Statistics Finland

Social Statistics

Street address: Työpajankatu 13, FI-00580 Helsinki
Postal address: FI-00022 Statistics Finland

Name of indicators:

-Building cost index, total index

Official classification is based on the European Business Statistics Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197. According to the regulation Construction Cost Index is calculated as a weighted average of the component cost indices: Material costs index and Labour costs index (and Other inputs including plant and equipment, transport, energy and other costs). Architect's fees are not part of the construction costs. Statistics Finland also use second unofficial classification to categorize construction costs: Modified Classification of Types of Construction. Currently building types used are Detached and semi-detached house, Block of flats, Service building (former Office and commercial building), Industrial and warehouse building. Also several renovation indices for residential building types are produced, namely Dwelling repairs of residential building, Building repairs of detached houses and Building repairs of blocks of flats. 

Activities covered: The index is based on products used in construction, not on the activity to which the suppliers of these products belong.

Size classes covered: All size classes

List and definition of variables: Material costs for typical inputs are collected. Products and their specifications may vary from one reporting unit to another. Labour costs are calculated using the information from Index of wage and salary earnings.

Accounting conventions: Inquired price is from the 15th of the reference month.

Reporting unit: Enterprise and local unit.

Observation unit(s): Enterprise and local unit.

Building material manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers. Population size is around 300 enterprises.

Geographical area covered: the whole country. The construction costs indicator only covers activities on the national territory.

Date of first use as a source: The earliest building cost index that is still chained is 1951=100. The first release period is January 1951.

Base year/base period: 2015 is used when reference year 2021 was calculated.

Base year 2021=100 is used from reference period 01/2022 on. 2015=100 indices have been chained with 2021=100 index from 01/2022 period. 

Base year 2021=100 indices is released nationally from reference period 01/2022, and is reported for Eurostat via Edamis from reference period 02/2024 onwards.

Euro, data is published as indices.

Material prices are from the 15th day of the month.

Legal basis:

The Statistics Act (280/04) is the general act for the National Statistical Service (NSS). It contains the principles for the data collection, processing, and dissemination of official statistics. The act defines the roles of statistical authorities (Statistics Finland, Customs, National Institute for  Health and Welfare, and Tike, Information Centre of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) and other authorities producing statistics. The Statistics Finland Act (48/1992) states that Statistics Finland (SF) shall provide for the general development of official statistics in collaboration with other central government authorities.

The aim of the NSS is to produce official statistics, Official Statistics of Finland (OSF). European law (especially the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European statistics (EC) No 223/2009) applies to a large portion of OSF.

European Business Statistics Regulation:

The legal basis for Construction cost index is Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 on European business statistics, repealing 10 legal acts in the field of business statistics and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197

Obligation on units to provide data :

The Statistics Act requires that the primarily exploited sources for statistical purposes shall be the data accumulated in the administration of general government and the data produced as a consequence of the normal activities of employers, self-employed persons, corporations, and foundations. SF has the right to have access to these data under the Statistics Act. In addition, all public and private entities in Finland are obliged to provide SF with data on their finances, products and staff as necessary for the production of statistics. The right of SF to collect data by virtue of the obligation does not extend, however, to data that are kept confidential for reasons of international relationships, public safety, the interest of national defence, or the safety of the state. Before any data collection based on the obligation, the statistical authority must consult the respondents or their representatives about the contents, timing, collection methods, duration of storing of the data as well as about costs. Besides those data obtained directly from administrative sources data from natural persons are always collected on voluntary basis by using interviewing or mail and web surveys. In addition, the interviewees must be informed in advance in a written form.

The Statistics Act stipulates that a data provider who willfully fails to provide the obligatory data or willfully provides false data shall be sentenced to a fine. Nevertheless, SF is allowed to refrain from bringing charges if the violation is regarded as minor, but in practice charges have not been filed.

According to the Statistics Act, data obtained by four statistical authorities may be released to other parties either if permitted by legal provisions explicitly concerning the National Statistical Service (NSS), or upon express consent of the subject of the data. As far as statistical authorities are concerned they are allowed to transmit confidential data with identifiers to each other if it is deemed necessary for the production of statistics. The same applies to the European Statistical System authorities (ESS Authorities). Co-ordination among data-producing agencies is normal practice at both specialist and top level.

Internationally data is only sent to Eurostat.

Several legal acts guarantee that individual data should be kept confidential.

According to the Act on the Openness of Government Activities (621/1999) data collected for statistical purposes are confidential. The rule is not applied to the publicity of data describing the activities of central and local government authorities and production of public services or to certain data in the Register of Enterprises and Establishments.

