In a recent post, I recapped the last six months of new construction contract activity for the state of Florida. The post included the monthly overall totals for new construction contracts, from August through January, along with their respective percentage gains or declines, based on information from McGraw-Hill Construction, publisher of ENR. The data seemed to paint a picture of a state starting to recover.

I imagine readers who work in the other three states making up ENR Southeast's coverage area wouldn't mind a review of the last six months of activity. So I'm doing just that, starting with Georgia.

Like I did before with Florida, I'll list the state's monthly overall total construction numbers--as reported by McGraw-Hill Construction--along with the respective percentage gain or loss, which is a comparison to the same period of a year ago. Again, McGraw-Hill Construction's figures include the entire project value of new contracts at the time of their commencement. So each month's total reflects an estimate of the value of new contracts that proceeded that month.

Editor's Note: The percentage figure listed here for October is included simply as ">100%." Actually, for any percentage gain equal to 100% or higher, MHC's reports do not include a corresponding percentage figure. And this was the case for MHC's report for Georgia construction in October--due to its inclusion that month of the Vogtle nuclear power project. As a result of that project, Georgia's October total soared to roughly $2.6 billion, or nearly three times the previous October's total of $909.4 million.

Here goes. Also, to get a more detailed report of each month's contract activity, including construction category data, readers can link back to those previous reports via the hyperlinks included at left:

January $737.9 million  -7%
December $741.5 million +14%
November $994.1 million +10%
October $2.6 billion >100%
September $941.3 million +11%
August $874.8 million +18%

Granted, these numbers are being compared to an earlier year--except for January, the comparison year is 2010--when the Georgia market was still in decline. With that in mind, what do these numbers look like to you? Is this positive news? Or nothing to write home about yet?

Let us hear what you think!