Twice a year, in January and July, The AIA Consensus Forecast is released. The AIA solicits Nonresidential Building construction spending forecast data from a number of firms and publishes the collected data. It can be helpful to compare the forecasts to current actual data. This provides some clues as to which forecasts are in the ballpark and which just don’t seem to be on track with reality.

The following table presents the AIA 2023 Consensus Forecasts published in January. Alongside the AIA Forecasts is my forecast, Construction Analytics 2023 beginning of year nonresidential buildings forecast and the Actual year-to-date spending published by Census. The ytd values are not much different than the current forecast for the year. The values highlighted in green are those that are closest to the current ytd. and expected forecast for the year.

Just one example to highlight forecast performance, more than half of the forecasts submitted to the AIA Consensus for Manufacturing were 10% or less for all of 2023. The current year-to-date spending for manufacturing is up 83%. My current forecast for the year is 67%.

The AIA January Consensus forecast had Nonresidential Buildings up 5.8% for the year. Construction Analytics forecast was 15.8%. The current ytd is 30%.

The Midyear 2023 AIA Consensus will soon be published. I would expect to see some drastic revisions to some of the input forecasts to catch up to actual spending. Construction Analytics will publish a midyear forecast after the July 1 Census data release that includes the revisions 5 years back. FWIW, Construction Analytics midyear forecast, for the last 3 years, has come closest to the actuals for the year in more markets than any firm’s forecast included in the AIA Consensus. As you can see in the table above, it’s looking pretty solid that Construction Analytics beginning of year 2023 forecast also comes closest to forecast for the year. Closest comparison is made to my current 2023 forecast, in table below, so there is room for change. Year-end actual might not hit my forecast, so… Anyway, the percent increase in 2023 forecast shouldn’t change much with July data, so it’s a preview of my midyear forecast.

On July 1st, the Census will release the construction spending data for May. Along with that, they will revise data back 5 years. Usually, the biggest revisions are to last year. The revisions can sometimes be large enough to sizably change the percent growth within a market from year to year.

This following table shows YTD and my current forecast for 2023 and 2024. Discussion of the forecast is in the preceding post. Construction Data Briefs JUN 2023