Understanding UK construction professional services exports: definitions and characteristics

Carol Jewell, Roger Flanagan and Caner Anac

Construction Management and Economics, 2010, vol. 28, issue 3, 231-239

Abstract: Services are very important to the UK balance of trade; a surplus has been recorded for trade in services every year since 1966. Construction professional services exports (CPS), which cover architecture, engineering and surveying (AES), have also increased, contributing over £3bn to the UK trade balance in 2007. The changing environment of construction professional services exports complicates the validity of the characteristics and definitions of services as described in the research literature and official export statistics. Through semi-structured interviews undertaken with large consulting engineers and a roundtable discussion with industry and government representatives, the research found that the impact of globalization and the changes in the construction business environment, such as increasing foreign ownership and changing forms of procurement, are not fully reflected in the official statistics. There have also been rapid changes in technology, procurement and methods of delivery which have impacted on exporting AES firms and a more appropriate set of characteristics is needed to better reflect the project-specific and knowledge-intensive nature of AES firms.

Keywords: Exports; services; construction; globalization; knowledge-based economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01446191003587729 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:28:y:2010:i:3:p:231-239

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RCME20

DOI: 10.1080/01446191003587729

Access Statistics for this article

Construction Management and Economics is currently edited by Will Hughes

More articles in Construction Management and Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().