Reshaping the Construction Industry

The cheaters in construction who all too often get away with avoiding payroll taxes and responsibility for their workers’ injuries are coming under even more scrutiny.  We’ve pointed out the problem for years at Construction Citizen because it is a blight on this industry and a roadblock to improving it for generations to come.The practice by unscrupulous contractors runs counter to our mission of advancing a socially responsible, sustainable and value-added construction industry.  Misclassification in construction – and other industries as well – leads to the degradation of the employer-employee relationship, turns workers into disposable commodities, cheats taxpayers like you and me out of billions of dollars, and makes it nearly impossible for ethical companies to compete.  

Because of an absence of federal action on the problem of rampant worker misclassification in construction, we continue to track the progress of states across the nation that are trying to deal with what's been called “a cancer” in the industry.  Lawmakers in Minnesota have gotten particularly aggressive, pushing a registry for subcontractors that can be easily checked and then revoking licenses of contractors who don't comply.Via Jonathan Barnes at the Engineering News-Record:“After some success with the new effort, the Minnesota legislature recently extended the state's Contractor Registration Pilot Program for another year, saving it from expiring on June 30 as it was set to do, and extending its life until at least June 30, 2015.  

Occasionally we take a look out to the horizon to satisfy our curiosity about what might be headed our way and what might be a major disruptor to the construction business as we do it today.  We have introduced you to BIM, robots on the job, driverless dump trucks, driverless cars, driverless concrete trucks, drones of all kinds and more recently 3D printing.

The following article by Vince Bailey, an estimator at E&K of Phoenix, was originally published in Construction Dimensions, a monthly publication by the Association of the Wall and Ceiling Industry.  Reprinted with permission.They’re back.  Activity in the commercial construction industry has been on the upswing for a couple of years now for most of us, and the reemergence of an unwelcome element in our midst was inevitable.  It is an unfortunate but predictable phenomenon that when prosperity flourishes, the parasites appear, and so we should not be taken by surprise when an attack comes from below.  The only trouble is, whether surprised or not, there is often very little that can be done to retaliate when a low-baller comes out of nowhere and bombs an otherwise righteous bid opportunity, shattering the prospects of valid and qualified bidders.  The best we can usually expect to do is shrug our broad shoulders and wait for the bottom-feeders to self-destruct.  But in the meantime, there is no question that they drag the level of the field down to a lower tier.  Still, a general awareness (or, the dirty low-down) on the nature and development of these subcontracting scoundrels can be useful.For the record, I’m not talking about qualified competitors who wind up on the low end of the number cluster on several successive bids.