The Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA) recently warned that before Christmas, approximately 8,400 jobs could be lost among this country’s small- and medium-sized civil engineering firms. Up to 17 percent of SME employees could lose their jobs as a result of the current financial downturn.

SME firms play a crucial role in building and maintaining this country’s critical infrastructure, such as the £16 billion Crossrail project. However, according to CECA, many of these firms will struggle to survive over the coming months. Major concerns highlighted include falling workloads, difficulty securing and maintaining bank funding, increasing delays on payments by clients, and steep cost inflation.

“Steady investment now could maintain civil engineering SMEs through difficult times and offset a far greater outlay when the country needs to call on their resources in the future,???? suggested CECA Director Rosemary Beales. The government and the banking sector are urged to commit to a 10-point economic action plan presented by CECA and work with the industry to secure the future of the infrastructure as a whole.

The plan’s proposed measures are increasing expenditure on planned public-sector infrastructure works, ensuring prompt payment to SME firms by clients, demanding fair treatment of SME contractors by banks, revitalising the housing market, encouraging the use of local firms, restoring rate relief on empty commercial property, preventing the use of on-demand bonds and removing retentions from future contracts, cutting planning, environmental and heritage consent bureaucracy, streamlining procurement of construction work, and protecting the next generation of skills.