Texas & Southeast

2013 Southeast Forecast: Rebound to Continue

McGraw-Hill Construction's preliminary data currently anticipates a 5% overall gain in new North Carolina construction starts for 2013, led by a 20% jump in residential contracts and a 3% boost in commercial work. (McGraw-Hill's official state forecasts will be finalized later in 2012.)

But North Carolina's nonresidential building sector could be down for the coming year, with industrial and institutional building contracts currently poised to decline. Additionally, the nonbuilding category, which includes infrastructure projects, could decline by roughly 10% during 2013.

In South Carolina, growth in the state's residential sector could top 40% in 2013, according to McGraw-Hill Construction, while nonresidential manages a gain of around 5%—the result of increases in institutional construction overcoming declines in the commercial and industrial markets.

On a positive note, in October The Boeing Co. announced it had hired Global Performance of Greenville, S.C., to manage construction of an expansion of its aft body and paint facilities located at the company's new campus in North Charleston, S.C.

Scott Judy is ENR’s Managing Editor. His roughly 34 years as a construction journalist began with an 11-year stint visiting and writing about construction projects in the Midwest region of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. Then, in 2000, Judy helped launch ENR Southeast, now known as ENR Texas & Southeast. After all these years, Judy says his favorite part of being an ENR editor is visiting job sites and learning how—and reporting on—a team’s approach to overcoming the project’s design and construction challenges. And Judy says he never turns down an invitation for a project visit.