Prices and lead times for construction materials continue surging to historic levels, yet local architecture and construction firms say their workloads aren’t being adversely affected.

An index of input prices — the prices that producers and service providers such as distributors and transportation firms charged for inputs for non-residential construction — were 21.1-percent higher in October compared to a year earlier. That included a 1.3-percent increase since September, according to an analysis conducted by the Associated General Contractors of America.

“We have seen an unprecedented surge in construction materials pricing and labor pricing over the course of the last two years,” said Chris Beckering, executive vice president of Pioneer Construction Co. “Simultaneously, we’ve seen historic delays in delivery times because of supply chain and production issues — something people aren’t talking about quite as much.”

The production of raw construction materials is simply failing to keep up with demand, Beckering said.

“For the industry to address some of these increasing lead time issues, we’re really going to have to increase production capacity for certain construction materials as an industry because demand has continued to exceed production capacity,” Beckering said. 

For example, Pioneer was just informed by its steel joist and decking supplier that new product orders will not be filled until 2023, Beckering said. Historically it has taken between 10 to 16 weeks for steel products to be delivered, he said. 

“The reality today is that projects are taking longer from concept to completion, and the main bottleneck is the availability of construction materials,” Beckering said. “We have not seen this kind of environment in my professional career. We’ve seen material price escalation, but it’s been with a certain commodity or with a certain trade. Now it’s across the board.”

Pioneer has pre-purchased some construction supplies to accommodate short-term demand, Beckering said. 

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