Research carried out by Bosch Power Tools found 78 per cent of female respondents said they like using power tools to carry out DIY.

Furthermore, 48 per cent of women cited their creativity as an asset when it comes to making property improvements, while 72 per cent of people believe women to be good at such tasks because they are more patient than men.

Chris Tidy, DIY expert at Bosch, said the gender gap in home adjustments is beginning to narrow.

He described the survey results as “interesting”, because men are traditionally drawn to property maintenance as a means of showing their authority, whereas women seem to be using it to express their imagination.

“Those who shy away from DIY should start off with a simple task such as putting up a shelf and let their creativity grow from there,” Mr Tidy suggested.

A recent survey by Halifax found 62 per cent of homeowners would be willing to make structural changes to their next property, which is further evidence that implies a growing trend for carrying out home improvements.

Ocon Construction has won a £5m student accommodation scheme in Liverpool.

The 100-unit scheme on London Road, for Westville Developments, will also include retail and office space on the ground floor.

Demolition work has just begun to clear the site while an adjacent property has been identified as a building of special historical interest and will be refurbished and integrated with the new build scheme.

The scheme is due for completion by the end of August 2011 in time for the start of the 2011/2012 academic year.

Andy Barker, managing director of Ocon, said: “This is the latest in a number of student accommodation schemes currently on site, including projects that Ocon is building in Loughborough, Exeter, Dundee and Sussex.”

Output will fall by 0.8% across next year, according to the Construction Products Association’s latest five-year forecasts.

Chancellor George Osborne’s spending cuts mean a sustained recovery is unlikely to emerge before 2012 and the industry could take until the end of the decade to return to 2007’s peak.

The office market is expected to fall 16% this year and then return to a 6% rise in 2011. “The commercial sector in particular is not yet driving the recovery,” the association’s chief executive Michael Ankers said.

Publicly funded education projects - which have already been hit by cuts to the Building Schools for the Future programme - are set to slide to almost half this year’s peak by 2014. A temporary boost from London’s Olympic venues will also fade as work on the main venues is completed next year, the body adds.

Construction made a strong contribution to the UK’s 1.2% growth between April and June but the latest warning comes after official figures also showed a 14% fall in construction orders during the second quarter.

The project, which is supported by the Energy Technologies Institute and a number of businesses including building consultancy Building Research Establishment, will investigate whether mass-produced technologies could be used to cut the cost of eco refurbishments.

In order to meet the government’s target of reducing carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, the £3 million scheme would need to renovate 12,500 homes a week for the next 40 years.

Paul Morrell, chief construction adviser at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: “This is way beyond the scale of anything attempted before and calls for a response from the industry that addresses that scale.”

Last month, housing minister Grant Shapps failed to define the meaning of the term zero-carbon, which all new homes must be by 2016 in order to meet environmental standards, before parliament broke for summer recess.

Gordon Miller, sustainability and communications director of Sustain, commented it costs around £200 to ensure an attic is insulated.

And grants are available to help people who receive income support pay for the work, he continued.

“Before you even think about trying to generate electricity or hot water, make sure that the home is properly insulated. That is one of the key things,” Mr Miller said.

Homeowners can expect to save about £200 each year in reduced bills on an insulated home, he remarked, so they will make back their initial outlay within around 12 months.

There are lots of advantages to living in an eco-friendly home, Mr Miller added.

For example, well-insulated properties retain heat better in winter and are cooler in summer.

Ebico recently urged those thinking of selling their house to improve their home’s energy efficiency due to upcoming European Union legislation.

From 2012 it will be compulsory for energy efficiency ratings to be published in all sale advertisements for properties in the UK.

House Building

The amount of new-build housing starts rose by 13 per cent in the second quarter of this year, the latest government figures show.

According to Communities and Local Government, 28,590 homes were constructed between April and June, which represents an increase of 84 per cent on the low of 2009’s first quarter.

Furthermore, housing completions rose for the first time since 2007, by one per cent.

However, Simon Rubinsohn, chief economist at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, pointed out that according to the organisation’s latest Construction Market Survey, enquiries to begin housing projects turned negative in the same period.

“Critically, we suspect that housing starts this year will amount to around 110,000 and the number for next year will be little higher,” he said.

Recently, Brian Berry, director of external affairs at the Federation of Master Builders, stated the government’s proposal to make energy-efficient refurbishments to 26 million houses could provide job opportunities for builders.

