INSIGHTS
Construction Market Intelligence
UK Edition
Q3 2025
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland’s construction sector remains busy. Encouragingly, major project starts in Belfast including the Strule Shared Education Campus and the new children’s hospital have renewed confidence in the city’s long-term potential for growth.
While material costs have broadly stabilised, labour and material shortages remain the most significant inflationary driver, particularly in high-demand sectors. With tender prices forecast to rise by 3% over the next year, early contractor engagement is critical.
MARKET CONDITIONS & PIPELINE
New opportunities keeping Northern Ireland’s construction sector busy
Construction activity in Northern Ireland is experiencing a mix of growth and challenges across sectors. While some sectors are seeing growth, others are reporting declines in demand.
Belfast is currently showing positive levels of construction activity, with a strong pipeline of new opportunities contributing to the buoyant outlook in the city. The local construction industry is busy and contractors are able to select the opportunities they bid on as their order books are full for the year ahead.
Opportunities within the healthcare sector remain strong. In the higher education sector, there is a large volume of works as the two universities maintain their estates or expand them to provide new faculties or build new apartments to meet the increased demand for student accommodation.
As seen in the rest of the UK, labour and material shortages remain high in the region. While tender pricing is set to increase in line with industry forecasts, the number of large projects that are continuing across the towns and cities of Northern Ireland will aid market competitiveness and help keep price rises at a steady rate.
RLB Market Activity Cycle
The RLB Market Activity Cycle is a representation of the development activity cycle for the construction industry.
RLB considers 10 sectors to be representative of the construction industry as a whole. Each sector is assessed as to which of three activity level zones – peak, mid or trough – best represents the current status of the sector within the cycle. This assessment is then refined by identifying whether the current status is in a growth phase or a decline phase.
The subjective current performance of sectors is identified by ascribing one of the coloured arrows (shown in the legend of the chart) to each sector. NB: In this analysis, sectors are not individually weighted.
▲ Peak Growth ▲ Mid Growth ▲ Trough Growth
▼ Peak Decline ▼ Mid Decline ▼ Trough Decline
Market sector activity analysis: UNITED KINGDOM
▲ Peak Growth ▲ Mid Growth ▲ Trough Growth
▼ Peak Decline ▼ Mid Decline ▼ Trough Decline
Consolidating the results of multiple regions enables the calculation of a national representation of percentage of sectors in each phase of the cycle at a point in time.
Market sector activity analysis: NORTHERN IRELAND
▲ Peak Growth ▲ Mid Growth ▲ Trough Growth
▼ Peak Decline ▼ Mid Decline ▼ Trough Decline
Consolidating the results of a region enables the calculation of a regional representation of percentage of sectors in each phase of the cycle at a point in time.
TENDER PRICES
- Tender prices are forecast to rise in line with general inflation, with prices increasing steadily from current levels but not drastically as in previous years.
▉ RLB Northern Ireland
▉ BCIS (National) TPI ▉ BCIS (GBCI)
▉ Competitors' range (High & Low)
INPUT COSTS
- There is strong demand for all skilled trades, particularly for masonry and MEP workers.
- MEP tender returns have seen a significant increase in costs due to the scarcity of labour and the lack of availability from competent subcontractors.
SECTOR FOCUS
Education
Strule Shared Education Campus, now under construction and scheduled to open in September 2028, represents £375m of investment which will deliver world-class educational facilities and wide-ranging educational, societal and economic benefits for the Omagh community and the west of Northern Ireland. The Department of Education has also recently announced funding for major new build school projects.
Healthcare
Belfast Health and Social Care Trust has marked the start of construction works on the city’s new state-of-the-art children’s hospital on the Royal Hospitals site. It will have 10 floors, 155 beds, 10 theatres, and an emergency department capable of catering for up to 45,000 children per year. Construction is due to last five years.
Alpha Housing
RLB is providing Alpha Housing with cost and project management services to support its delivery of much-needed quality social housing across Northern Ireland.
Two apartment block developments currently on site and due for completion by March 2026 are Parkside Gardens, Belfast, and Main Street, Cullybackey, Ballymena, which together will create nearly 40 new homes.
JOIN OUR
PROFESSIONAL NETWORK
Modern Slavery Statement
RLB © 2025 Rider Levett Bucknall.