Under the Statistics Act, statistics shall be compiled so that the respondents whom they concern are not directly or indirectly identifiable. Violation of the secrecy obligation is punishable under the Penal Code. At the EU level, similar assurances are included in Council Regulation (EC) No 223/2009.

Details regarding the protection of information on private individuals are laid down in the Finnish Personal Data Act (523/1999).

The Statistics Act obliges statistics-producing authorities to inform respondents in writing or in other appropriate manner about the intended use of the data, the procedures to be used in producing the statistics, the principles governing whether the provision of data is obligatory or voluntary, the rights of the respondents, the arrangements for protecting the data, and the duration the data will be stored.

The Statistics Act allows a statistical authority to grant access to confidential data for use in scientific research or statistical surveys if statistical units cannot be identified directly from them. The right to use data may be given in compliance with a well-defined process including a written application.

SF has implemented procedures to prevent disclosure of any individual data provider. It has published guidelines on how to apply the Statistics Act and the Personal Data Act, as well as guidelines on the protection of tabulated data on enterprises and individual persons. A section on data protection is included in the SF publication Quality Guidelines for Official Statistics. Micro data concerning individual persons released for scientific research are first edited to remove variables that would make it possible to directlyidentify individual persons such as name, address or personal identification number. Similar procedures are used with respect to sensitive information about units other than individual persons.

Only main indices are published. In each index there are several price quotations behind the index numbers, so that informants can not be identified.

A release schedule for the coming year, specifying precise dates of release, is published in the Release Calendar in December by Statistics Finland.

The calendar is available on the website of Statistics Finland http://tilastokeskus.fi/ajk/julkistamiskalenteri/index_en.html.

Indices are published simultaneously to all interested parties. No one has prior access to the statistics before their general release. Series are transmitted to Eurostat on the same day they are published in Finland. The transmission to Eurostat is done via Edamis as SDMX-file.

Monthly.

No news release is published. Latest statistical releases are shown on the front page of Statistics Finland.

A monthly publication is issued on the Internet (https://stat.fi/en/statistics/rki) the day of publication.

Indices are published in English in the StatFin-database of Statistics Finland (https://pxweb2.stat.fi/PXWeb/pxweb/en/StatFin/StatFin__rki/?tablelist=true).

Microdata is not publicly available.

Data is sent to Eurostat monthly.

The documentation on methodology and sources used in preparing statistics is available in English on the Internet (https://stat.fi/en/statistics/documentation/rki).

The documentation on quality management is available in English on the Internet (https://stat.fi/en/statistics/documentation/rki).

The main lines of quality management at Statistics Finland are defined in the handbook Quality Guidelines for Official Statistics. There is also a group for the management of quality and processes at Statistics Finland. The group reports to the Director General. Statistical Methods unit takes care of methodology for quality assurance e.g. in sampling and editing-imputation process.

Statistics Finland develops its activities according to the Total Quality Management principles. It has been influenced by, among other things, the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) excellence model, the United Nations’ Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and Handbook of Statistical Organization, as well as the European Statistics Code of Practice. The quality criteria of OSF are harmonised with the respective criteria of the European Statistical System.

Relevance: Building cost index meets customer needs very well. Ad hoc -indices can be constructed for the special needs of customers.

Accuracy and reliability: Not applicable. Non-probability sampling is used because lack of sampling frame. All published figures are final.

Timeliness and punctuality: Indices are published on the 15th of the month following the reference period. Releases can occasionally be late because of technical problems. Preceding occurrences are rare.

Comparability: Indices represent nationwide figures.

Coherence: The building cost index has a strong coherence with producer price indices because they use partially same price data.

Further information: From time to time statistics are comprehensively evaluated. The latest evaluation of building cost index was at 2008.

Main users of building cost index are building contractors, builders, building materials manufacturers, national accounts, government officials and renters. The index and its component indices can be used for example:

-to estimate the final costs of different building projects

-as an indicator of inflationary pressures in economy

-as a deflator and inflator in estimations of intermediate consumption of building industry

-as an index in contracts to revise price or cost levels.

Not available.

Building cost index meets the requirements given by EBS Regulation (2019/2152 and 2020/1197)

Bias in price trend is quite small, but index may react too slowly on sudden and strong changes in economic conditions.

Not applicable. Non-probability sampling is used because lack of sampling frame.

Non-sampling errors are hard to estimate and overall assessment of the errors can not be given. Several procedures are taken to minimize the effects of non-sampling errors:

-Vast and accurate product specifications for priced items, so probability for misunderstandings is very low (survey instrument).

-Big price changes from previous month are always checked from the respondents (Data editing & validation).

-Motivation of respondents is taken care of and email and phone reminders are pursued. Response rate is approx. 94%. Actions to speed up and increase the rate of response are carried out. For instance, we have extended the period when we try to reach the informants.

Indices are published on the 15th of the month following the reference period.

