Robert Murray at Build Boston

A very interesting lunchtime presentation at Build Boston by Robert Murray, Vice President, Economic Affairs at McGraw-Hill. Some notes of interest related to the sustainable building, green building, and building trends/predictions in general:

• Green building as a part of construction trends is starting to effect the macroeconomic picture. This earned a few slides in the Powerpoint. Great to hear!
• He noted that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 has had an effect on conservation efforts. It also has spurred a boom in ethanol plant construction (we'll let you decide if that's good or bad, particularly if it's corn-based as opposed to cellulose ethanol).
• Downtown redevelopment projects are helping the macroeconomic picture—due to continued emphasis on restoring existing structures, brownfields, etc.
• "Green News," as he put it, includes a federal executive order (January '07) setting environmental goals for federal agencies: 30% reduction in energy use by 2015... 3% per year.
• Big-ticket items on college campuses will continue into 2008; predicting 232 msf (+4% increase) in educational buildings. Not to sound negative, but detention facilities were up 15% in 2006. Hope they're green as well.
• Renovation of existing housing stock will be a growing trend. (Will this include sustainable design? College projects I've seen have, but the renovation market is not something I've checked. Anyone know?)

Someone in the audience asked why "the numbers presented today focus on construction 'starts'?" The answer: "'Starts' are looked at to predict demand for building materials," among other things. It's interesting that he mentioned this first. Prices for construction materials were up just 2%, with gypsum falling 17%, copper and copper alloy down 2% between December 2006 and September 2007, wood and lumber pretty much level. Cement, iron and steel were all up 4-5%. No reason given.