While being the fifth consecutive quarter with construction workload balance in the negative, it still improved from -12% in Q1 to -4%
Infrastructure continues to be the strongest performer for the seventh consecutive quarter, according to the RICS Construction Monitor, as workloads rise from +4% to +16%.
Within infrastructure, energy is up +39% from the last quarter’s +24%, while water & sewage is at +23%, communications at +22%, rail at +10%, roads at +7%, and harbours at -2%.
Other sectors are not performing as well
The private sector especially is struggling, as private housing has only risen to -12% from the last quarter’s -19%, private commercial has risen to -7% from -15%, and private industrial to -9% from -15%.
The public sector has performed better, as public housing reaches +1% after Q1’s -2%, and other public works, including schools/colleges, universities, health, offices, etc. has hit +9% from Q1’s -1%.
Profit margins and financial constraints remain a primary concern as well, as margins stay in the negative (from -27% to -10%) and costs are expected to keep rising: material costs are expected to rise by 6.7%, skilled labour by 5.2%, and unskilled labour by 3.9%.
67% of respondents to the RICS survey cited financial constraints as an obstacle to construction activity, 1% higher than the last quarter. The other most commonly cited constraints are planning and regulation, insufficient demand, labour shortages, and material shortages.
Planning and regulation are keeping respondents down as issues with the Building Safety Regulator and Gateway approval times are still being brought up, as well as planning delays, regulatory uncertainty, and additional costs and lack of certainty are all preventing projects from moving forward.
An optimistic outlook, despite everything
There is a little positive news as credit conditions show promising signs of recovery, with the three-month credit outlook having improved from -51% to -21%, and the 12-month outlook has improved from -42% to -23%.
Furthermore, RICS has updated their 12-month workload expectations from +2% to +13%, as private residential expectations increase from -2% to +6%, and private non-residential from -4% to +11%.
Infrastructure is expected to keep the lion’s share of growth, from +19% to +34%.
This is at odds with the Construction Products Association’s own Summer forecast 2026, which expects confidence to suffer in the face of Middle East conflict. It does, however, agree that infrastructure is expected to grow.
Read more on the CPA’s forecast here.
Download and read the full RICS construction monitor Q2 2026 here.
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