Timetable of data collection: Online inquiry is open from the 16th to 30th of the reference period. Deadline for response is the 30th of the reference period. Responses after the 7th or 8th of the month following the reference period are not included in the index calculation.

Releases can occasionally be late because of technical problems. Preceding occurrences are rare.

Indices represent nationwide figures. There are no regional figures available.

Old series are chained according to the changes of the currently calculated series.

Building cost index and producer price indices (PPI) have partially same price data which links them strongly together. Building cost index links also to wage statistics because of the use of wage data from the construction industry.

All published index numbers are always internally coherent, because all aggregate indices in all levels are always calculated from the same set of the lowest level elementary aggregate indices.

Cost:

Production of the building cost index requires approximately 1477 person-hours. Number includes both Eurostat requirements and national requirements.

Burden:

Latest respondent burden data is from 2009. Approximate burden is as follows:
3600 (number of questionnaires per year) x 13( average time for filling in the questionnaire, min)/60 min
=780 burden hours.

Figures are not revised and are final at the time of publication.

Building cost indices are not revised. Methodological changes are announced at the time of change.

Type of source: Statistical survey to collect data on materials costs. Other sources (not covered here) are output price index data (Statistics Finland) and wage statistics data (Statistics Finland). New data source (scanner data) for some products typical for hardware stores.

Frame on which the source is based: Reporting units for materials costs selected by VTT Building Technology and Statistics Finland. Suppliers considered typical for the sector are selected.

Sample or census: Sample (convenience sampling)

Sample size: Around 1000 price quotes.

Monthly.

Questionnaires used in the survey: The Construction costs questionnaire; one kind of questionnaire to all responding units. Products for which price quotations are asked differ from one respondent to another.

Data collection media: Internet questionnaires.

Scanner data: complete sales data with information on sales values and quantities and price lists scraped from hardware stores operating online.

Validation level 0: All data transfered from electronic data collection is automatically technically valid data.

Validation level 1: Price data is mainly validated by observing the high price changes from the previous month (outlier detection). The threshold value is 20 %.

Validation levels 2-3: Building cost index has specialized data collection, so the inter-dataset comparisons of the same statistical system (or domain) can not be made. Building cost index use data from PPI and vice versa, so the comparisons between them are not useful.

Validation 4: Evolution of building cost index can be compared to PPI and CPI.

Validation 5: There are no building cost information available outside the Statistics Finland. Comparisons can be made between other building cost indices produced in other countries (eg. Sweden).

Validation for scanner data: extremly high price changes are deleted from micro data.

Estimates for non-response: Price quotation for the previous reference period is used as an estimate for missing data for a given respondent.

Estimates for grossing-up to population levels: Each input influences the overall index in proportion to its share in building budgets (unit price multiplied by quantity used) in the base year.

Type of index: The indices are compiled according to a Laspeyres formula with fixed weights.

Method of weighting and chaining: The weights were determined according to each item's share of total construction cost in the base year. The weights are reviewed every 5 years, along with the selection of factors included in the indices.

Index formulas for two types of scanner data are: 

1. complete sales data with information on sales values and quantities. The index formula applied for this data is Törnqvist. Calculation method for scanner data is corresponding to the Finnish Consumer Price Index.
2. price lists scraped from hardware stores operating online. This data has no information on the sales quantities and index formula applied is Jevons.

In addition, the scanner data allows to calculate average price changes for hierarchical product groups. Suitable product groups are then linked to the product selection of CCI.

None.

Changes in the data collection from the reference period 01/2022: 

In the Finnish CCI we have about 300 index products (sample of representative goods). Price information is collected from different types of suppliers: factories, whole salers, hardware stores, timber suppliers, importers and other price indices. Prices are collected from typically 2-3 different types of suppliers for each index product.

The  selection of index products is based on construction experts. The experts have estimated relevant types of supplier for each index product and also defined weights of the different suppliers for each product.

From 01/2022 on new data sources for the index products relevant for hardware stores have been introduced. There are about 130 index products collected from harware stores from the total of 300. The average weights of hardware stores are approximately 14 % for these 130 index products. This means, that observations from other suppliers (for example factories and whole salers) are given a more signicant weight (average of 86 %). The observations from other suppliers are collected with questionnaires as before (sample of companies based on construction experts).

Two types of scanner data have been introduced;

1. complete sales data with information on sales values and quantities. The index formula applied for this data is Törnqvist. Calculation method for scanner data is corresponding to the Finnish Consumer Price Index.
2. price lists scraped from hardware stores operating online. This data has no information on the sales quantities and index formula applied is Jevons.

 The scanner data allows to calculate average price changes for hierarchical product groups. Suitable product groups are then linked to the product selection of CCI.