Dive summary:

• New construction starts fell off 1% last month, compared with May, but a reading of 104 on the Dodge Momentum Index still helped this year look better than it began.
• The Index, compiled by McGraw Hill Construction, uses each month's annual rate of construction investment (12 times that month's investment) and scores that number on a scale that uses 2000 as the base year that was equal to 100.
• In June, residential, commercial and nonbuilding starts came in at an annual pace of $489.5 billion with help from several bridge projects that got going, and that helped take some of the sting out of a 2% drop for the first half of the year that was largely due to much less electric utility work than in the first half of 2012.

From the article:

“The first half of 2013 revealed a mixed performance by project type, producing a hesitant pattern for total construction starts,” stated Robert A. Murray, vice president of economic affairs for McGraw Hill Construction.  ...