Does Your Company Do Employee Reviews? I Think I Know.

When was your last employee review? Now, I'm not talking about some pat on the back for a job well done, or a passive aggressive comment from your boss at the water cooler, I'm talking about a sit down, face-to-face, knock-down, drag-out, employee review. I doubt it was anytime soon.

In my brief (but eventful) tour through the working World, I have found that construction and engineering folk would rather slice off their fingertips with a diamond-blade grinder than give an employee review. I even had a six month review written into the offer letters with one of my employers and when six months was up they kept saying that they'll get to it next week until they finally told someone else in the office to tell me, "I didn't have to worry about getting fired". Incidentally, I was fired five months later but they told me I was getting laid off. That was so nice of them.

I personally love employee reviews. I like sitting around having discussion about improvement - it's so much damn better than sticking your face in an Excel spreadsheet or counting square feet of drywall. I think of it as more of a discussion about how the operation is going and what improvement can be made to the situation.

So why are bosses so deathly afraid of giving employee reviews? Well, I don't know. Perhaps they are afraid of what is going to come out in the review, if they'll be painted into a corner about something they said during the year which will make them look bad in front of their boss. Seriously, this is the crazy stuff that runs through people's minds. Regardless, employee reviews are also a rare opportunity for employees to look their bosses in the eyes, ask some real questions and come up with a plan about where things will be heading.

It may also be because they simply don't know what to say. I've seen far too often the modus operandi for companies is to hire someone, give them little direction and no feedback and then fire them when they decide they don't like them. This is by far the laziest style of management possible. It's really not that hard to list ten to fifteen bullet point responsibilities of a particular job. Then, at the annual employee review, go over the bullet points and talk about what is going well and what needs improvement. It's also good to try to make the positives outweigh the negatives. Some people think there should be three positives to every negative, but in construction, when young employees are treated like chimpanzees who just escaped from the zoo, a fifty-fifty split will suffice.

Employers and employees both benefit from reviews, it's a win-win and people avoid them like a room full of airborne asbestos. Reviews also act as good opportunity to document performance in case of a necessary dismissal, and also keeps someone from firing an employee just because they don't like them (at least it can help). So let's be men, and women about this and give your employees reviews. If you have a job then ask your boss for a review.

It's a win-win.

Does Your Company Do Employee Reviews? I Think I Know.

Stimulus Package - Where Are You?

Many professionals in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry, employed or otherwise, are wondering when this federal stimulus money appropriated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is going to start making it's way to the pockets of designers and contractors.

Well, this answer is unfortunately difficult to nail down, however, it is rather clear that the great majority of this money has yet to be released. I'm not exactly sure why, six months after the signing of the ARRA, we are still wondering when this money is going to start flowing. The most recent report from the Government Accountability Office shows that only 5.1% of the $27.6 billion appropriated for highway infrastructure projects has been spent.

While the government is probably partially to blame for some of this, shall we say, sluggish release of stimulus funding, the nature of the construction industry is partially to blame as well. While the funding was at least partially intended to fund "shovel ready" projects, the reality is that a truly shovel ready project is kind of like the study of micro-economics - it doesn't really exist.

The term, "shovel ready" is misleading, and certainly over-used. If plans have been shelved for several years, in the very least the existing conditions have to be verified and brought up to date. What construction has taken place since these plans were generated? Has there been erosion, or effects of weather? What maintenance issues from existing structures have arisen and now need to be dealt with? What code requirements have changed since the initial design? Are the LEED certification requirements the same as they were when the plans were generated?
All of this stuff takes time. So even with a project that was shelved for several years, we can't just pick up the plans grab, our shovel and hard-hat, walk out the door, rev up the bulldozer, and start digging.

The majority of the federal stimulus money is schedule to be dolled out in 2010, so this coupled with perhaps an improving private sector economy could bring more clients in the doors of design firms and more plans in the doors of contractors - and just maybe a collaboration of designers and contractors on new projects.

So once we push this massive snowball down the hill and get it rolling it will pick up steam and could perhaps start rolling out of control.

Stimulus Package - Where Are You?

Michael Moore's trash talk on capitalism certainly raises some questions

"Capitalism: A Love Story", is the tongue-in-cheek title of Michael Moore's latest film that trashes the people who run our country. But honestly, he's tough to argue with - very tough.

Larry King tried hard Wednesday night to catch Mr. Moore off his guard and paint him into a corner, but the goofy kid from Michigan was having nothing of it.

Larry took a shot with, "Are you saying the investor is more important than the employee?"

Moore, like a prime of his career, Mike Tyson, fired back with,

"Yes. The investor --and the investor, these days, they want the short-term, quick profit and they want it now. But in the long-term, here's what happened. When I was on this show 20 years ago, 20 years ago this week, I was here with "Roger and Me".

And General Motors, that year, made a profit of $4 billion. And yet they had just laid off another 30,000 people. Now, why would you lay people off when you're making a record profit of $4 billion?

I mean that was totally insane. But they thought, well, you know, we can make a
bigger profit. Maybe we can make $4.2 billion if we move those jobs to Mexico.
And so they're always, you know, we can make a little bit more money if we do
this. By firing those workers, Larry, they got rid of the very people who buy
their cars."

