Construction Informer

Bluebeam's Website features some comic relief from paper.

It’s always nice to see some creativity in the realm of marketing messages, even if it might be a little corny as in, “Battlin’ broomsticks Batman did you see witch way it went?”

Bluebeam Software tames the paper we all love to hate in construction by making it easy to use PDFs for everything, (except maybe as paper in the porta john).

So at AIA Miami in June the company is unveiling a monstrous super hero booth. Here you can get a look at the the company’s latest efforts to rid us of paper once and for all.

The company’s booth (#2387) is going to be a whopping 600 sf. This is all designed to showcase its new technology, and also it appears to be showcasing its artistic and story telling talent.

We never really know how well we are communicating if we don’t show that we welcome feedback. People are often afraid to speak their minds if they perceive what they are thinking may not be in line with what you are thinking. Instead, you just get a weak agreement with your thoughts.

Unfortunately, while that might make you feel good, it doesn’t go very far toward getting a wide range of ideas. And it is a wide range of ideas that ultimately leads to sound decisions.

Assuming you aren’t just making the decisions you make so you can be the hero, or show that you know what’s best for everyone in any given situation, then there are some things you can do to let people know you welcome feedback.

• Publish it. Whenever you respond to an email, or write a memo where you are trying to get people to offer suggestions or feedback, don’t forget to ask for it.
• Speak it. In meetings, on the phone, or in one-to-one talks break out four simple words: “What do you think?”
• Recognize it. Let people know you received it and thank them. Then, go one step further and when feedback leads to great things, highlight it so others know it is valued.

Thoughts are the life blood of any company but people need to know they are welcomed and valued.

I put up a basic poll in the sidebar earlier in September and it just finished up. There really weren’t enough responses to make it significant. This blog is getting 12,000 page views a month so it’s kind of surprising that there weren’t more votes. Of course the topic was probably kind of lame. I mean, really, who cares in construction what OS you use. I guess just me and a few others. But mainly I wanted to test the plug-in and widget.

Internet polls are far from scientific but I think if they get enough responses they can indicate trends. For the polls on these pages I have disabled the “ISP cookie thing” so in effect people can vote more than once. I just figure there are enough cookies floating around and the people who stop by here are probably not interested in skewing my little polls. 

For the next ten days the poll on the right seeks to discover just how real this credit crunch is for those who are in construction. I’ve been hearing from several sources that it’s simply more smoke and mirrors and that good businesses are not having any difficulty with credit. After all, aren’t banks in business to loan? How could they all of a sudden decide a long-time customer with an excellent repayment history and a realistic business plan isn’t worth the risk? If they do that, why not just go out of business.

Anyway, maybe your vote will add to some clarity. Comments are always welcome also.

You only have to look at main street USA to see examples of how adaptation allowed some to survive. In city after city when a Wal-Mart store was about to move in small businesses and governments would band together to try to prevent it. But the consumers voted with their wallets, as they will most often do, and in the end the giant retailer prevailed. And while local business after local business closed up, some changed their focus, adapted and thrived. The difference was refining their niche and doing it better than the big store, or anyone else could do it for that matter.

Now home building/remodeling construction companies face the challenges of a shrinking pool of customers due to more people not owning homes and fewer people purchasing them. The nation’s infrastructure builders find there is ample need, but no money or political will to tackle the necessary construction. Commercial building projects are fading and there is already a long- slow decline in the offing.

The first thing that happens in these times is the less competitive close up. Those who absolutely have to get top dollar because of their skill level, belief in the superiority of the product they deliver, and unwillingness to meet market demands, either find a niche with top-end clients who recognize and appreciate their value, or they fade away. Those who charge competitively but don’t deliver enough quality to match what they charge, move down the chain and struggle, or fade away. There is a fate allotted to every firm in the hierarchy and they all can end up out of business.

These are exactly the times when the really creative and thoughtful companies find new opportunities. These are fertile times for those people who like to walk around the edges of your business pushing on the envelope and asking questions that nobody has dared ask before. These are the times that belong to companies that actually listen to that hair-brained idea someone in accounting has been talking about for the last three years.

These are the times that test businesses and without times like these most businesses would devolve into inefficient bureaucracies that no longer adapt quickly enough for the market. If that sounds like your company it may be time to look for other work, or roll up your sleeves, and open your mind.

If you read enough reports and company explanations about why profits are up or down you are reminded that there are cycles in business and to expect them and work with them. But you have to be careful about making assumptions.

It might be tempting to think that with a slow down in home construction there would be an increase in the available supply of materials and therefore it would be a good time to stock up at lower prices. Well, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be a break in material costs.

The Non-Manufacturing ISM (Institute for Supply Management) Report on Business, put out by the Institute for Supply Management, shows construction as one industry reporting higher prices for materials and services in January. This is in the face of construction being listed among the 14 industries that saw negative growth the same month. That means there’s less building going on, but material prices are rising.

When you look out across the landscape of material suppliers you see losses being reported. Louisiana-Pacific Corporation (LP) reported loosing $39 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 and blamed that loss on the decline in construction in the housing industry and the decline in the value of the dollar. Encore Wire (WIRE), makers of electrical wire for buildings, reported a $1.1 million loss and largely blamed the decline on the actions of other wire makers who kept lowering prices. Its CEO, Daniel L Jones commented:

“Despite strong copper prices, margins in the building wire industry continue to be compressed. Certain competitors continue to respond to the slowdown in residential construction by cutting wire prices in an attempt to maintain market shares, compressing margins below our expectations at this level of copper prices.”

Temple-Inland (TIN), a well diversified company, reported overall record profits, but lower gains than 2006 for building products like lumber, particle board and gypsum. The company cited lower prices in Q4 of 2007, when compared to Q4 of 2006, as a contributing factor to this drop in revenue. Doyle R. Simons, chairman and CEO said:

“Building Products pricing and demand were adversely affected by deteriorating housing markets in 2007. We are focused on lowering costs and matching our production to our demand. We expect 2008 to be difficult for our building products business.”

At some point in the future all three companies will be probably be reporting they had the expected or record profits and cite the obvious reasons why. And so it seems that business cycles, like the seasons, owe their very life blood to expected changes that happen at regular intervals. It’s not something to fight, or rail against, or whine about…it just is.