September is a crunch month. Holiday season is over and those of us not in quarantine are being encouraged to send the kids back to school and get ourselves back to the office. Talking to construction bosses it feels as though many want to put the horrendous past six months behind them, press the reset button and make a fresh start.

The problem is that the path ahead is far from clear. We have been in recessions before, of course, and construction knows its fate follows that of the national economy. But this is unlike previous recessions in that a recovery is heavily dependent on how far we can keep the coronavirus under control. 

The truth is that, while people are busily making predictions, coming up with scenarios and scouring the forecasts, nobody knows how things will pan out this autumn let alone over the next 12 to 18 months – unless of course we find a treatment or a vaccine before then, though even an effective vaccine may not be the panacea that we might hope.

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