Construction Equipment Owner

National Careers in Construction Week will take place this week. Last year several governors proclaimed Careers in Construction Week in their state and the week received recognition from the White House. Besides the possibility of being recognized by the White House, this week your construction business should make the effort to promote the industry and the rewarding career opportunities it provides. It will also be a good opportunity to further relay the message of the need for a multi-year highway investment bill.

You can find materails to assist your organization and others in planning a successful week including: a comprehensive Careers in Construction Week Planning Guide equipped with sample press releases, logos, proclamation templates, and suggested week activities at the NCCER Careers website. NCCER also has the 2008 Build Your Future career awareness video that you can watch below.

Here’s an interesting little construction tid-bit I came across in regards to practices of training the younger workforce entering the construction industry. The following information was supplied by LexisNexis:

Japanese construction firms are acting to carry veteran workers’ skills and knowledge to young staff as they are concerned about a shrinking workforce at a time when baby boomers are retiring.

Taisei Corp. has started deploying retired employees in building and engineering work sites to teach young staff. In May last year, Shimizu Corp. started letting veteran staff visit construction sites regularly to give advice. The company launched workshops in February to allow workers to share improvements in skills.

Tobishima Corp. has appointed over 30 veterans, mainly in their 50s, as skill keepers. “We hope to surely preserve Tobishima’s DNA,” a company official said.

According to the Japan Civil Engineering Contractors Association, five major Japanese constructors are expected to lose 12,000 workers together for compulsory retirement over seven years starting in 2005.

I like the concept of “skill keepers.” The thought of how you are going to replace your aging workforce may have been pushed to the back burner in the recent market, but now may be the time to start crafting your plan on how the skills and knowldge of your older employees don’t leave with the workers but get passed down and remain in your crews.

This is precisely what one Skyline Construction Inc. of San Fransisco is doing. Ok, there are a couple of limitations to this, but basically it boils down to the following: Select employees of the company chose their own salary from a selected range. Then here is where it gets interesting. Those who chose a lower salary had an opportunity to receive a larger bonus at the end of the year if the company turned a profit.

Of the 15 employees who were offered to set their own salary, 12 decided to go on the lower end and roll the dice on earning a larger bonus at the end of the year - bonus amount was not disclosed, but the employees who chose the lower up-front wages reported being happy with their decisions.

The result? Skyline’s revenue grew from $42 million in 2004 to $76 million last year.

One belief for why this is so far has been a successful venture is that when employees are more directly in charge of their compensation they will be additionally motivated and more likely to produce profitable results because as the business succeeds so does their monetary return.

The up again, down again stimulus news hit a pretty high note today in a newsfeed item that came across the wire - Stimulus Work on the Cusp of Revving up the Economy: “ProPublica asked members of its reporting network to find out if states had advertised the projects, awarded contracts or actually started construction work. While about 30 percent of the projects in the sample had broken ground by mid-summer, at least 66 percent had a contract and 76 percent had been put out to bid - suggesting an impending gusher of stimulus work in late summer and early fall.”

In addition to news items, ProPublica has a pretty good site that breaks down stimulus funding in a variety of ways: http://www.propublica.org/ion/stimulus/item/our-stimulus-spot-check-summer-wave-of-projects-nears-crest-817

Another Stimulus Work Search Tool from JW Surety Bond Consultants

Despite the fact that I need to get some more updated material for my blog headlines it does appropriately illustrate what we’ve been hearing from our audience of construction professionals. They want to know where they can track stimulus spending. By far, the best site I’ve found is Recovery.org. This is not to be confused with the Government site Recovery.gov.

We’ve worked together with the folks at Onvia (the company powering Recovery.org) before on this website and call tell you they have a large amount of resources dedicated to tracking ARRA and other projects. Mike Pickett, President and CEO of Onvia, recently posted an article on HuffingtonPost.com regarding “What We Do Know About the Recovery.”

I would encourage our audience to read this analysis and then check out Recovery.org as this is probably the best site on the web to see where and on what the stimulus dollars are being spent.

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

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

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/

The deadline isn’t until June 29, but every state has committed at least half its highway stimulus funds so none will lose any of its allocation, the Obama administration said Thursday. According to a CNNMoney.com article: only a month ago, some 14 states had yet to satisfy that goal. Hawaii was the last to meet the mark, hitting it on June 19.

You may recall the previous post where we highlighted the fact that some states had barely even begun to commit its stimulus funds. So it’s good to hear that every last one will receive their allocated allotment.

On a related topic, the website greenbuildings.com is featuring a website that tracks stimulus dollars on a state and local level.

For those of you who are regular readers of the Construction Business Owner Blog you know that on Fridays we occasionally like to kick back and end the week on a lighter note. This is one of those weeks as we came across an article on MSNBC.com in which a student transformed orange and white traffic barrels into a “Barrel Monster.”

According to the article: The construction company has become a fan, and wants the 21-year-old to create a replica of the figure that led to his arrest on June 10.

Hamlin Associates, the construction company whose barrels were turned into a monster, doesn’t want to press charges and has said the monster has resulted in a lot of positive publicity.