Comments on: Sorry kid, Construction is a Cyclical Industry

By: clibricky

clibricky — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:37:15 +0000

Wow – really interesting topic. I will blog about it too.

By: Dick Bonnet

Dick Bonnet — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:04:34 +0000

All businesses go through cycles and adapt their staffs to it as needed. I once worked in a greenhouse and our staff flucuated 500%. There was no option to keep the extra people when the planting was done. Likewise a friend has a construction company who specializes in public projects and he may need 20 electricians today but next week he needs carpenters or drywall hangers. It is inefficient to have everyone trained for everything so he deals with construction unions and can hire who he needs when he needs them and then lay them off. The project is done on time and he keeps the best project mangers, estimators and generalists emplyed most of the time.

By: Alvin C. McDonald

Alvin C. McDonald — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:45:28 +0000

I have got problems viewing your site layout through the latest release of Opera. It looks ok in IE7 and Firefox however.

By: Constructonomics » Blog Archive » Are the White Collar Forgotton in a Recession?

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:39:24 +0000

[…] Sorry kid, Construction is a Cyclical Industry […]

By: Russell King

Russell King — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:31:47 +0000

Another very obvious factor for this is the weather. The number of workers on any construction project that occurs outdoors will decrease in those parts of the country when the ground freezes. Have you ever tried to build a road in Chicago when the the temperature is -15F and the ground is frozen? It is hard enough to build a building under those freezing conditions, but both nature and the government prevents you from building a road, sidewalks, parking lots, and other physical features. That is a significant percentage of the workers who are layed off in cyclical nature of construction.

I don’t know of any sub-business that a pavement contractor can enter to minimize those ups and downs. Luckily, in the upper Midwest, the workers, both laborers and management, understand this phenomenon and account for it as well as they can. Unions have grown up to protect the workers as much as possible, good companies keep real good employees, whether labor or management, as long as possible, and they accept the fact that they can go to Florida in the winter.

You know, Sarah Palin and her rureaucracy really has to deal with that one!