Glenigan recession signals: UK project pipeline risks and prospects for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Glenigan’s February Construction Review shows UK project starts in the three months to January 2026 down 31% on the previous quarter, with values 20% below 2025, while main contract awards have dropped 37% quarter-on-quarter and 43% year-on-year. Detailed planning approvals fell 30% over November–January, ending 33% below last year, signalling a thinner pipeline for major civils, utilities and building work. Economic director Allan Wilen points to the hospitals and schools building programmes and upcoming infrastructure and utilities upgrades as potential stabilisers, contingent on improved investor confidence and earlier interest rate cuts.
Technical Brief
- Glenigan’s February Construction Review is based on data for the three months to January 2026.
- Glenigan attributes the downturn primarily to a “persistently sluggish economy” and “low private investor confidence”.
- Publicly funded hospitals and schools building programmes are identified as key counter-cyclical workload sources.
- A “strong pipeline of infrastructure and utilities upgrades” is flagged as the main medium-term stabiliser for civils.
Our Take
With Glenigan data showing project starts down 31% and detailed planning approvals down roughly a third, UK contractors and plant-hire firms are likely to face a thinner pipeline into 2026, compounding the ‘perfect storm’ conditions flagged in our recent coverage of Wolffkran UK crane operator strikes.
Across the 733 Infrastructure stories in our database, very few show such steep concurrent drops in both starts and approvals, suggesting the current UK downturn is more synchronised across the project lifecycle than most regional slowdowns tracked recently.
For UK civils and building contractors, a 20% fall in project-start values versus 2025 implies intensified competition for remaining work, which typically translates into tighter margins and more aggressive bidding on public-sector frameworks and framework renewals.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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