| BROOKSTONE INDUSTRIES | August 3, 2026 · Vol. 1, Issue 5 |
BRIEF.
| The Local Desk |
Four stories we clipped. Links go to the original reporting.
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Lancaster city narrows where data centers can go
LancasterOnline · July 15
Council’s 7–0 ordinance, effective August 3, limits new data centers to 16 properties in the city’s northeast corner and adds zoning hearings, noise studies, and decommissioning plans. The two Chirisa Technology Parks campuses at the former printing plants are grandfathered; the Harrisburg Pike building — a new two-story, roughly million-square-foot structure — is targeted to start construction in November 2026.
Read more →
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A township budgeted $5.9M and the low bid came in at $10M
LancasterOnline · June 16
Lancaster Township opened bids on a new public works facility in January and found the low number about 70% over its estimate. Redesigned with Buchart Horn, Inc. — less height, smaller crane span, less vehicle storage — the projected cost is now roughly $8 million for 23,000 square feet, financed with a proposed $6 million term loan. Supervisors were set to authorize construction at 6 p.m. on August 10.
Read more →
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$6.8 million in state grants lands on four city projects
Pennsylvania House of Representatives · July 17
Four Lancaster city projects drew Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program awards — the local share of a $109.3 million, 68-project statewide round. $3.4M to Ecore International to convert a century-old building into offices, $2M to Arconic US for a warehouse expansion and water piping replacement, $1M to Franklin & Marshall College for a wellness center, and $400K to College Avenue Property Holding Company LLC. RACP money funds design, acquisition, and construction.
Read more →
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Harrisburg moves on data center rules — with strings attached
Pennsylvania Capital-Star · June 25
The state House passed three data center bills before the budget deadline. One would let any municipality enact a 180-day pause on applications. Another would condition the 6% sales-tax exemption on certification that a project creates at least 200 prevailing-wage construction jobs, 50 permanent jobs at 125% of the statewide average wage, and $250 million in investment. A third would repeal the exemption outright. All three sit with the Senate. ABC Keystone, up the road in Manheim, has been tracking related prevailing-wage legislation in the same chamber.
Read more →
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| National Construction Outlook |
One tracks drawings. The other tracks signed work. Both landed in July.
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Design Work — AIA/Deltek ABI
47.3
↓ Below the 50 growth line
June reading, up ~3 points from May. 41st straight month without a majority reporting growth. Q2 backlog 6.3 months, down from 6.6.
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Signed Work — ABC Backlog
8.8 mo
→ Down 0.3 mo, up 0.1 vs. 2025
June member survey. Still longer than any month from Sept 2023 through April 2026. Confidence above 50 on sales and staffing.
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| On data center work 13% of members |
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| Everybody else the other 87% |
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Two and a half months of difference, depending on whether you’re on that work. Which is why the zoning items up top are worth watching.
Sources: AIA/Deltek ABI, June 2026 · Associated Builders and Contractors, July 2026
| ★ Special Focus · August 2026 |
In July we said Nucor holding hot-rolled coil flat at $1,130 looked like the clearest sign yet that sheet steel was near a top, while noting a pause isn’t a price cut. Here’s what happened: after a three-week hold, Nucor went to $1,135 on July 13, held a week, then went to $1,145 on July 27. We read that wrong. Meanwhile diesel ran to $5.31 a gallon, up $1.51 from a year ago, and a new tariff front opens August 19 that has nothing to do with metal.
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$1,145
HRC spot/ton — climbing
again (Nucor, July 27) |
$5.31
Diesel/gal, up $1.51
year over year (EIA) |
9 wks
Galvanized lead time —
highest since late 2023 |
Fuel is the tallest bar on the board — the diesel index is up 65.8% from a year ago, ahead of aluminum. And the last two bars are the part we keep coming back to: all inputs up 7.1% year over year, contractor bid prices up 3.5%. Roughly double.
One fair caveat on that diesel bar: the index actually fell 18.4% month over month in June, which is most of why all inputs dipped half a percent. But retail diesel has more than taken it back since — $5.31 a gallon as of the week of July 27, up 17.9¢ in that week alone.
