Peri looks to civils for future work

Formwork specialist Peri feels the commercial office market has peaked and is expecting future work to come from the civils side of the industry.

Peri managing director Carl Heathcote said: "There is a glut of office accommodation in London and provincially and we see a downturn in commercial building.

"There is still a lot of potential in schools and hospitals, but I can see that we're going to have a greater interest in civils, namely roads, rail and water, in the near future," he said.

"We expect to see a shift back to a 50:50 approach with regards to where our business comes from.

"Half will be building work and half will be civils," he added.

Peri is looking at expanding its workshop at its Rugby head office to accommodate the huge rise in pre-assembly work it is experiencing.

"Our pre-fab facility is 100% used. There is a waiting period of four weeks for pre-assembled products," said Heathcote.

"The workshop is under review for possible expansion, but we need to investigate how much more pre-fab work we would actually get if we expanded the workshop.

"It's certainly an area that won't fall off, but whether it will expand further is something we need to consider," he said.

"Pre-assembly takes a lot of risk factors out for our customers: no space or labour is required for on-site fabrication; crane time is not required during assembly; skilled workers can be deployed elsewhere on site; and customers get a fixed price for the product, which ensures greater cost control," said Heathcote.