Expensive materials, few workers: construction co-ops risk collapse

UDINE. Wood, steel, iron for the reinforcements, concrete, plastics, coatings for the “coat” of the houses: all building materials have undergone a huge increase in recent months.

To this must be added the shortage of manpower, given that already half of the workers who work on construction sites in the region come from abroad.

Finally, the lengthening of delivery times: a load of beams for the roof that until recently arrived as soon as the order was placed, now also takes 5 or 6 months.

The result of all this? As of today, a project from three years ago is out of the market and there is a very high probability that the tender for the construction of a work may therefore go empty. With all that this entails, even more so if it is a public work.

Today, Ici Coop of Ronchi dei Legionari, the largest construction cooperative in Friuli Venezia Giulia associated with Legacoop and active for 30 years in construction and design, has raised the alarm, already highlighted in recent weeks by the categories of the sector. of building works.
«The moment is truly dramatic – confirms the president of Ici Coop Marco Seibessi – and the crisis we are going through affects all companies across the board, including cooperatives. The cost of raw materials, the drastic shortage of manpower and the lengthening of delivery times for materials, in some cases even by five or six months, risk bringing many companies in the sector to their knees ”. The president of Legacoop, Livio Nanino, is also worried.

«Construction – he explains – has always represented a“ pilot ”sector, a thermometer capable of anticipating both the expansionary and recessive phases of the economy.

The NRP, with all the resources made available, can represent a new beginning and a new driving force for other sectors of the economy as well.

To seize this opportunity, courage is needed, in particular on the part of the Government in rethinking sector policies, in revising the terms of the NRP, an instrument conceived and defined before the current geopolitical crisis arose.

It is necessary to have the courage to think about policies not linked to the upcoming electoral deadlines, but to what the country needs in the next ten years. There is no alternative, companies have already suffered the pandemic first, then 110%, today the war. We need a clear and stable framework with assessable risks ».
After the rain of funding that is arriving or that will arrive through the PNRR, there are many public administrations who now dream of being able to carry out great works. “The problem – Seibessi warns again – will arise when those public administrations will not have the funds to deal with the adjustment of the costs that the works will inevitably suffer and therefore, perhaps, it would be in some ways right to suspend those construction sites that currently have supply difficulties. of materials and above all the criticality of carrying out certain processes with a strong imbalance between costs and revenues “.
Everything is made paradoxical by a request from the client which, on the other hand, is growing exponentially. Ici Coop is also well aware that with a 2019 turnover of 20 million euros and a 2020 closed just over 25 million and a 2021, still in the closing phase, at around 30 million, boasts a work portfolio “of which there is no you can certainly complain », confirms the president of the cooperative.

«The problem is the quality and timing of execution of the works – continues Seibessi -. Like many other business colleagues, we sent the requests in December for the price adjustment, but to date, out of 18 questions we have received only one answer with collection, while of the other 17 only two have had the signing of the additional deed that , however, it is bound to the procurement of economic resources.

A sort of check that we know to be covered, but who knows when, I don’t want to say if, we will cash ”.
To all this, as already mentioned, there is the problem of finding manpower.

«To date – concludes the president of ICI Coop – we are 40-50% of workers who come from other countries and thank goodness that at least there are, otherwise the sector would be really at risk. The Government must act quickly on the works in progress and in a timely manner.

Otherwise, the risk is to still lose pieces on the street of what is the construction sector already heavily affected, given that at national level we are talking about 150 thousand construction and service companies disappeared due to the crisis that began in 2012 with a loss of 600 thousand jobs ”.