Nonresidential Planning Index Sees Monthly Loss

The Dodge Momentum Index, a monthly measure of the initial report for nonresidential building projects in planning, dropped 1.3% from July to August to register a score of 137.8. The index, issued by Dodge Data & Analytics, has been shown to lead construction spending for nonresidential buildings by a full year. The decline was solely the fault of a 16.6% weakening in the institutional component as the commercial component was up 9.1%.

And on a year-over-year basis, the overall Momentum Index is 10.3% below August 2018, suggesting that construction spending will be settling back as the year progresses according to the provider of analytics and software-based workflow integration solutions for the construction industry. 

However, the index has lost only 1.8% since the beginning of 2019 so most of the year-over-year regression occurred in 2018, indicating "that while construction activity will ease it is not in a freefall." In the past year, the institutional component has tumbled 22.5%, but the commercial component is only down 2.4%.

In August, there were 11 projects each with a value of $100 million or more that entered planning. The leading commercial projects were a $215 million office building in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, and a $200 million Amazon fulfillment center in Memphis, Tennessee. The leading institutional projects were a $235 million hospital tower in Salem, Oregon, and a $150 million dormitory at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.