Weather the Storm

This is an excerpt from an article I found entitled "Weathering the Storm - Navigating a Turbulent Market." This piece looks at the current state of the construction market and was delivered to me from Butler Mfg., our pre-engineered metal building supplier. Below is the portion of the article that looks at positive actions to be taken while we all "weather the storm." I hope you find this helpful in preparing strategies for dealing with the slow economy.

We are living at a moment when things taken for granted about our world are changing. What those changes might be and how they might affect your business can serve as a starting point for building possible scenarios for business in the next five to 10 years. We offer a few basic scenarios of possible futures for the construction industry to fit the current planning horizon. These straightforward examples are simply drawn here, but each scenario used for planning your strategy should have the elements of being probable within some range of likelihood, challenging, different from each other and contain enough information to allow real decision making. Furthermore, scenarios should be generated based on your particular business, not merely copied from others.
Scenario One
• Markets fall.
• Credit crunch stalls construction.
• Consumer spending tumbles.
• Backlog stagnates and pulls back.
Overcapacity of contractors leads to record business failures.
Prices fall severely, threatening already thin profit margins.
Scenario Two
The market shock is largely over in 2009.
Credit stabilizes for good contractors.
The cost of credit squeezes mediocre contractors out of business.
The Obama administration spends $200 billion on infrastructure over the next five years, creating stability for public and civil-construction markets.
Scenario Three
Traditional construction markets continue to slow, but new opportunities open up for green construction.
Government programs and tax incentives cause a boom in alternative-energy solutions.
The automotive industry is completely restructured, leaving only two major U.S. manufacturers. Closed automotive plants are sold for pennies on the dollar to entrepreneurs who will retool the manufacturing floor to build “the car of the future.”
A growing number of larger contractors are becoming developers with capabilities of delivering integrated projects to design, build, own and operate facilities.