Photographic Facade Survey

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SiteMaster Elevation requires only one rectangle with two known side lengths for calibrating an image plan. The software lets you measure and draw a building in 2D with added height information on floors, openings etc.

It saves the exact measurement results by redrawing the image with points, lines, rectangles, polylines, arcs and circles. SiteMaster Elevation transfers drawing elements with state-of-the-art technology to your CAD system, e.g. or SiteMaster Building. After completing your measurements you can generate a report list of all measurements and areas. The results can be exported in excel lists.

Processing digital photographs of the building’s facade in SiteMaster Elevations allows you to enhance your project into a full 3D plan with precise exterior views. You can exchange drawing files between SiteMaster Elevation, SiteMaster (and other solutions) using the .FLX (PowerCAD) and .DXF file formats.

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Sitemaster Elevations screenshots

Revised figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) yesterday revealed the strongest jump in output from the UK construction sector since the second quarter of 1963.

Like then, the 2010 Q2 performance was driven by a sharp rebound following an unusually harsh winter.

One economist described the 8.6 per cent quarterly rise - against an initial estimate of 6.6 per cent between April and June - as a “one-off snow melt boost”.

However, a spokesman for the ONS said that, other things being equal, the upgrade would add 0.1 percentage points to the second quarter’s 1.1 per cent GDP growth rate.

That initial UK estimate caught analysts by surprise last month - expectations had hovered around the 0.6 per cent mark.

Most economists expect a Q2 rate of 1.1 or 1.2 per cent to represent a peak in the pace of recovery before growth slows or even returns to negative territory later this year and next due to impending budget tightening.

Fears of a double-dip recession were further stoked yesterday as economists reacted coolly to news of the fastest growth in eurozone output in more than three years.

Official figures showed GDP in the 16-nation currency zone growing by 1 per cent in the three months to June, driven by Germany’s biggest quarterly expansion since reunification two decades ago.

Positive numbers were also recorded for France, Italy and Spain. Greece, however, saw its economy shrink by 1.5 per cent during the quarter as far-reaching government austerity measures kicked in.

Jennifer McKeown at Capital Economics said it was unusual for growth in the eurozone to outpace that in the US but also highlighted concerns about the strength of the recovery in “peripheral economies”, such as Greece and Ireland.

Carsten Brzeski, an economist with ING, said the German economy - the largest in Europe - was in a “league of its own” and put the impressive growth down to “a catching up in the construction sector after the harsh winter and strong foreign demand for German goods”. But he warned the current growth momentum was unlikely to be sustainable.

“With the one-off impact from the construction sector and normalising of export growth, Germany will return to more ordinary growth numbers.”

According to the revised UK construction data, Q2 output was also sharply higher than a year earlier.

Private home-building rose 9 per cent on the year, and was 22 per cent stronger over the quarter. Gains were even more marked in publicly-funded work, with home-building surging 11 per cent on the quarter and 62 per cent year-on-year - a 30-year record.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors found more of its NI members reported declining workloads than in any other region of the UK.

Most said they expect business to worsen further over the next year.

Parts of the NI construction industry found work declining faster between April and June, with no area showing growth, the survey found.

In the mid-2000s, rapidly rising property prices in Northern Ireland were behind an intensive period of new developments, but the equally rapid fall of the housing market has meant troubling times for the construction industry.

The survey is the latest in a series of gloomy news for the Northern Ireland economy, with rising unemployment, falling business confidence and slower private sector activity.

The construction market in Northern Ireland is at its lowest point since RICS began its survey in 2000.

The scoring system it uses to compile its report rates the current situation in Northern Ireland at more than 10 times worse than Great Britain.

Northern Ireland scored minus 75 in the second quarter of 2010, compared to an average figure of minus seven for England, Scotland and Wales.

RICS Northern Ireland spokesman Jim Sammon said: “Large public spending cuts are a major factor depressing the local construction market, which is very public sector-driven”.

Mr Sammon said that while pressure on public finances meant that cuts were inevitable, “the need to invest in our infrastructure for long-term competitiveness must be taken into consideration in spending decisions”.

“Northern Ireland’s infrastructure has been under-funded for many years, and if we don’t make the necessary investment now, our economy will continue to suffer from this well into the future,” he said.