It has been a rough three or four years for the commercial construction business and with the drought that has plagued the industry for those years, cracks are beginning to show up around the foundations of some very strong companies.
We work with a number of developers, contractors, specialty subcontractors and designers, and it is becoming apparent that many of them across the country are running out of projects, out of reserves, and a number of them are running out of gas.
“These are the times that try men’s souls!” These are the testing times, these are the times when we create our new future and for some that future will not be as bright as they might have imagined.
I wrote a poem a decade ago to use in some of my marketing and strategic planning speeches and workshops to help people begin to look forward, to stretch their vision and to see how quickly their new future would arrive. It goes like this:
The future, what do I care.
I’m over here and it’s over there.
Oops, the future is here!
Many in our business have just awakened to the fact that the future is here and that they are unprepared for the low bid, show bid, no new project environment that we suddenly find ourselves in. They are being stressed to the limit and the next two years will bring some tremendous changes to the industry as we restructure and restack everything that we thought was a constant.
The future is here and now we need to design a new future that we can work towards, but that is what we do isn’t it? We flex, change and we adjust, even though it is sometimes very painful. We take on the challenges to build in new ways whether lean, green or mean and we meet those challenges because we are the construction industry. We build structures that will last 50 or 100 years and we build complex structures that could not even be designed a decade ago.
We still sometimes do it 2 inches at a time until that form emerges to become a new building, one that people look at in amazement and say to their children, spouses and grandchildren, “I wonder how the contractor built that!”
Now is the time to look ahead and to build a new future for your company and for the industry. Maybe we will need CPR to get our hearts and the economy started again, but we will get that help and we will bounce back to create the next new future construction industry. We will, from time to time, look forward with you to see how you are coming along and what is emerging for the future of the commercial construction industry.
Have a great Labor Day holiday!
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