Moore's words sting harder than seeing a pink paper on your keyboard when you come back from lunch. They sting, because he's so damn right. Nobody can really argue with him, and the only reason he has the guts to say it is because he's already a millionaire from making documentary movies. It's not like some unemployed nobody is going to start ranting about how much our economic system sucks on a blog or something...ahem.

From what I gather about Moore's overall theme is that our economic system of capitalism has gotten very far away from democracy. He's saying that the majority, while under the illusion of having some control over what goes on, actually has none.

Now, I'm not sure if this is true in a political sense, because we still elect officials and that system seems to be relatively fair. However, I do know that the majority of organizations in which we work are so far from a democracy that we might as well have red flags flying high outside every office building. For profit organization are straight up dictatorships where a small group of elite officials run the whole thing while the rest fight like hell to break through the ceiling and rub elbows with the CEO and his son-in-law on the corporate jet. If you speak up about how the little guy is getting the shaft in an organization, just wait and see how long it takes to be shown the door. You have two options, you can stay and put up with the way things are run, or quit.

Moore says,

"It's set up like a pyramid, so that the richest 1% at the top have more
financial wealth than the 95% beneath them. But the trick here is to get
the 95% believing that if they work hard and slave away, they would get to the
top of the pyramid. Of course, as we know, only a few people can stand on top of
a pyramid."

I guess the rebuttal to Moore's little rant is while there is clearly BS going on in large corporations nobody is forcing you to work for them. He grew up in Flint, Michigan where GM was only show in town. Factory workers in Flint had little choice about who was going to sign their paycheck. But in the rest of the country, darn near the majority of people work for small companies, and while smaller organizations can certainly show signs of beating up the little guy, the hierarchy can be much less brutal to navigate.

The construction industry can be looked at as a rather accurate cross section of the overall organizational picture in this country, however, the major difference being that the overwhelming majority (over 90%) of construction organizations have less than fifty people. And while the sneaky tricks pulled by business owners are still evident, there is often plenty of opportunity to jump ship within the same town or even street, which may place a little higher premium on keeping employees. But really, who the hell knows.

Oh well, reinventing the economic wheel in this country probably won't happen, and it will almost certainly not be started by a filmmaker, but it definitely makes people think about what is going on and allows them to make more informed choices about what they are going to do with their life. At least the freedom to choose is still here.

Michael Moore's trash talk on capitalism certainly raises some questions

Guess What? LEED Is Not Alone

Do you ever wonder if we are are all alone in this big Universe? With all those solar systems, galaxies, planets, dwarf planets, black holes, stars, suns, and supernovas, its seems hard to believe that we are the only folk flying around on a big blue marble.

While I can't tell you for sure if there is extraterrestrial life (although I have a pretty good idea), I can tell you that LEED is not the only rating system for the certification of green buildings. I learned this while taking a gander at the Construction Informer blog by Duane Craig. Duane made note that there is another green rating system called Green Globes. With a similar method to giving buildings a tiered system of rating their green building initiatives.

While allowing LEED to be the only kid on the block probably doesn't do too much benefit for the cost of green building certification, learning and applying another rating system makes my stomach start to turn and my face being the only thing turner brighter shades of green.

According to a study by the University of Minnesota, "nearly 80 percent of the categories available for points in Green Globes are also addressed in LEED 2.2 and that over 85 percent of the categories specified in LEED 2.2 are addressed in Green Globes." The same study indicated that there was only moderate dissimilarity between the rating standards, but that LEED has a slightly greater emphasis on material choices and Green Globes has a slightly greater emphasis on saving energy.

Green Globes also has a lower cost at about $500 per assessment. LEED certification can cost several thousand dollars just for the assessment and the USGBC can tend to have their nose up in the air about how quickly they get to your project.

And believe it or not there are more green building standards such as BREEAM, the GBC tool, and the Minnesota Design Guidelines, but I really hope we don't have to start playing a game where we select what system to use and then have to select all the green initiatives. Honestly, one is enough and two at the most, but let's just stop there.

However, nobody knows how big the Universe actually is.

Guess What? LEED Is Not Alone

Bernanke says recession is over - Can we get that in writing?

"The recession is likely over."

These are the words of Fed Chairmen Ben Bernanke, however, his use of elusive words like "likely" worries me and bit. Maybe I'll tell the credit card that I will most likely pay them this month depending on the growth of our economy that has most likely emerged from recession. I'll ask them to hold the finance charges and late fees until the third quarter GDP numbers are finalized.

Bernanke also said that interests rates will stay "exceptionally low" for an "extended period". Well, the stack of unpaid bills on my kitchen counter is getting "exceptionally" high and I'm a little worried about spending an "extended period" in debtors prison.

This declaration of independence from the worst recession in 80 years comes at a time when the majority of the federal stimulus money is getting dolled out in the country's 2010 fiscal year which starts this month. So by this time next year, we'll be rolling in jobs and money. Well, in the spirit of nebulous discussion, I will go on record and say, perhaps.

