The answer to the question is not easy, but there are options believe it or not.  I’ll try to sum up a few.

Look International

I’m not saying that the international construction market is much better than it is in this country, but there could be some opportunities with American companies that are having trouble getting their more rooted and stubborn older employees to drag their family overseas.  You can definitely make some money overseas, there are tax advantages, and a company will often pay your living expenses while you’re over there and probably let you come back to the states about four weeks a year.  I would just make sure  you have an exit plan if the company decides they want to send you to Antarctica for ten years to build their top secret alien communication headquarters.  I would just be clear that you want to get back to the States a few years down the road and maybe even get it written into your offer letter.

Build Highways

I know, I know, who the hell would want to build highways?  Well, certainly not me, but believe it or not, there are a lot of people that do it, and they make some good money.  And I don’t think it’s really as boring (no pun intended) as everybody thinks.  There are actually pretty innovative methods of financing highway projects with public and private entities partnering up and sharing revenues.  If you’re interested in politics there is certainly a heavy dose of it in construction of highways, bridges, and other transportation projects.  With all the stimulus money pouring into infrastructure, this would be a good way to get a paycheck during these “challenging” times.  But be careful of the pigeon hole, and being shipped to Alaska to build the first paved dogsled track.

Do It Your Damn Self

The worst part about this is that it takes two things that most people who are coming out of college don’t have: experience and money.  Maybe you can get a loan to start the company and pay your bills for the first year or so, but it’s going to be very tough to get awarded a contract without a track record or at least some references.  However, you may be able to partner with a more seasoned entrepreneur who may be able to get financing and also provide the much needed experience required by most clients in order to get a project.  Just be careful cutting a deal with a partner that you don’t know (or that you do know for that matter).  You probably want to at least pay a lawyer for a few hours to review the agreement and documentation that all parties involved will be signing.

Last but not least,

Chill Out

Just because you don’t have a job right after you graduate doesn’t mean the world is coming to an end or things won’t improve in the future.  You may want to take this opportunity to do some traveling or volunteering around the world for a couple of years and then come back to a much improved job market.  Believe it or not, there are some employers (albeit not many) that may look at that as a valuable growth experience that will benefit their organization in the long term.  But either way, it will certainly be personally beneficial and it’s only a matter of time before things are cruising along nicely again.

This question has boggled my mind for years.  People in position of authority would rather their employees think they are doing a bad job even if the contrary is true.  I think the perception of the manager may be that if we are told we are doing a good job we won’t push for improvement and may even take our foot off the gas.  While this conventional psychological assessment done by a manager may be true for some employees, I think it is in fact counter productive in the majority of occasions.  And I know for a fact that it is not the way in which I will perform my best.

I can’t stand people yelling at me and telling me I’m no good.  In my experience, managers are terrible at motivating people.  They believe that the more they beat people down, the better they will perform.  However, this could not be further from the truth.

I don’t know how or why this method of management has crept into the world of conventional wisdom, but I could venture a guess that it has something to do with the military and perhaps a certain general by the name of George S. Patton.  Patton once struck a soldier who he regarded as a coward who was hospitalized for battle fatigue.

Some may say Patton was appropriate in his behavior and some may say he was not, but I do know that if I was the soldier in the hospital that day, George S. Patton would have been given a fist full of knuckles as a kind response to his gesture.

The bottom line is that while some may be motivated by a condescending manager, I believe that the majority do not.  And I know for certain that I respond much more positively to praise and encouragement than degradation.  But of course, that’s me.

I could never really figure out how healthcare and employment got all wrapped together.  Your employer doesn’t have much to do with your health, and at least not more than they have to do with your house or you car.  Employers don’t provide car insurance, or homeowners insurance, so why would they provide health?  Regardless, it has become the norm that employers provide this benefit and people have come to expect it along with the high premiums that are shared between employers and employees.

