Like most in the construction industry firms providing contracting services are struggling to stay in business
MEC contracting Services have been in business for over 20 years. They are part of the Slater’s Group who have been providing high-end electrical services for over 65 years. During that time, the industry has evolved and changed, presenting the firms with many challenges. Adapting to increasingly strict and complex regulation has been a huge challenge, but the main problem has been taking the business through recessions.
Once again, MEC are faced with an extremely challenging trading environment. Construction across the UK has fallen sharply across both the commercial and residential sector. For those firms, like MEC, who provide electrical systems in retail buildings, office blocks and factories this has been bad news. Demand for new electrical systems has obviously fallen sharply as construction projects have dried up. Today, the majority of their work is carried out on existing industrial scale electrical installations.
Clearly, the government is aware of the problems such a big drop in construction has caused. They are working hard to get things moving again. However, to date their main focus has been on the residential housing market. They have launched several schemes to make it possible for people to buy new homes. For example, the Funding for Lending scheme has enabled many who have not been able to access mortgages to do so. This has boosted sales of new homes allowing constructors to start new projects.
To date the government has not come up with any similar schemes for the commercial sector. This is seen by many in the industrial construction industry as a serious oversight on the part of the government.
Dr Blake of the CBRE recently pointed out that “Almost 50% of the loss in UK economic output since the beginning of 2008 can be attributed to a drop in private construction activity”.
The future for MEC contracting services
However, there is light at the end of the tunnel, which is allowing firms like MEC Contractors to be confident about the future. Many cities, in the UK have plans to build new commercial and industrial infrastructure between now and 2030. This means that in order to meet their development targets they will have to begin building new commercial properties. This is particularly the case for large cities like London, Birmingham and Liverpool. Whether the government will come up with schemes to speed up the building of this new commercial infrastructure remains to be seen.