July 24, 2024 | Warren Shoulberg
The Dodge Momentum Index measuring building planning offers encouraging news for the industry.
The latest news from the Dodge Index shows that commercial planning, especially for data centers, increased 10.4 percent for June, providing an indicator that more construction projects are in the works.
“Data centers continued to dominate planning projects in June, fueling another strong month for commercial planning,” said Sarah Martin, associate director of forecasting at Dodge Construction Network, which is one of the leading forecasting companies for the industry.
“More momentum in planning, while not as strong as data centers, was seen across most segments and indicates confidence in 2025 market conditions. The DMI is up 43 percent from June 2019 levels, signaling strong construction spending in 2025.”
Dodge said that data center planning continued to be the primary driver of June growth, with moderate growth in retail, hotels and warehouse projects. In the institutional sector, weaker healthcare planning was offset by an improvement in education activity. Dodge also said a large detention facility just announced helped the public planning sector.
The DMI was 7 percent higher than in June a year ago and the commercial segment was up 25 percent from year-ago levels, though institutional was down 25 percent over the same period.
The DMI measures the monthly value of nonresidential building projects going into planning and indicates construction spending for nonresidential buildings.
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