Jim Kollaer's blog

The first investigative report by David Schecter at WFAA in Dallas/Fort Worth drew quick reaction from other subcontractors and from legislators in Austin.  In a follow up report which aired Friday evening, Schecter talks with several specialty subcontractors, with the chairman of the Senate Business and Commerce Committee and with a key member of the House about the issue of non payment of taxes by some subcontractors who misclassify their workers as independent contractors as a way to avoid payment of payroll taxes, unemployment taxes and worker’s comp insurance.   [node:read-more:link]

The Career Advisory Board and DeVry University recently teamed with the folks at Harris Interactive to do a poll on “The Millennials”, identified as adults ages 21-31, and report on their current expectations for the future of their careers in the workforce.

I found it interesting that the survey was “conducted online within the United States between December 29, 2010 and January 10, 2011.”  According to the report Future Of Millennial Careers:

“The survey participants included 500 U.S. adults age 21-31 who are either employed or plan to seek employment in the future.  They also included 523 U.S. adults age 18+ who are [node:read-more:link]

Our last blog post talked about “black box” projects.  ExxonMobil just disclosed a new project that has been in the Black Box for several years: Project Delta.  According to the company’s press release, Bryan Milton, president of ExxonMobil stated:

“This new campus provides an opportunity to consolidate many of our Houston offices in one location, which will provide a high-quality working environment as our employees continue to support ExxonMobil’s mission of delivering energy to meet growing global needs.  The complex will be constructed to high standards of energy efficiency and environmental stewardship, and will promote new opportunities for employee collaboration in their daily work.”  

Corporations and government agencies have fairly large “Black Boxes” like the infamous “Area 59” in California where they conduct research, development and design on projects that they don’t want their competition or sometimes their vendors and allies to know about.

In the economic development world, it is not unusual for a city’s economic development team to be contacted by a site consultant or company representative to discuss potential sites for an unnamed project.  Invariably they have great names like Dick and Jane or the Duck, or more recently the Delta project.

The mystery companies make everyone sign non-disclosure agreements or NDAs to keep the real company’s identity secret during negotiations.   [node:read-more:link]

We have written about the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world, at 828 meters high.  The newest skyscrapers in progress in the current construction cycle of tall buildings, while not as tall as the Burj, are still substantial and will change the skylines of the cities where they are being built.

There are some interesting buildings going up, but few of them in the United States.  It seems that the Middle East and Asia are currently vying to create new, different and taller buildings.  Ever since the earliest discussions of Frank Lloyd Wright who projected multiuse buildings a mile into the sky, designers have been speculating on how to build their designs.  Only recently have the engineering, financing and especially the construction techniques caught up with the designer’s visions.  Shanghai Tower, currently under construction in Shanghai, though not as tall as the Burj, is still about half of the height that Wright proposed in the mid 1900s.

We like the SkyscraperPage.com website which provides users with the ability to click through for more information about the buildings such as designer and engineer so that we can stay in touch as these buildings stretch even higher into the sky.  We would suggest to the folks who add to the database that they include the contractors who lead the construction on each of them.   [node:read-more:link]

Owners, developers and contractors have a new critical issue to add to their list of concerns about the hiring of illegal labor on their projects – human trafficking victims.

We were alerted to the seriousness of the issue by Brandon Darby, a subcontractor and human rights activist who has been investigating human trafficking in the U.S., its impact on the construction industry and its toll on human lives.  Darby is best known for his work with law enforcement agencies on anti-terror issues.  We followed up with Darby and asked him a few questions.

Why did you contact Construction Citizen about this issue?

“When I found Construction Citizen and realized that many construction industry organizations and leaders are working to hold their own industry accountable, I wanted to alert them to another issue that exists in our industry, one that is undermining the image and future of the industry, the issue of human trafficking and slave labor in construction.”    [node:read-more:link]

Charter Builders in Dallas, a Balfour Beatty company, is the general contractor on the largest “Net Zero” school in the nation, located in Irving, Texas near Dallas.  Net Zero means that the facility, when completed in August, will generate sufficient power through its design and from its passive energy systems for the school to operate without using the grid.

Engineering News-Record (ENR) quotes Aaron Scates, vice president of operations for Charter Builders, the Dallas-based unit of Balfour Beatty Construction that is building Lady Bird.  Scates believes that net-zero schools will become more common in the future.  He stated:

“Buildings like this will play to being more frugal and economically stable.  On a middle school, electric bills can range from $20,000 to $40,000 a month.  A building that doesn’t have an electric bill creates more money for other opportunities.”   [node:read-more:link]

Daniel W. Rasmus, blogger for the online magazine Fast Company, is focused on the uncertainties that companies will face.  Our companies.  Our industry.  Our uncertainties.

Issues like wellness, generational change and conflict, technology, leadership, skills gaps and worker shortages will plague those companies who do not take the initiative today to create action and contingency plans to address each of the issues before they demand an immediate solution.

About the possibility of a skilled worker / talent shortage, Rasmus writes:

“If nationalistic tendencies prevail, then the outcomes of individual education systems, public and private, and training programs provided by firms and immigration policy will combine to determine the available talent pools.  [node:read-more:link]

Mike Rowe, star of the Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs, testified before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on May 5.  He testified about the current construction industry workforce and announced a new initiative in partnership with Discovery Communications called Discover Your Skills.

His remarks to the committee included his desire for a national PR campaign to attract much needed workers to get trained to fill the skilled-labor gap which is imminent in the industry.  In the following video of his testimony, he points out:

“We talk about creating millions of “shovel-ready jobs” for a society that doesn’t really encourage people to pick up a shovel.  In a hundred different ways, we have slowly marginalized an entire category of critical professions, reshaping our expectations of a good job into something that no longer looks like work.”   [node:read-more:link]

On May 5, 1868, JOHN A. LOGAN, Commander-in-Chief of the Army in his General Orders no.11, Washington, D.C., called for the first Memorial Day to recall and remember all those soldiers who had died and were buried in “almost every city and state” during the Civil War.

The tradition that started in May of 1868 continues today. I wanted to pay homage to all of the builders, private contractors, SEABEES (Construction Batallions), and members of the US Army Corps of Engineers who fought for and built the roads, ports, [node:read-more:link]