Managing Director's Column - The Outlook for 2023

As 2023 marches on it felt the right time to put pen to paper and look forward to what’s to come this year. 

2022 was undoubtedly a year with some real challenges for everyone.   Significant rises in the costs of living as well as increases in wage and materials costs in our industry had an impact on demand across the sector.  But here at GCD we’ve started the year with a very healthy order book and January has seen lots of new enquiries coming in.  

There were some wonderful highlights during last year - exciting projects in SW London for former clients who asked us back, some prestigious projects across Central London and we were delighted to receive more awards recognising our work.  Clients still want to improve their homes but are making more careful and calculated decisions about where they invest their money. 

While the supply chain remains difficult to manage with warnings of delays and price rises never far away, we started to see a real improvement in the availability of good labour towards the end of last year as the larger construction industry contracted and employees moved to smaller private firms.

Overall we are looking forward to a strong year, even better than last year and will be looking to build our team to drive that growth. Finding a good builder has always been difficult but our reputation, high recommendation rate and loyal customers give us confidence of continued growth in these uncertain times.