Construction Informer

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Podcast: Play in new window
| Download (3.7MB)

Podcast Transcript
Here’s an interesting item I came across while researching a totally different topic. Many of you who use those great little lumber crayons for marking everything from lumber to the back of your buddy’s hard hat, may not realize it but those little tubes of grease can [...]

One thing’s for sure, there is no shortage of opinions on how to manage and lead a construction business. Opinions are most often born from experience so when we opine we are in effect speaking from the perspectives of our own experiences. If I’ve had good luck managing through fear, then I’m no doubt twice [...]

There is a whole topic related to employees that gets little attention in many construction circles. Why, how and when do we invest in our people.
The header to an article at Workforce Management sums up the realities of spending on employee training and development:
Companies expend a great deal of energy in establishing programs that [...]

It is true for a great many people that how they spend their workdays is an effort in just getting by, and that is reflected in their enthusiasm for the work. I have noticed that whenever you manage construction jobs you are bombarded by people looking for work. Some of those people are mostly interested [...]

Just like in the aftermath of all past wars there are people returning from war and conflict today who need to reestablish life in society.
There are also projected labor shortages for many occupations, and construction is one of those. Perhaps not right now, but certainly as economies recover, most every sector of the AEC [...]

Last August I reported here on an effort underway by some of the major construction firms to establish best practices for ensuring, and promoting, ethical behavior in the construction industry. Called the Construction Industry Ethics and Compliance Initiative (CIECI) it has 13 founding member companies and 13 principal member companies.
Firms in any of the [...]

By at least some accounts the use of temporary people in construction work is expected to increase through 2016.
According to the American Staffing Association (ASA) more than 2.5 million people are employed everyday by staffing companies. Although the industry shrunk in 2008, and has remained flat for the first six months of 2009, the prognosis [...]

If you pay close attention to construction news you often find underlying currents that point to the subtle issues of today that will grow into the major issues of tomorrow. Workforce diversity is one such issue.
This past spring Philadelphia released a study that found one-fifth of all construction workers on large city projects were male [...]

Another thing tough economic times do is they cause us to re-think some time-honored beliefs. One of those that is coming up more and more frequently has to do with our preoccupation of sending everyone to get a four-year degree. I have delved into this topic before, here, here, and here.
USAToday just highlighted an unconventional [...]

From Massachusetts to Washington, DC to Kansas City and beyond, the construction world is abuzz with an acronym. PLA, or project labor agreement, has re-surfaced in the wake of the large government spending that is about to take place for stimulus-funded construction projects. This is nothing new as whenever massive federal spending on construction is [...]