I will also say that in my observation of Bernanke since he took over for Alan Greenspan in 2006, he has been "exceptionally" careful with what he says publicly. It seems like the whole World hangs on his every syllable, so I doubt that he would make statements like this if they were not "relatively" close to being accurate.

So the US is likely out of the recession however unemployment is still rising and construction billing continues to decline. The problem, is that construction, of course, shows lagging response to the growth of the economy, so we may have to wait until Bernanke removes the tricky adjectives (or are they adverbs?) from his prepared statements before we're seeing real-life improvement before our eyes.

Despite Mr. Bernanke's aversion to commitment, I think we can all feel very optimistic about America's resilience and our ability to emerge, alive and kicking from a horrific economic state. However, this is only likely to be the case.

Bernanke says recession is over - Can we get that in writing?

I'm looking for Bond, Construction Bond

In the eyes of an owner of a construction project a payment and performance bond is like that warm and fuzzy security blanket that takes all their troubles away. Bonding is one of those construction issues that I never fully understood. And I guess I still don't, but my knowledge probably quadrupled when I actually tried to obtain one for myself.

We've all heard of the requirement for contractors to be bonded and insured and this is especially the case when public entities are using a low bid method of selecting contractors. But really, what are they?

Surety bonds provide financial security and construction assurance by assuring owners that contractors will perform the work and pay subcontractors, laborers, and material suppliers. It's basically a risk transfer mechanism where the surety company assures the project owner that the contractor will perform a contract in accordance with the contract documents. If the contractor defaults or goes bankrupt, the bonding company comes in and finishes the job on their dime.

Bonds are actually a lot older than I thought. I read an article about the first known bond to have been etched in a clay tablet from the Mesopotamian region around 2750 BC. According to the contract, a farmer drafted into the service of the king who was unable to tend his fields. The farmer contracted with another farmer to tend them under the condition they split the proceeds equally. A local merchant served as the surety and guaranteed the second farmer’s compliance - a brave man.

However, even in 2750 BC Mesopotamia, payment and performance bonds were tougher to find than an exploding money clip, and without a code name like 007, it's still tough to get one. I was in hot pursuit (sans Alpha Romeo) of a payment and performance bond this week while putting together a bid for a public repair project. After days of discussions and filling out forms of financials, I was told about two hours before bid time that I would have to put 30% of the contract value up as collateral in order to get a bond. Thanks for the notice.

Just like a municipality doesn't want to take a risk on an unproven contractor, a surety is similarly cautious. This kind of leads me to wonder what good they are anyway; they won't bond you unless the risk of you defaulting is next to zero to begin with. The owner could just as easily write joint checks or contract directly with the sub (who are also bonded by the way) and hire the general contractor as a consulting construction manager.


In private projects however, this is how most work is done. In an effort to avoid doubling up on security (and wasting money), the subs are bonded and the general contract either goes unbonded or acts as a consulting manager. This is the more practical and cost effective way to do it, but when tax payer dollars are on the line, I suppose logic, practicality, and certainly cost effectiveness are all thrown into a BMW Z8 and shredded by a helicopter.


So without a bond my bid was forced to spontaneously self destruct (no, that's Mission Impossible) and I'm back to the drawing, err bidding board, and another trip to the Casino Royale of public works request for proposals.

I'm looking for Bond, Construction Bond

Revel Casino finds interesting partner to finish construction

Atlantic City is kind of like a paradise that never quite came to fruition. It was a good idea - in fact, a great idea. Beach, gambling, shows, what more could you want from a vacation? But instead of becoming the multi-day destination for wealthy executives from New York, Philadelphia, and DC that Mr. Trump and others were anticipating, it became a somewhat seedy mecca with lots of retired bus trippers. Atlantic City was eclipsed by a much more remote destination in desert of Nevada.

But now, in the midst of a financial crisis and stiff gambling competition from Pennsylvania and now Delaware, AC is making a comeback. A comeback that begins with the opening of the $2.5 billion Revel Casino and is slated to be followed by several more mega-casinos that will bring Atlantic City to the overnight destination status once envisioned by its earliest pioneers.

However, in late 2008 a credit crunch put a halt to the project and the hopes for Atlantic City revitalization seemed less likely than beating the guy who built hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place. So where does Revel Entertainment turn when they are out of money and they already have about a billion dollars sunk into the shell of a hotel and casino with no get out of jail free card? Where else, but the Chinese government. The get out of jail free card finally surfaced, and hopefully the bank error card is not about to rear its head.

Evidently, Revel Entertainment has entered into a $1.7 billion deal with China State Construction Engineering Corp. and Tishman Construction to finish out the mega-project intended to resurrect AC from the ranks of gambling town wash-ups.

The chief executive of Revel said, "This is not about financing...It's about a construction management agreement." It's not about financing? C'mon.

Apparently seeking international investment partners is becoming more of the norm for casino owner since MGM Mirage has had a partnership with the Dubai government to co-finance the $8 billion CityCenter casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

I suppose China feels that the economy in the US will have passed Go a couple of times by 2011 to warrant such a monstrosity of excess. However, I doubt they'll be paying many change orders until then.

Revel Casino finds interesting partner to finish construction