Derrick McFarland, Managing Director Keystone Lintels is BMBI’s Expert for Steel Lintels.

The roller coaster of 2020 continues. Q3 2020 rises back to similar levels seen in Q3 2019 and demand into Q4 2020 remains strong. Weather permitting, construction should finish strongly in 2020 and we wait patiently on what is around the corner in 2021. The newly-announced ‘social’ lockdown, will hopefully reduce the risk in infections, and allow construction to continue in a safer environment.

NHBC reports Q3 2020 completions are just 4% behind Q3 2019, although new home registrations are behind by 25% over the same period. This would suggest we are in a programme of catch up with an end date dictated by the end of the stamp duty holiday and help to buy scheme. Hopefully, Rishi will reconsider options to continue to stimulate construction sooner, rather than later.

Is working from home here to stay? Developers say it has created a trend towards more housing demand in the suburbs and out of town developments. Keystone’s recent competition with RIBA on designing a house/development in the suburbs now seems well timed as we encourage architects to add space which meets the modern family requirements, and of course includes a few special lintel designs. Working from home also reduces our Carbon footprint, and at Keystone the climate change topic is high on our agenda, acknowledged through our Gold Standard from the School of Sustainability.

Enquiries still lag behind 2019, and we hope builders’ merchants’ sales teams and branches are getting involved in the ‘Movies from Home’ campaign. We understand branches are very busy, and our teams are here to support our loyal stockists.

We continue to operate our factories under strict social distancing guidelines, with marked walkways, limits on number of people in our welfare facilities, temperature checks on arrival, additional cleaning, hand sanitiser stations and face coverings where required. We remain open for business.

Hands – Face – Space.