Australian crane survey shows little Covid-19 impact in 2020
Rider Levett Bucknall, a leading construction company’s latest count of cranes in operation across Australia shows only a 6% decrease following the impact of Covid-19 in the year 2020.
In an interview with a news publication, Domenic Schiafone, Oceania director of research and development at Rider Levett Bucknall (RLB) has that the uncertainties surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic have not impacted the Australian construction industry as we had expected.
The third quarter in 2020 RLB Crane Index found that there are currently 677 cranes working on projects across Australia.
Schiafone has added that while most industries nationwide have had to grapple with the effects of lockdown, the construction industry to date has not experienced a complete and sudden halt.
Construction was deemed as an essential service by both state and federal governments, which plays a big role in the lack of decrease in operations.
Crane numbers across all sectors fell by 45 or 6.2% recording a total of 677, down from 722 in Q1 2020. This is only slightly more than the 4.6% drop in total cranes numbers recorded between Q3 2019 and Q1 2020, and a 10.6% drop from the peak numbers of 757 in Q3 2019 to now.
A significant portion of the fall has come from the residential sector.
According to the RLB Crane Index, since the beginning of 2020, 272 new cranes were erected across Australia compared to 416 new cranes in the year 2019.
Around the country, Sydney continues to be the main driver of the crane count. Of the 677 cranes sighted across Australia, 297 were in Sydney, 179 were in Melbourne, 50 were in Brisbane, 36 were in Perth, 34 were on the Gold Coast, 27 were in Canberra, 10 in Adelaide, 11 in Wollongong, 15 in the Sunshine Coast and 13 were in Newcastle. There were none in Hobart or in Darwin.
Across Sydney’s five main regions, all regions, except for the west, experienced a decrease in crane numbers. The fall of five cranes in the north was the largest decrease. Western Sydney, in comparison, recorded an increase of eight cranes.
The content was derived from a report published by theconstructionindex.co.uk
