All during 2004, ENR has been reporting about the return of inflation to construction. That quaint phenomenon from the 1970s was back in double-digit form, much to the consternation of the industry. Contractors struggling with a broad range of material price escalation often found that their biggest problem was convincing owners that there really was a problem and that they were not just trying to bury more profit in a pile of invoices. After all, it was easy for owners to be complacent after more than a decade of moderate inflation that even the record long economic expansion of the 1990s failed to stir.
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