Construction Equipment Owner

I was chatting with my publisher today and he poised the question to me about what are the current trends in the interest in specific types of construction equipment and does this correlate to what the market is experiencing. This got me thinking and so I decided to look into it since crunching numbers and working with spreadsheets is a very enjoyable task for me to do. As evidence with my massive Fantasy Football Excel file, I’ll jump at the opportunity to analyze data at the drop of the hat.

Now, I’ll tell you this was no massive 10-year survey with extensive theology put behind the research. These stats are based off of taking a look at our Equipment Product Section of the website and identifying what categories have been the most popular over the past four months.

Here are the Top Three most popular equipment types:
Concrete Equipment
This was the No. 1 most popular Equipment Section on our site three out of the four months reviewed (being No. 2 the other month). This was a bit of a surprise to me I’d have to say. As a lot of our concrete readership is tied to residential and commercial flatwork - which is significantly down - you wouldn’t expect these types of products to be in much demand. But according to the visitors of our website, there is still much interest in these types of products.

Asphalt Preservation and Maintenance
A strong No. 2 average placing each month. This seems to mirror what we are hearing in the market in terms of allocation of stimulus funds. A lot is going in to the preservation and maintenance of existing roads and not really too much to new projects.

Pavement Marking Equipment
Hurt by a No. 4 most popular section in April, Pavement Marking Equipment has been a constant No. 2 or No. 3 the past few months. I would imagine this coincides with the striping season. The spring was simply the beginning of the season and as we are in the prime of the season now the interest for these types of products continues to stay strong.

Does this reflect what you are looking at these days? Have other suggestions as to what type of equipment is most popular these days. Let us know in the comment section below

On July 16, 1867, F. Joseph Monier patented reinforced concrete. The idea came to him while trying to design a concrete flower pot. Read the whole story at Wired magazine.

Eric Herrenkohl, one of our regular contributors on ForConstructionPros.com, is having a book published entitled:”How to Hire A-Players: Finding the Top People for your Team - Even if You Don’t Have a Recruiting Department.” The book, to be published by John Wiley & Sons, will be on sale in major book stores and on-line through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and other sites beginning April 12, 2010.

Eric decided to write this book because of so many instances in which his clients ask the same question: “Where do I go to find great employees?” In the book, Eric compiles the lessons that his clients and he have learned about how to consistently find and hire A-player employees.

According to Eric: “The companies that consistently hire A-players prospect for new employees just like they prospect for new customers. For them, recruiting is an ongoing process, not a periodic event. They know the profile of an A-player employee for their company and they interview people constantly. They know how to weed out weaker job candidates. When they find great people they hire them, whether or not they have an opening. Critically, these companies know how to accomplish all of this without a large HR department or a famous corporate brand.”

Read some of Eric’s articles on ForConstructionPros.com that deal with the topic of employee recruitment and retention:
Developing Your Farm Team in the Construction Industry
Hiring A-Players in the Construction Industry

Baseball’s All-Star Break traditionally marks the unofficial (and mathematically inaccurate) half-way point of the season and it’s a time when teams reassess how their first half went, what their second half looks like, and what their prospects are for making the post-season. If you’re a Chicago baseball fan it’s been a frustrating few months with both the White Sox and the Cubs hovering around the .500 mark and demonstrating that they’re not quite “there” yet, though they’re not quite out of it either. There are worse places to be at this point.

I suspect most contractors feel just like Cubs and Sox fans: There are worse places they could be halfway through the season. Paving contractors, unfortunately, probably feel a little like Baltimore Orioles fans who are watching their team not quite be able to get near that .500 benchmark.

At least that’s what we’re hearing from contractors in the front lines and the manufacturers and material suppliers who support them. Pavement maintenance work continues to be steady if not plentiful, with many contractors scheduled four to six weeks out (in a normal year they’d be six to eight weeks out). Competition is tough, which is having an impact on margins, but the pavement maintenance work does seem to be out there still. And, contractors tell us that, for whatever reason, they have an unusually large number of jobs they’ve bid — but those jobs that haven’t yet been awarded. So there’s an undercurrent of optimism that there will be more work to come, with the prospect of a busy pavement maintenance fall season.

With paving contractors, on the other hand, there is no such undercurrent. New construction is still struggling so builders don’t need new driveways and new parking lots. Commercial overlay work has also declined as many properties are paying close attention to their pennies as vacancy rates increase while debt loads remain the same. And the federal stimulus package, while generating sporadic work throughout the country, has so far not had the intended impact of putting fleets of iron and crews of workers back in the field en mass. Plus, the work that is getting done is getting done at significantly smaller margins than paving contractors want and need.

So if your business is a “Cubs” or “Sox” business and you’re doing okay though not as well as you’d hoped, remember we’re only halfway through the season; a successful year is still within reach and flirting with .500 is something to build on. If your business is operating like the Orioles (or the Pittsburgh Pirates or the San Diego Padres) a “strong” season might be out of the question but a strong finish to lay the groundwork for 2010 isn’t.

Do I sound like a Cubs fan or what?

 Concrete’s contributions to sustainable construction are many — pervious concrete, insulated walls, low-albedo values, supplementary cementicious materials (SMCs), recycling opportunities, and more – but many people continue to focus on concrete’s negative affects on the environment, namely carbon dioxide emissions from cement production. The industry has been working on sustainable manufacturing and increasing the use of cement substitutes like fly ash and slag, which lessen the amount of cement needed in concrete production. And scientists have recently found another cement substitute that’s carbon neutral — rice husks. The Discover Channel reports that rice husk ash could replace up to 20 percent of the cement in a concrete mix.

The New York Times ran a story today on the Obama administration’s decision to require businesses that work on federal projects to verify the legal work status of their employees through the E-Verify system. The rule will affect contractors who gain new contracts after Sept. 8, 2009.

e-Builder and FMI will co-host a one-hour webinar on Thursday, July 16, 2009. The webinar, titled “Inflection Point - Defining the Future of the Worldwide Construction Market”, will discuss how FMI has begun taking a formal look at the industry’s current inflection point through scenario planning - the development of a series of scenarios that describe potential futures for the construction industry. This session is part of e-Builder’s monthly executive webinar series.

Webinar participants will learn how the potential implications of each scenario will rock the foundations of architects, engineers, contractors and owners or buyers of construction services over the next 10 to 20 years. During the one-hour webinar, FMI senior consultant, Mark Bridgers, will share the trends, drivers and themes used to develop four scenarios and will discuss how senior managers running organizations in the construction industry can use this knowledge to position a firm to benefit rather than suffer during this period of change.

This webinar is free, but registration is required. To register, visit: http://www.e-builder.com/