Where are you sat? Seriously. In your office? At home? Take a look around, what can you see?

 

I am sat in a modestly sized office that has two lights, two windows and a door. It is one of many in our building and if I peer out from one of the windows, a newly built school sits proudly in the foreground and beyond that the impressive stadium of the local football team dominates the skyline. Dotted in between are hundreds of houses, industrial units and various other buildings connected by a network of roads, pavements and railway lines.

 

I don’t know how your view compares but it’s fair to say most of us take our surroundings for granted – certainly from a construction perspective. When you consider the amount of hard work, planning, intelligence and resources that go into putting these structures in place (even the one you’re sat in) you begin to realise the scale of the task involved. From the smallest house to the biggest skyscraper, construction requires hard labour, planning, intelligence and a multitude of resources. Along with politics and farming, it has been around from the start of human civilisation. The tools and methods we now use have evolved over thousands of years and today’s highly specialised building industry allows companies to build higher, faster and better than ever before.

 

The 2007 financial crisis hit it harder than most but the air is clearing, the dust settling and the oldest profession in the world will find it’s feet once again.