News Newsletter January 2010 A Word from the Chair: Crisis or Shift
A Word from the Chair: Crisis or Shift
Written by Eric Seanger
Shift... Doug Jaeger did a great job of focusing attention away from the woes of the economy and sharing what Adolphson & Peterson sees as the emerging opportunities in the power (utility and alternative), highway and street, and education (K-12 and college) sectors over the next few years. Manufacturing, healthcare, and multifamily may see slight increases but commercial will continue to drop.
As is appropriate for an $800 million company, extensive time was spent deciding how to evaluate the market place and build a strategic plan for a strong future for A & P. It was generous of Doug to share some of their goals. Interestingly, Building Information Modeling (BIM) is helping them land projects, work more effectively with their subcontractors and improve profit margins. Members reported that some of their general contractors have asked them to start using REVIT, the design software used in BIM. Chad Kurdi, Dunwoody, gave an overview of REVIT and said they are no longer providing AUTO CAD classes. This is a great time to invest in the training and development of ourselves and our employees.
Use MEA First... Members attending MEA's Strategic Planning meeting discussed the importance of:
- Using MEA's classes and other services as much as possible
- Belonging to MEA
MEA has our back and it's important to remember that the money we pay for classes—helps pay for the work we do at the legislature, Board of Electricity, OSHA, and other agencies. Here are two important problems MEA will be fighting to help electrical contractors solve in the next few years:
- Lose 6% and create a paperwork nightmare... Due to lower-than-expected income tax receipts, Minnesota is facing a $1.2 billion is a new deficit that must be addressed before the biennium ends on June 30, 2011. Sales tax is definitely going to be on the table—and construction labor will be there with all of the other services—and we need to explain how this will hurt small contracting businesses.
- 1.5 million ways to delay inspections... No legislators can truly understand the importance of timely permit filings and electrical inspections until that legislator is sitting at a construction site with open trenches and no inspector available for several days. With 2,000 bills a year to understand in 5 months time—we cannot expect the legislature to know how much it penalizes the industry when they take $1.5 million dollars away from the CCLD (which houses the Board of Electricty). We need to explain it to them.
Coffee & Shop Talk... We asked the MEA staff to make it easy for us to get together with other contractors and our legislators to talk about these and other important problems. Please read Dutch Hasskamp's column on page 3 and join us working toward good solutions.
Wishing you a Happy New Year!
