It’s been a busy 2020 for Ryan Novelli.
The owner of Patriots Contracting Services in Halifax says he’s 10 times as busy this year as he was in 2019, with a lot of customers calling looking for decorative exterior concrete work for walkways, walls and driveways.
“The flow of work is very steady right now,” said Novelli, who has been in business for 10 years and employs three people. Right now, he has 10 residential concrete jobs waiting to be completed, with five of those ready to start. Any more work will have to wait until next spring.
“You see a lot of people that are looking at Nova Scotia as a residence, and a lot of people are moving into Halifax,” said Novelli. “I have clients that are coming from Ontario and out west, and I just see the growth in the city is taking a major turn right now.”
Pandemic renos
The interest in home renovations during the COVID-19 pandemic has been well documented. A recent Scotiabank poll conducted by Maru Blue found that just over a quarter of Canadians are considering home renovations.
Tony Baker, owner of Concrete Services Ltd. in Conception Bay South, specializes in concrete repairs and has been in business serving homeowners, industrial and commercial clients in Newfoundland and Labrador since 2002. While the number of jobs he’s taking on has been consistent with previous years, Baker said quote requests have quadrupled.
The Newfoundland and Labrador government announced a $30-million rebate program earlier this year that offered a 25 per cent discount— up to $10,000 —on projects completed before the end of next March. While he acknowledges there was public interest in the program, Baker suspects the driving factor behind people looking to get work done is they did not spend money for an extended period of time during the earliest months of the pandemic.
“They weren’t spending their money on vacations or travel or kids’ hockey or new skates or school activities or restaurants or getting a cab home from a club downtown,” he said. “People just didn’t spend that money and people woke up one day and, in my personal opinion, they said, ‘Holy dyings, how come I’ve got that much extra money in the bank account?’ ... They naturally managed their money good because they couldn’t spend it.”
Outdoor projects
Novelli finds customers these days are more comfortable getting work done outside the home due to the pandemic.
“I can talk to them from their window and be able to be outside and not in their house,” he said.
Kevin Nickerson, president of the Atlantic Concrete Association, has likewise noticed increased demand for small concrete projects outside the home, and like Baker, he believes people are finding other ways to use the money they would have a spent on vacations that failed to materialize.
“That’s what we’re hearing from a lot of our landscape customers, pool customers,” said Baker, who also manages Quality Concrete Ltd. in Nova Scotia. “You’re not getting out of town for less than $5,000 if you’re going away for your all-inclusive vacation. This is money that a lot of people have set aside ... and they can see very clearly that it’s going to be another year or two before they go anywhere, so they’re taking that money and investing it in their home.”
On a typical day, his trucks might make deliveries for five cash-on-delivery (COD) jobs. Of late, there’s more often 10 to attend to.
“I don’t know that the supply to the residential customers is any different, as much as the demand for it is higher,” Nickerson said. “Especially the COD customers. The ones who are doing the backyard jobs, whether it be pools, patios or just tinkering around and putting in a fence.”
Labour challenge
One issue when it comes to meeting that demand has been having enough drivers to handle deliveries. Nickerson, who has been in the industry for almost 30 years, recently had to advertise for ready-mix truck drivers. Nickerson admits he’s not sure why that’s the case this year, adding there is an ongoing conversation within the industry about how to do a better job of attracting workers.
“This is the first year in many years that I can remember actually putting an ad out,” he said. “Normally, we’ve got people coming in word-of-mouth. We have a HR department and we’re able to get the people we need. This year, I couldn’t find that. We’ve got trucks parked because we’re unable to find people.”
