Time for self examination!

I happen to belong to an industry that has been hit really hard by our current economic down-turn. I have heard that the construction industry is at or near 50% unemployment as we enter 2nd Qtr 2010. The time to panic for many is either upon them or is about to be.

There seem to be several constants that I have noticed lately; the first being a marked increase in inquiries that have lead to several preliminary designs and project budgets. The second constant is a less appealing one, and that's the overnight disappearance of customer loyalty.

So even though activity has increased, the prospect of being the sole source for a project are virtually none existent as potential clients seek multiple bids for everything. And can you blame them for this, no way, not in this economy, not with the unknowns surrounding the new universal health care bill, and most definitely not in the tax hell that is Wisconsin.

It's time for some serious self examination if you ask me. Take my company for example, we have been doing business virtually the same way for over 50 years. In that time we have seen little reason to change the basic business model because we made money. But all that's changed as we have started finding ourselves competing for jobs that in the past we were the sole source for. Like others I have talked too, this simple competitive test has made it necessary to start the self examination process.

This "self examination" needs to go beyond the construction industry if you ask me. It's time for our Federal Government to do some "self examination" instead of trying to "level the playing field for all," or "ram through legislation that creates outrageously high energy standards by applying cap's on carbon emissions," or "regulate the banking industry." Am I the only one that has noticed how hard it is for a company to get a business loan anymore?

Local municipalities need to do some serious "self examining" and decide if this is the time to continue to apply "strict architectural guidelines to industrial parks," requiring "four sided architecture to buildings that back-up to conservancy's, and corn fields," or "to require 8 different bonds andor letters of credit replete with mountains of paperwork," or "to require that new construction projects follow 20+ pages of landscape requirements," or "to employ outside consultants that bill on an hourly basis thus creating mini profit centers by constantly request "more information" on the plans they review."

It would suggest that banks do some self examination but i think they have done that with thanks to our fearless leaders in Washington. Nowits the end user and ultimately my industry that end's up on the raw end when financing cannot secured.

And while I'm at it, what's wrong with Union's doing a little self-examination? I have plenty of examples I could suggest but I don't want to go swimming with the fishes at the bottom of Lake Michigan, so I will leave that one to your imagination.

Without some humble self examination by everyone, I'm afraid that the current state of our economy will at best stay the way it is today, and at worse.....well I don't want to think about what it would be like if it got worse.