| Material | Trend | What to Watch |
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| HRC / Sheet Steel | ↑ | Nucor went to $1,135/ton July 13 and $1,145 July 27; SMU put the U.S. average at $1,165 on July 21. Mill lead times three to five weeks. Nucor posts a new spot number Mondays — worth a look before you commit a metal-heavy number this week. (Nucor / Steel Market Update) |
| Diesel / Fuel | ↑↑ | National on-highway average $5.313/gal for the week of July 27 — up 17.9¢ in one week and $1.51 from a year ago. Use the Central Atlantic figure for Pennsylvania, $5.579, not the national number. If fuel is still buried in an overhead rate you set when diesel was under $4, a visible surcharge indexed to this number is easier to defend than a padded unit price — owners argue with markup, rarely with a published index. Free, posted Mondays at eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel. (EIA) |
| Aluminum | ↑↑ | Mill shapes +52.4% year over year through June — still the worst line on the board, still no plateau. The 50% Section 232 tariff has pulled U.S. prices away from world prices. (AGC, July 15 2026) |
| Copper | ↑↑ | Copper and brass mill shapes +26.0% year over year. COMEX copper settled at $6.376/lb on July 29, up 3.3% for the month and 43.6% year to date — about 5% under the May record. (AGC / COMEX) |
| Galvanized Sheet | ↑ | Here the number that moved is time, not price. Average galvanized mill lead times edged up to nine weeks in late June, a high last seen in late 2023, with Galvalume around eight and a half. Coated product is running weeks longer than hot band. (Steel Market Update, June 25 2026) |
| Lumber & Panels | → | Framing lumber around $614 per 1,000 board feet on July 31, off a high near $642 earlier in the month. Note what the August 19 tariffs do not cover: softwood lumber is carved out. Plywood, MDF, and moldings are not. (Trading Economics / NAHB) |
| Canadian-Sourced Goods | ↑↑ | New and easy to miss. Effective August 19, an additional 50% hits a long list of Canadian imports including cement, paint, plywood, veneered panels, MDF and fiberboard, wood moldings, doors and frames, and fiber optic cable. Per the proclamations, USMCA origin doesn’t exempt it. Confirm scope with your customs broker. (Section 338 proclamations, July 20 2026) |
Metals are unchanged since June 8. What’s new is a different authority — three proclamations signed July 20 under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, adding 50% to a list of Canadian goods starting August 19. Ductwork, structural steel, copper piping, and galvanized sheet appear to fall outside it, since the proclamations carve out goods already covered by Section 232. If you have a job with Canadian-sourced cement, paint, plywood, doors, or panel products that hasn’t cleared customs, that’s a call to your supplier this week rather than in September. We’re not customs people — verify anything unusual with a broker. AGC keeps a running list at agc.org/tariff-resources-contractors.
Sources: AGC (July 15, 2026) · EIA · Steel Market Update (June 25, 2026) · Trading Economics
Green Apprentice.
SMACNA ran a piece by its AI Leadership consultant, Hugh Seaton, that does something nobody selling software does: it explains why the thing is unreliable. AI runs on probability, not instructions — that’s what lets it handle messy real-world inputs, and it’s also why “outputs are not automatically reliable.” Hence his frame: “It can read fast, write fast and find things fast, but it needs supervision and clear direction, just like a green apprentice.”
He names five risks and a fix for each. The four that matter most in a shop:
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The Easy Button
It sounds confident and looks polished, so people stop checking. His fix: treat AI training like safety training — “essential, non-negotiable and ongoing” — and do part of it in person so people learn from each other.
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Overautomation
Vendors are promising to automate whole workflows. “There is a reason experienced workers do certain things.” Automate what supports judgment; don’t automate the judgment.
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Overwhelm
Long hours already. Now a tool that buries people in more information than they can read. Brief training on how to ask for less fixes most of it.
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Security — and it’s not what you think
He corrects the common worry: the model doesn’t remember your work. The real concern is “prompt injection” — a document or website feeding it instructions you didn’t give it. Fix is IT awareness, not avoidance.
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Two things to add from our own reading. A DEWALT study this spring found 90% of construction professionals expect AI to be indispensable within five years and 8% use it on the job today — so nobody in this trade is behind. And there’s now an optional ISO endorsement, form CG 40 47, that excludes generative-AI-related liability from general liability policies. Whether it’s on yours is a free phone call to your broker.
For our part, we don’t think software is what wins a job. A drawing somebody checked, metal cut right the first time, and a delivery that shows up when we said it would. Better. Metal. Faster.
Get a Number.
Even a rough sketch. We’ll come back with a price, today’s material cost, and a date we can actually hit. No obligation — and a real person looks at it, not a form.
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| 📞 717.859.3340 |
| ✉ sales@brookstoneind.com |
Brookstone Industries · 161 Zook’s Mill Road, Ephrata PA 17522
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The Brookstone Brief is published monthly as a resource for our clients and partners. All market data is sourced from publicly available third-party publications — links provided for full context. Content is intended for general planning purposes only and is not legal, insurance, tax, or financial advice.
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