1 2018, almost two thirds (62%) of respondents reported an increase in material costs, and nearly half (45%) reported an increase in labour costs in Q2.
Retentions were held against 61 percent of
businesses, and late payment remains an issue for over half of respondents in commercial and public sector work.
The overall outlook for Q3 appears positive and optimistic; nearly nine out of 10 (88%) respondents predict their turnover will grow or remain steady for
the quarter.
ECA deputy director of business policy and practice, Rob Driscoll, said: “As we move into the second half of 2018, the effects of Carillion’s January collapse are still surfacing but overall, the second quarter showed further steady growth, with a positive outlook for the next quarter.
“We will continue to push for industry improvements on payment and retentions and we anticipate that new government requirements for transparent payment reporting will help the industry to address its ongoing poor payment performance.”
BESA public affairs and policy manager, Alexi Ozioro, added: “It is encouraging to see growth amon g members and amore optimistic outlook for the sector. For a long time, however, members have been concerned about rising material costs. The
announcements of government’s preparations for a no-deal Brexit do not address these concerns, instead introducing further uncertainty into the market. We will be closely monitoring the situation, to see if enough has been done to minimise disruption and ensure a smooth and orderly exit in all scenarios.”
Darrell Matthews, managing director of SELECT, s tated: “It is a tribute to the resilience of both small and large employers that they are generally more optimistic about future work despite rising costs and recurring late payment issues.”
SNIPEF chief executive, Fiona Hodgson, said: “After a challenging start to the year for many of our members, it is heartening to see signs of steady growth in the industry. The industry continues to show resilience. However, there are ongoing challenges that must be addressed to provide certainty for businesses.” The survey received 372 responses from companies across the multi-billion pound industry, mainly regarding their performance in Q2 (01 April to 30 June 2018), an d expectations for Q3.
Air from cooling systems produces noise pollution
“
Cooling and fresh air machines must be silent and must consume less energy!” Masahiro Tsujimoto, managing director
of fan company Ziehl-Abegg Japan, underlines during an international conference in the German Fan Valley. “We must be able to reduce the big energy consumption of cooling machines in Japan and reduce the noise of these machines.”
The German company Ziehl-Abegg has more than 100 years of experience in invention and construction of electric motors and fans.
“The requirements changed during the past 100 years”, Masahiro Tsujimoto says. In the beginning, the focus was on the life period, later on the ventilation system performance. The energy consumption h as been important for roughly
roughly 20 years. “Furthermore, people evaluate noise as pollution of the environment or as noise disturbance in the past few years”, the expert explains.
International leading fan companies try to reduce energy consumption and noise of air installation and air conditioning systems.
Ziehl-Abegg, the origin of the German Fan Valley, is leader in bionic fan design. The engineers have a lot of experience: they transferred characteristics from the owl, the eagle, the humpback whale or of trees into the fan design, always with the aim to reduce noise and to optimize the fan’s aerodynamics to reduce energy consumption.
“There are two possibi lities: the planning of new buildings and the refurbishment of existing buildings, Masahiro Tsujimoto illustrates. “The ventilation system of old buildings is often too noisy and consumes too much energy. “If you need current calculation software for the needs and refurbish with energy saving fans, it is not necessary to modify the tube system”, h e explains .
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