Isabelle

Hi,

Well, I've been offered a place at a top Uni to read a Master's degree in Construction Engineering and Management. Anybody here in the construction industry?

I'm trying to get a feel for the construction market in the Bay Area. Any idea what the job prospects are like for graduates in that field? Am considering whether or not to give up the job over here (London) and move to the US.

I'd appreciate any advice........

Regards,
BC

schwett

i'm not in the construction industry per se, but as an architect i deal with a lot of contractors. right now, there is still an extremely large amount of construction going on in the bay area. some of it is large scale public works (the almost completed subway extension to the airport, airports themselves, the new bay bridge, new light rail lines in san francisco proper), some is commercial, some institutional (several large new museums, a new campus for UCSF, some big new federal buildings) and most is residential. there is a pretty severe housing shortage throughout the bay area and especially in san francisco. i would guess that right now there are thousands of units under construction in s.f., mostly in the form of large scale mid-rise and high-rise condominium developments.

HOWEVER

almost all of this is the tail end of the boom of the late 90s and '00. the local economy is in a pretty serious slump, and when the current batch of private sector construction is finished, there will likely be a long lull before new projects pick up. a pretty sizeable chunk of the work our firm is currently designing is in asia, particularly china, and most of the work in california and the bay area is institutional (uc merced, housing for the new ucsf campus, city office towers, etc.)

there are some very large new public sector projects, almost exclusively transit related, that will probably see construction sometime in the next 10 years (subway/rail extensions to san jose, further airport construction, san francisco's central subway) but the general consensus is that it's going to be pretty slow for quite some time.

in general, the large scale construction is dominated by a very small number of large firms - some examples are webcor, bovis, dinwiddie, swinerton, tutor-saliba, etc

Isabelle

Thanks for the heads up.

TBC

snakei2k

I say if you got a job in UK and your happy there. Stay there, cause the economy is pretty bad in the Bay Area. Unless otherwise your School is more important. There are some jobs here, but with all the budget deficit in California, the construction industry may not be as good it has in the past. That just my thought.

Chris

BigMeanBull

I'm in the housing industry. People are still buying houses even tho the economy is bad...But with the war I think inflation will raise and ppl will spend even less. Commercial construction is in the dirt I think with alot of companies belly flopping and lot of empty office buildings, but I think construction especially in the home industry is the best way to go...Especially since alot of the new homes are being sold even before the models are built, and the Sacramento area is growing alot.