Construction Equipment Owner

The American Subcontractors Association is currently offering a free podcast entitled “10 Survival Tips for Contractors in Lean Times.” Hosted by Donald Gregory, Esq. of the Columbus, Ohio-based law firm of Kegler, Brown, Hill and Ritter, the 15-minute podcast addresses topics such as preserving lien rights and cost-cutting. You can listen to the podcast through your computer or download the program to your iPod or MP3 player. Access the podcast at the ASA’s website.

We’ve been stuck in a bit of a cold snap here in Wisconsin — a nice time to kick back on the couch under a blanket with a warm cup of tea for some easy reading. “Easy reading” for me no longer means a steady diet of knitting magazines and Tony Hillerman novels, but instead topics like pervious concrete and sustainable construction. A few great reads I’ve recently taken in include two white papers from L.M. Scofield — “How Concrete Contributes to Today’s Green Designs” and “Design and Construction of Pervious Concrete Pavements.” If you’ve got a little time and want to increase your knowledge base on either of these topics, I encourage you to take a look at these publications.

I recently received some pretty interesting underwater photography … of bending rebar! The photos were taken on a jobsite offshore in the Bahamas. The contractor was hired to refurbish a couple berths in the port. He wrote of the project, ” We have to custom build cages which requires drilling, doweling and epoxy to make the structures. We have to bend the rebar in place to customize each cage, then build a form around it and pump concrete in.”

Underwater bending was performed using EZE Bend equipment. Brad Rozema of EZE Bend explains, “Using radio communication to activate the hydraulics, the diver completes rebar bends underwater.”

This blog posting from AEM was originally published by The Hill - which covers politics in Washington, D.C.

This blog is another call for an increase in the investment in America’s infrastructure, this time by the AEM. One point brought up in this post that I have not heard discussed all that much has to do with the type of projects that should benefit from this investment. The AEM states that “Funded infrastructure projects must provide for the greater common good” and that “Projects that benefit all Americans include critical commerce corridors, upgrades to existing highways, ports and water systems.”

I will close this blog with the closing of AEM’s post as I think it states in its simplest terms our situation and what needs to happen. “The U.S. has an infrastructure crisis. The time for action by the Congress and the new Administration is now.”

Click to read the full blog posted by AEM

2008 was tough and 2009 is likely to be tougher. So what’s the most-important step you can take as you prepare to start your season? To me it’s obvious: Attend National Pavement Expo, Feb. 18-21 in Charlotte, NC. Cynics out there might think I’m shilling for Cygnus Business Media, which employs me and operates NPE — but that’s not the case. Obviously we all want the company we work for to be successful, but that’s not the reason I’m urging contractors to attend NPE.

Simply put, NPE can help your business survive, grow, and even become more profitable regardless of the economic conditions. No joke and no exaggeration. I’ve been putting together the conference program since 1991 and I can tell you of countless contractors who have stopped be in the hall or on the exhibit floor to tell me variations of “This show has made my business.” Most of our speakers have had the same experience.

Unfortunately I’ve also talked with people — over the phone — who say they don’t come to NPE for any of a variety of excuses. Too bad for them. Most of those folks are looking for the Big Secret that will solve all their business problems and make them millions. But education — and business — doesn’t work that way. The contractors who attend NPE successfully are those who take bits of information from seminars, ideas of contractors they’ve met between sessions, answers to questions they’ve posed to exhibitors on the floor — and then applied what they learned to their business. These bits of information might be small, enabling them to save, perhaps, $100 on a job. But if that contractor does 250 jobs a year he’s just moved $25,000 to his bottom line. And that’s just for one year. What happens if he can apply that savings over 10 years?