Resource forecasting models for private housing projects

The thesis stems from the interest being shown in the topic of forecasting in many quarters. This study attempts to indicate a method of forecasting the demand for resources in the private sector of the house building market. The thesis is to be interpreted as an exercise in the co-ordination of the disciplines of building technology, economics and statistics. It is in this context that it should be viewed. It can not be claimed that any model will satisfactorily predict the future course of an activity so readily subject to external and governmental pressures as is private house building. At the present time any model will serve as a useful addition to our knowledge of a very imperfectly understood economic process. The situation of such that even if subsequent analysis shows that the intervention of extraneous pressures renders inapplicable a model based on the interaction of purely economic factors, there remains the possibility that such a model may still be of the value in indicating the limits of effectiveness of such extraneous interaction. In this examination of private house building in the North West Region of England, it is hoped that a little light has been shed on the complications involved in such analysis. The complications exist, we found, in the process of identifying regional resources; in the linkage of inputs and outputs; and in the fitting of a time scale to operations and requirements. It may be that detailing of this nature will prove superfluous: but it is only by refining and modifying analysis of this sort that the dangers, inherent in the inevitable and necessary simplification which must occur in the consideration of macro-economic problems, can be appreciated. To facilitate the presentation of the various topics in the thesis, we have first indicated the need for such a study as applied to all types of building, and then selected the privates housing field to study in detail. In the second chapter we reviewed the statistics, for the past decade, concerning the number of new starts of private houses, the production and consumption of materials, and the employment of skilled operatives. We have studied some of the seasonal, cyclical and other irregular variations. These analyses showed that there be a suggestion of regular cycles of definite peaks and troughs corresponding to the periods of economic prosperity and depression. To forecast the demand for resources, a study of the volume of inputs was necessary. A sample of 22 housing projects were studied. The results were used to build design/input models for explaining the materials and labour consumption in terms of the design variables. The input "normal" together with the forecast value of housing starts were used to assess the future demand for [materials]. Finally the implications of the levels of demand for 1 hour and [materials] discussed and compared to the availability of such resources on the regional level.