I was originally under the impression that the new Healthcare Bill was going to provide governement health benefits to all citizens, but as it turns out, that is far from the case.  It seems to me that the system will stay largely in tact with some added regulation as to what insurance companies can and cannot do when it come to providing or denying benefits to policy holders, ultimately resulting in a more policy holder friendly environment.

By employers providing health insurance, there is certainly an added necessity for people to have a job that provides these benefits.  It also gives employers the ability to hold employees in place at their company who may be in fear of losing health benefits.  Salary is something that people can probably go without for a while, but health insurance is nearly a necessity unless you are interested in taking on significant risk.  And most people are not.

If all citizens were given the opportunity to purchase affordable healthcare, employees would be much more likely to switch companies or go out on thier own, and this is certainly not in the best interest of employers.  But how this particular bill will affect the likelihood of employees venturing out on their own or to other organizations still remains to be seen.

Could this bill spark a frenzy of entrepreneurial spirit and drive positive change to a stagnant industry?  I hope so.

The more devastating of the accidents, on E. 51st st. was probably the result of insufficient strapping used by the rigging company, Rapetti Rigging Services.  William Rapetti was indicted in January on manslaughter and other charges and has pleaded not-guilty.  Incidentally, a city crane inspector was found to have falsified inspection reports of the crane when in reality they never even visited the site.  However, the engineer studying the aftermath of the case said that the inspection protocols that were in place would not have caught the problem anyway.  Also, Jimmy Lomma, the owner of the crane that fell and killed seven people was not indicted at all for this incident.

However, Lomma was not so lucky in the collapse at E. 91st st. that killed two operators.  He was arrested, slapped with two charges of second-degree manslaughter, second-degree assault, criminally-negligent homicide and second-degree reckless endangerment, and released on $100,000 bail.  The reason he can be charged as liable for this incident is because the failure was a result of the crane itself and not the rigging.

In 2007, the swivel portion of the crane was showing signs of cracking and the crane owner was required to fix it.  Taking a crane out of commission can cost a company up to $50,000 per month so it is in the strong financial interest of the crane owner to make this fix “happen” in the shortest amount of time.  A recent ENR arcticle gave the following description of the incident.

Criminal prosecutors allege that Lomma asked Varganyi, a mechanic with expertise in Kodiak-brand cranes, to seek out replacement gear in 2007 after the original part cracked. Since the crane was no longer in production, Varganyi solicited aftermarket bids, settling on a part from China-based RTR Bearing for about $20,000 with a three-month delivery. Two “reputable” firms also said they could build it for $34,000 and $120,000, respectively, in seven months and two years.

RTR Bearing even told Lomma that they did not feel comfortable or qualified to perform the work and wrote an email saying they lacked “confidence on this welding,”, but after being offered more money they quickly became a bit more confident.  The cause of this accident was good ‘ol American greed.  The kind of greed with which we have become all too familiar.

There are few industries in which greed can kill people.  Construction is one of them.  Greedy bankers just ruin people financially and maybe cause the occasional person to throw themselves out of a window, but at the end of the day it’s only money and can’t really hurt anyone too much.  Greed in manufacturing of cars and other items can probably turn into some risk of safety, but a faulty car will most likely leave you stranded on the side of the road and not flattened on a New York City sidewalk.

At the risk of being sent “swimming with the fishes”, I hope Jimmy Lomma goes away for a long time.  His attorney is trying to get him off by claiming that just because he was the CEO doesn’t mean he should be held responsible for the negligence of his employees.  And then the attorney tried to get all philosophical by saying that he’s not going to tell his daughter to be a CEO because she’ll be held responsible for the whole company.  That is a weak, weak attempt a getting a true criminal off the hook.

This behavior has to stop and I think sending Jimmy up the river for a while wouldn’t be a bad way to send a message.  I also think engineers and other technically (and ethically) trained people should be running companies of this nature instead of gangster thugs like Jimmy Lomma.

We have to avoid, at all costs, another year like 2008.

