These include the £110m final phase of the Eden Project, which includes the dry tropics biome and an education centre, the £500m Broadmead shopping centre redevelopment in Bristol, the £100m residential development at Carlyon Bay, Cornwall, and the £170m Drakes Circus shopping centre redevelopment in Plymouth. Cost consultant Davis Langdon & Everest has more than £500m work in Cornwall alone.
There is so much work here that many construction professionals in the region are concerned that the market could overheat. "The amount of work people are talking about down here could easily make it a hotspot," says David Porter, a partner at DL&E and the man responsible for the Carlyon Bay scheme.
The trend was highlighted in May's tender price forecast, produced by DL&E and published in ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½. The forecast said: "The increase in workload has put pressure on the local building industry; two-thirds of building firms in the region are working at full capacity and skills shortages have forced labour rates for traditional trades up 10-20% over the past year."
Construction output was up a staggering 24% last year and value of new orders rose to 26%. And with commercial activity accounting for 22% of new orders in the South-west compared with 31% nationally, the impact of a slowdown in the commercial sector is being felt much less here than in many other regions.
Several factors have contributed to the surge in activity. Gareth Steventon, the partner in charge of DL&E's Plymouth office, says that one of the main reasons is that "Devon and Cornwall are playing catch-up with the rest of the country – that is why there are so many town-centre redevelopments under way".
Another reason is the amount of European funding being pumped into the area. Cornwall and the Is