Construction Equipment Owner

Usually when magazines and newspapers write articles about the “sounds of summer” they mention “I Get Around” by The Beach Boys, “Groovin’” by the Rascals, “Surf City” by Jan & Dean, or even “4th of July, Asbury Park” by Bruce Springsteen. That’s all fine “summer” music but this morning on a trek to Chicago’s northern suburbs I got a chance to listen to some different, and possibly “better,” summer music. Temperatures this morning were (finally) in the eighties, the sun was high in a bright blue sky… and I sat in six traffic backups of varying lengths that transformed a 90-minute roundtrip into a 150-minute roundtrip. Yes, summer is wonderful! Seriously! And the sounds of summer are music to my ears — even if I have to sit in traffic to listen.

I jumped on I-294 (which allows drivers to circumvent downtown Chicago) just at the end of the rush hour and had plenty of time to watch crews hard at work on the I-294 reconstruction project. While passing hundreds of orange-and-white barrels and hundreds more bright orange cones of varying sizes I counted 17 arrow boards and at least 7 message boards — and I might have missed a few. Work zone speed limit signs and signs designating lane shifts and new traffic patterns were plentiful, and I had plenty of time to watch the Big Boys and their crews hard at work — no paving work yet but an awful lot of big equipment out there making preparations.

Once I got off 294 the traffic continued in a snarl — but all to a good cause! A Wirtgen W2000 cold planer had already done its job on eastbound lanes of Dempster Avenue and was beginning its work milling what looked to be about 3 inches of pavement off the westbound lanes. And not too far behind it was an Elgin Eagle sweeping up leftover millings. And a few miles down more milling had been completed and temporary lane markings had already been sprayed onto the surface. It all sounded good to me.

And then, possibly the best news of the trip, was my destination featured a recently sealcoated and newly striped parking lot, a good-sized one too. I took a tour of the lot to check out job quality … only to realize it must have been done by a Pavement reader as the pavement appeared to have been recently cracksealed, new stripes were straight, ends of stripes were sharp and lined up, and all the places I checked there was no spillage or overspray of sealer on brick or concrete. The work there was complete so there were no summer sounds of sealcoating systems or striping equipment, but the evidence was obvious: They’d been there working.

So next time you’re in a conversation about “songs of the summer” let other folks bring up Alice Cooper (”School’s Out”) or Steppenwolf (”Born to Be Wild”), but make sure to mention the real music made by construction equipment working in every city, making every jobsite its own outdoor music festival. (But don’t forget about “Summer in the City” by the Lovin’ Spoonful, the first rock band to include the sound of a jackhammer in a pop song.)

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.

Working in the construction industry, I see projects of all sizes — from backyard patios to multi-story buildings. Recently I’ve been keeping an eye on a particular project that is just huge, and the imagery is out of this world (the image here is from The Hoover Dam Bypass Project Web site). It’s the Hoover Dam bypass bridge, formally known as the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. The bridge will shuffle traffic over the Arizona-Nevada border, 890 feet above the Colorado River. When complete, it will be the largest concrete arch in North America. If you’re a concrete nut, the project is worth checking out.

The Las Vegas Sun covers the bridge construction closely, with great imagery. And with another concrete marvel  — the Hoover Dam – less than a half-mile upstream, the area is a true concrete mecca.

Well, they say all good things must come to an end, and this good thing just has. Loretta Miles retired last month from Cygnus Business Media and I’m sure going to miss working with her. Loretta and I go way back, to 1990 when the magazine and National Pavement Expo were acquired from Bob Woltering by The Aberdeen Group. We worked together in this industry since then — Loretta as primary salesperson for Pavement Maintenance & Reconstruction and NPE before becoming manager and primary salesperson on NPE and NPE West, and me as editor and conference coordinator for the shows.

Technically I worked “for” Loretta, but we were really the most successful team I’ve ever been involved in. Ours was one of those working relationships that was a great one. We each had a goal of developing the magazine and the trade shows for our company — first Aberdeen and now Cygnus — because just like contractors and manufacturers we’re in the money-making business. But what made us work so effectively is we both figured the best way to do that was to try to help the paving & pavement maintenance industry develop and grow. We believed that as individual businesses improve and become more profitable, the better and stronger the industry itself becomes and the more the industry can grow — and the more successful we can be for our company. It’s a real “rising tide lifts all boats” kind of philosophy and as I point out it my August Editorial in Pavement our efforts have resulted in “a trade magazine and two trade shows recognized for their unbiased and straightforward efforts to reflect, develop, and grow the paving and pavement maintenance industry.” Loretta can certainly can be proud of that and I’m sure we can continue the path she helped mark out during her almost 20 years in the industry.

I’ll still be talking with Loretta regularly, letting her know what’s going on in the industry, and she’ll be telling me about her long and straight tee shots and the putts she holed from just off the edge of the green, reminding me I could finish a round of golf a little quicker if I didn’t zig-zag down the fairway. I know she’d enjoy keeping up with her friends in the industry so if you want to drop her a note you can reach her at Loretta.Miles@live.com.

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.