I take that back, they don’t have to.  What they do have to do is give the job to the lowest responsible bidder.  Of course responsible is the key word there and they could make a contractor look irresponsible rather quickly if they wanted to (or if a few Benjamins were slipped into their pocket).  But the reality is that there are tax dollars at stake and all information regarding bidders is one hundred percent public.  So if a town wants to disqualify a low bid, they better have darn good reason to do it, or some villagers may get quite angry.  If a low bidder is able to produce a bid bond as well as the necessary insurance requirements, I would think that it is a very difficult sell for a town to disqualify a bid.  If they did, I wouldn’t be surprised if some rumblings began around town about councilmen with “greasy pockets”.

I used this system to my advantage by going after these public bids and bidding at rock bottom prices.  And when I say rock bottom, I mean rock bottom.  I looked high and low for the lowest sub numbers and then marked them up a meager 5% plus a few miscellaneous overhead costs.  This is honestly the climate we are in right now.  Which conveniently brings us to the ugly side of public bidding.

I have seen at least five bidders on these jobs and at most 14.  With fourteen bidders, it is nearly impossible to get the job unless you grossly underestimate the cost.  Once you start the job, don’t expect to get paid anytime soon.  Payment applications have to go through a hierarchy of bureaucracy that rivals (gulp) the federal government.  And trust me, you don’t even want to get me started on prevailing wages.

Prevailing wage is a way for unions to remain competitive on public projects.  Every county in Pennsylvania publishes a rate for every trade and requires that you show certified payroll proving you paid your employees this rate.  The paperwork required to get paid begins to turn into a novel.  And if you screw up one line item or forget to include one worker’s timesheet?  You better wait until next month.  The process of getting paid moves slower than molasses in January.

Of course some contractors cheat on this and show one thing through payroll while they are in reality paying something much lower.  I don’t know if this is even enforced, but I’m not going to find out.  However, I will say that these cheaters are very difficult to beat.  They can probably cut their labor costs in half producing bids that are consistently 25% lower than mine.

It’s a tough game, but as a new contractor, you have to take what you can get.

Ironically, the most expensive of these projects was not a facility intended to house Olympic events, but rather a building, or should I say village, intended to house Olympic athletes, coaches, and officials.  The Vancouver Olympic Village is a 600,000 square foot facility with over 600 units will accommodate about 2500 Olympic participants.  And at a price-tag of $1 billion, it provides some of the finest housing Olympic athletes have ever seen.  At least according to U.S. speedskater Chad Hedrick who was quoted in a recent Time Magazine article as saying, “It’s blown us away, to be honest.”  Of course Vancouver taxpayers had to bail out the private developers who initially funded the project, but maybe the taxpayer scorn will be alleviated by the fact that the neigborhood received LEED Platinum certification while all the buildings received LEED Gold.

Another major project in this deal was the Sea to Sky Highway which was a widening and renovation to Highway 99 which links Vancouver and Whistler mountain.  I traveled along this gnarly stretch of two-lane gristle back in the early 2000s before Vancouver was awarded the Olympics.  This was obviously one of the required improvements to British Columbia in order to facilitate an Olympics.  It was nicknamed, “Ski and Die Highway” prior to the improvements so it will most likely benefit BC well beyond the games.  The price-tag on this was $600 million.

Other projects included a $150 million renovation to the BC Place Stadium which holds the opening and closing ceremonies, the $178 million LEED certified Richmond Olympic Oval hosting speedskating, and the $40 million LEED certified Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Center hosting only curling, but will be converted into a community recreation center after the Olympics.

This year’s Olympics also got me thinking about when the next American winter games will be held.  For the past ten years my prediction has been and remains to be….Denver 2022.  I wavered for a while about whether they will go for an Olympic bid in 2018 or 2022, but from what I’ve read it looks like ‘022 is the answer – it has to.  Colorado has long been the leader in winter sports in this country and by now, tempers have settled after their little spat with the IOC back in the ’70s.

So let’s get about $10 billion queued up and get the games in Denver for 2022.