All in a Day’s Work

For most of us, each day holds a number of “to-dos.” Some are thinking tasks that involve strategy, and others are more routine, as in “just do it.” Everything I’ve read says that our minds work in different cycles depending on how we are wired. I’ve written about being a member of the before breakfast club, and I suppose this is the next layer.

Personally, I find early in the morning works best for anything beyond the “just do it” tasks. There are no pressing deadlines, and I am not against the wall to make the right decision, or stressed that I might make the wrong one. In the back of my mind, I know that if I reach a decision, I have the rest of the day to change my mind. Make sense?

Early mornings give me the freedom to be me. I can get in the right mental rhythm to maximize efficiency. For others, it may the opposite side of the clock, but the important thing is to recognize what the clock is saying to each of us and adjust accordingly. Our brain has its preferred time to be sharp, and its best to lean into that instead of trying to overcome your your nature.

 

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A Look Ahead

This week, I participated in an FMI construction conference in Denver, with the goal of discussing the construction outlook for 2018.

A major item, not surprisingly, was the increasing shortage of labor and new talent in construction. The problem is likely a combination of after-burn from all those leaving the industry during the financial crisis, baby boomers retiring and no resolution to our immigration policy.

Those in the civil segment will likely be affected by the results of a comprehensive infrastructure bill passing or not passing later in the year. It may be doubtful if either the house or the senate flips in the fall. I heard that both Florida and California are tackling their own infrastructure revenue streams and programs going forward.

There are huge housing demands this year, and experts are even predicting a historic shortage of new homes. It also looks like energy infrastructure drivers are rebounding as well.

To me, the general feeling was that we will have a “recessionless” economy the next few years. Our biggest challenge might be the labor talent pool, and at the same time figuring out how technology can do more with less.

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Technology Drives Innovation at World of Concrete 2018

Another year, another solid week at World of Concrete (WOC) in Las Vegas. This year’s show was held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, January 22-25, 2018, boasted 58,222 attendees and featured more than 1,567 companies exhibiting across more than 747,411 square feet of space. Of those exhibitors, 302 were new to the event. The show was the largest WOC in 9 years—and doesn’t show signs of slowing down.

The Importance of Inspections & Fleet Maintenance

Recently, a crew working a “tilt-up” job in Austin, Texas, got a frightening reminder of how important regular crane maintenance and equipment inspections can be after an accident on the jobsite. (You can watch live video of the accident at youtube.com/watch?v=Mn6PYOG6sWw.)

How to Hire Top-Tier Talent

Hiring talented individuals has become the latest in a long line of routine challenges for many business leaders. Whether it is exhausting the new channels of social media or tapping old relationships in the recruiting world, firms have made it a full-time job to increase the capacity in their personnel pipelines. Too often, the pull of “just in time” labor seems to take precedence, short-circuiting the need for process discipline and strict adherence to higher standards.

Transforming Operations with Collaborative Cloud Technology

Construction doesn’t happen in the office—it occurs out in the field among the project teams and during collaboration with everyone involved in the project. This collaboration and the timely sharing of information for fast, well-informed decision making is crucial to success. Data and information needs to be delivered to those who need it when they need it. Changes, progress reports and project updates need to be communicated quickly and efficiently. Documentation must be current to stay on top of issues and mitigate risk.

Pushing Your Luck

I sometimes think I used up all of my share of blind luck about 15 years ago, when I played in a charity golf tournament that Coach Bowden of FSU sponsored down in Destin. It was one of those tournaments where they drew five names that evening and each of the five pulled a key out of the fishbowl. If it started the car, you won it. I was fourth in line and ended up pulling the last two keys out, and asked the guy behind me to take one of them. My key started the engine, so I figured that I would never be lucky again the rest of my life.

We all have heard people say something like, “You sure are lucky.” I wonder what portion of success comes from intelligence and smart decisions, and what portion comes from being in the right place at the right time? Or from planning and hard work? I’d say it ends up being some combination of these, but there’s almost always a little luck involved. Perhaps the best way I have heard it described is that, “luck occurs at the intersection of random chance, talent and hard work.”

Sometimes you can make your own luck by seeing a path that others don’t, or by being different to stand out from the competition. There’s one thing for sure: You won’t find any luck if you aren’t taking chances. Sometimes we just plain make our own luck, through hard work and a few other ingredients blended in.

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Technology Drives Innovation at World of Concrete 2018

Another year, another solid week at World of Concrete (WOC) in Las Vegas. This year’s show was held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, January 22-25, 2018, boasted 58,222 attendees and featured more than 1,567 companies exhibiting across more than 747,411 square feet of space. Of those exhibitors, 302 were new to the event. The show was the largest WOC in 9 years—and doesn’t show signs of slowing down.

How You Can Fight Opioid Abuse in Construction

Empirical research is validating something that foremen have understood for years now—the opioid crisis is taking a serious toll on the construction industry.

How to Hire Top-Tier Talent

Hiring talented individuals has become the latest in a long line of routine challenges for many business leaders. Whether it is exhausting the new channels of social media or tapping old relationships in the recruiting world, firms have made it a full-time job to increase the capacity in their personnel pipelines. Too often, the pull of “just in time” labor seems to take precedence, short-circuiting the need for process discipline and strict adherence to higher standards.

Avoid Losing Valuable Employees to the Competition

Currently, there is less than 2 percent unemployment for project managers, estimators and field supervisors in the construction industry. Keeping your best talent should be your top priority. Let’s review a few causes of great employees leaving good companies, and what happens when business owners can’t let go of control.

America’s Largest EPA Contractor on How to Avoid Equipment Downtime

Imagine maintaining 300 pieces of rolling stock plus 200 pieces of equipment spread across the entire United States, U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. That’s the challenge Tim Bland, assistant operations manager at Environmental Restoration LLC, faces every day. For 20 years, Bland and his staff have provided emergency response services, site remediation, government services and industrial cleaning to various commercial, state and federal clients.

How the Los Angeles Rail Project Benefits from Emergency Exit Doors

Construction business owners face challenges daily. Whether it’s a delay in materials, finding skilled labor or keeping projects on budget, there is no shortage of obstacles.

7 Ways to Leverage Licensing for Profit & Growth

Increasing profitability is a key challenge for construction companies of all sizes. One area that presents tremendous untapped growth potential for construction firms is business licensing.

A Trip to the Dark Side and Back Again

A break in, or a ransom letter. An invitation to the dark web. It sounds like a movie plot, but it played out here last month.

A computer hacker waited until about 7:20 pm, when our office would likely be cleared out, and found an opening in our firewall, creating a username. He or she then virtually made their way through all our computers and locked them down. Around 6 am the following day, the team member who handles our IT noticed something wasn’t right, and kicked the hacker out. Unfortunately, a lot of damage was done in those overnight hours. Beyond our individual computers, the servers with our accounting files and job information were frozen. Plans, pictures, records. Everything.

As I understand, this was a “brute force attack,” where an individual rather than a virus does the work. We received a ransom letter that started out like this:

“All your files are encrypted, making it impossible to recover files without the correct private key. If you are you are interested in getting this key, you should proceed with the following steps.”

It went on to demand 3 Bitcoins. Fortunately for us, we had planned ahead. Our servers are backed up each hour in a Linux-based operating system (intentionally different from Windows) and stored in the cloud. If the building caught on fire, flooded or, in this case, got hacked, we are covered.

We resumed operations after a long weekend deleting all the encrypted files and implementing the backup files. Needless to say, an ounce of prevention, or maybe more, saved us. In this world we live in, anything is possible. I never would have dreamed we would be hacked, but because of the preparation, it was more like an attempted kidnapping.

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