This was despite an overall fall in workload across the industry as a whole and the fact that things would have been worse but for a positive showing from publicly financed construction.

So are the surveyors right and we are poised to rebound from recession over the coming year?

Certainly it is encouraging to see optimism alive and kicking in the construction industry. But the seeming disparity between optimism and reality does throw up some issues, which relate to this survey and others of its nature such as that from the buyers' body CIPS.

It is not uncommon for questions on expectations of workload to overstate the likely future. (Although I suspect if you looked at the surveys of farmers or civil engineering contractors the reverse may be true. I recall in the 1980s the surveys of the then civils body FCEC consistently painting an over gloomy picture of the future.)

But on this point, let's look at the survey data from RICS in the period up to the start of the construction recession in early 2008. The graphs below are taken from the first quarter 2008 survey.

So what do they tell us?

It must be said that trying to discern sensible insight from examining the orders figures month by month is probably as fruitful as peering and prodding hourly at the scab on a grazed knee to see how it's healing. You more or less know how long it will take to heal - a few days - but that doesn't stop you looking.

Anyway the latest fare came out from the ONS today and it shows construction orders continuing on the predictable decline downward at a pretty predictable rate.

Persistent sightings of green shoots over the late spring and summer now look to have been little more than a mirage.

Much to the surprise of many analysts the UK economy appears to have remained in recession, with GDP output falling 0.4% in the three months of July, August and September.

These are however only preliminary estimates and will be revised. And in recent quarters revisions to the estimated construction output have caused sharp revisions.

But these figures, which show construction 13% down on a year ago, will dampen optimism as it seems the clamp of the recession is still tight around the UK economy.

I obviously recommend the conference because I have a vested interest in it and indeed the associated report, which I edit. But that is not the point.

While the presentation styles of the two politicans could not have been more different, there was one thread I noticed that appeared to tie the two presentations together. Given that this was pretty much a pre-election speaking opportunity both managed deftly to alienate large slices of the audience.

It would be rather tricky to summarise the document other than to say it provides a critical look at the state of the post-credit-crunch housing market.

The report is a synthesis of a meeting instigated by BSHF bringing together three dozen or so practitioners and academics from different housing-related disciplines, some with overseas experience, for three days of discussion and debate at St George's House in Windsor Castle in the summer.

Many of the points raised are familiar, but the report does pose plenty of questions worthy of consideration.

Certainly I would put it on the reading lists of Grant Shapps and John Healey, if they haven't already read it.

Indeed the three forecasts came closer together in this round of forecasting as Experian took a marginally dimmer view of 2009. This convergence hints at there being more certainty about the near term direction of construction than there was.

That said, as the graph shows, the views of the industry prospects remain some way apart, with Experian the most upbeat and Hewes shading assumptions on the downside.

But all are agreed that 2009 will see the worst of the recession and the pace of decline will slow markedly after that.

CLICK ON GRAPH TO ENLARGE

This is a marked rise in the prices from just a month ago and reflects the uplift in the Halifax index against which the futures prices are measured and the overall rise in other house price measures.

The Tradition Future HPI - a derivatives-based measure of future house prices - in September priced the Halifax non-seasonally adjusted average house at £174,745 in a year's time. This compares with the one-year-out price of £163,549 posted in August.

And the 5-year future price is put at £184,636, which represents solid growth, but still leaves average prices almost 9% down on the peak reached in 2007.

Yes the rate of collapse has slowed. But it's the level that really matters at the moment.

Forgetting seasonal adjusted constant price measures, if we compare the amount of work contractors have bagged over the preceding 12 months in cash terms we see the amount still dwindling.

New work won in cash terms over the 12 months to August was down 33% from peak at the end of 2007.

This is despite strong rises in public sector and infrastructure orders.

And we have to throw in the effects of the restocking process that has started to take place in the housing market, which in recent months have given the new orders figures a bit of a boost.

Now the link between orders and output may be far from linear, and you can contemplate as many green shoots as you like, but the reality is that the construction industry has to work through a period when there is a serious shortage of work to be done.

And, more worryingly, when there is even less money being paid for it.

I made a stab (a lucky guess as it turned out), but I should have had a number at my figure tips. I waffled while I grabbed a calculator and tapped in some very rough and ready numbers.

Well have a guess how much that bit of number crunching came up with?

Here's what the numbers suggest:

But is this good news or bad news for construction?

Well why not try playing Fantasy Chancellor and conduct your very own Spending Review 2010.

If it grabs your fancy, then those zany guys at the Institute of Fiscal Studies have just the spreadsheet for you. And the simple download comes complete with some top-notch "cheats" to give you that extra edge.

• Read the full Observation
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So pit your wits against Alistair Darling and see if you can steer the UK economy away from impending doom.

Ok so I have rather hyped it. But I am sure when those smart cookies at IFS have fine tuned the xbox version it will have all the extra features like power cuts, strikes, collapsing infrastructure, extended NHS waiting lists, civil unrest... along obviously with total global economic domination

This means that 111,000 jobs have been lost to the industry since they peaked in the autumn last year.

In fairness the drop in workforce jobs has been coming for some while and it has been a mystery as to why the numbers had held up so well for so long given the severe downturn in construction output and the surging numbers being made redundant.

The latest data do in fact show that earlier figures for workforce jobs in construction have been revised down, with 5,000 jobs shaved off the 2008 third quarter peak figure and with the figure for the first quarter of this year showing 15,000 fewer jobs than were estimated three months ago.

I have been for some months a bit curious as to why the brightest brains (well some seriously well paid experts) among the UK economists have consistently been wrong in their prediction of inflation, each time overstating the fall in the headline figure.

Again this month, they expected the Consumer Price Index to fall to 1.4% in August, according to the regular consensus poll of economists undertaken by Reuters. The actual figure recorded by the Office of National statistics was 1.6%.

This underestimation of inflations now seems to be a regular event each month. This suggests that the economists polled are on average of the view that the economy is under greater deflationary pressure than is actually the case.

So I looked at the back data and the components that make up the CPI and was a bit baffled as to why this view should be so deeply ingrained.

Here's a graph of CPI showing the year to year comparison that we get headlines written about and the actual month-by-month trend in the index. I have also plotted CPIY, the index with the effects of indirect taxes removed. And you can see the point of departure when VAT was reduced.

The big question is whether this is the start of a continuous and sustained recovery in the housing market or just, as the ITEM Club suggested yesterday, a false dawn.

The big problem is that while the survey points to a general rise in prices, it also highlights that there are deep fault lines running through the current housing market. And these are creating considerable uncertainty over what meaning to put to the recent rally.

One thing that seems pretty likely is that many of the pet theories put forward by various experts on why house prices are rising despite a still fragile economy and growing unemployment will be put to the test.

Firstly what does the survey say?