Friday, September 30, 2011
Jane's Carousel
Oshkosh Corp., union contract talks focus on defense forecasts
A lot has changed in the five years since Oshkosh Corp. and the United Auto Workers Local 578 last reached a contract agreement.
Celebrity Real Estate: Alonzo Mourning Retires the Second 'No. 33' of His Lifetime
Retired Miami Heat No. 33 Alonzo Mourning has listed No. 33 Arvida Parkway, his Florida estate, for $14.5M, reports the Wall Street Journal today.
Barton Malow: Construction Services
Fixing the Roof ? The Pragmatist
Assessing the health of your roof requires a discerning eye, but it pays enormous dividends.
Manufacturing
No pot of gold at the end of this Rai ...
Thursday, September 29, 2011
The Lock, Stock, and Barrel Listing
Metro Home Prices Improved in July on Seasonal Lift
FourPlans: Hillside Houses
Looking to make the most of a hillside lot? These designs maximize space with basements that can be finished with a variety of bedrooms and living areas.
Construction rolling along for automotive lighting products maker in Warrick County
HerreroBoldt: Hospital Construction Partnership
Where America's millionaires live
The list of ritzy places ranges from Fisher Island, an enclave of yacht owners off Miami, to the Tribeca area of Manhattan, where wage slaves with seven-figure salaries have their chic loft apartments.
Negative Equity Loans Denting Sales, CoreLogic Says
9/11 Memorial Museum Pavilion
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Israel defies world over Jerusalem housing plan
Nonbank Mortgage Lenders Staging a Comeback
New Software Matches Down-Payment Assistance Programs with Properties, Buyers
Builders Adapt After J.D. Power Cancels This Year?s Customer Satisfaction Survey
HerreroBoldt: Hospital Construction Partnership
New Keys Connecting Road to Mainland Set for Dedication TODAY
Healthiest Housing Markets: Mid-2011 Update
It's time to take a second look at the healthiest housing markets for this year and next.
Day Around the Bay
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
New-home sales on track for record low
Sales of new homes this year could hit the lowest levels in the nearly 50 years the government has been tracking the data.
The Construction Contractor's Digest | Construction Executive Advisory
As a practical definition of a fixed cost business, it is one where the fixed cost of the business is greater than 50%. So with each sale, the cost of executing the sale and delivery is a minority (less than 50% of the total cost).
The asset is most of the cost of the transaction. Each month starts off with a large ?nut? to pay for. Generating revenue dollars is critical for this type of business model. If a fixed cost business has paid off its liabilities (which fund the acquisition of the assets), then it can approach 100% gross margin of its sales.
Construction is different, since 80 to 90% of the costs of a firm are the direct costs of projects. All profit is generated by a single purpose: completing projects on time, within budget, safely and with adherence to plans and specifications. There are no other options to generating a profit. The projects are the ?main thing.?
In a fixed cost business, gross margins can be large on each sale, so there is a great incentive to come up with an innovation that increases sales. One innovation or new product can be a ?windfall.? Also, a company can bury mistakes under a pile of profit with a few breakthroughs. Peters?s tremendously in-depth analysis serves a fixed cost business well. Sometimes gross margins on sales can reach over 90%, so an innovation can reap great rewards. The energy spent on finding a better way or product is justified.
Take the example for a new use of an asset such as an airplane. One use is for passengers, but another may be for, 2) package shipments, or 3) use as a charter for private corporations. An innovative idea is to adopt number 2 or 3. The cost of the asset stays the same, but the revenue steam can be increased.
As a simple example, if passengers and package shipments are sent at the same time, revenue dollars are increased and extra operating cost rises minimally. More profit is a result.
Uncovering a way to make an asset more productive especially a machine, intellectual property or even a person can be a boon to a fixed cost business.
In another way, the fixed assets are visible to competitors and others. This makes these kinds of companies a sitting duck. Where private or public, a steel plant or a retail store is a stationary thing viewable upon a public visit. It is hard to be invisible and discrete. So innovating and becoming a moving target is a necessary strategy. That is, if a firm is to beat the competition and thus improve profits quarter to quarter.
Take the firms and leaders who have appeared on the cover of Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, and other leading periodicals or that have been featured in ?In Search of Excellence,? ?From Good to Great,? etc. Many are bankrupt or have a diminished presence in their markets. This is not a reflection on books or their authors, it is a reflection on the nature of U.S. capitalism. Legendary leaders live and die. Many times their company has no equal replacement to them. Also, business conditions change, so the company?s fortunes flag. ?Creative destruction? is a real phenomenon.
This is an excerpt from our recent book, The Practical Construction MBA (2011, 458 pages) for more information ? go to : http://stevensci.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=SCII&Category_Code=PCMBABook
Fluor Completes New Bear Garden Generating Station in Virginia
Nationwide home sales hit 50-year low
U.S. home sales sank to a 50-year low this spring and summer, hammered by a flagging economy and high unemployment.
Home-buying season was the worst in at least 50 years
An open house sign is posted near new homes for sale in the Blackstone development in Brea, Calif., on Sunday.
Tan Dun?s ?Martial Arts Trilogy? at Lincoln Center - Review
Study to take look at bus operation
An outside transportation expert will look at the Columbia area’s troubled bus operation to suggest ways to make it more efficient.
Registration forms for Seminar and Golf Tournament
Monday, September 26, 2011
Pottery bids opened
Jefferson County commissioners Thursday opened bids for the Pottery Addition sewer project and heard good news about the Crestview-Belvedere sewer project.
Negative Equity Loans Denting Sales, CoreLogic Says
Opportunity Within Market Turmoil - Research Report on Gulf Island Fabrication, Inc. and McDermott International
Edmonton Real Estate Market Weekly Update - Sep. 23, 2011
Here is our update on the Edmonton real estate market. . For the past 7 days: New listings: 443 # Sales: 257 Ratio: 58% # Price changes: 304 # Expired/Off Market Listings: 239 Net loss/gain in listings this week: -53 Active single family home listings: 3242 Active condo listings: 1749 Homes 4-week running average: $382k Condos 4-week running ... (more)
Pending sales of existing US homes fell in July
Burns & Mac lands Virginia power plant work
Burns & McDonnell has been picked to help build a huge natural-gas-fired power plant in Virginia.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Flat Fee Listing Virginia Home Sellers Save Thousands In Real Estate Commissions
Comparison reveals that Virginia home sellers that used the leading Flat Fee Listing agency in Virginia- GoToFSBO, verse other less flexible options, saved thousands in Real Estate commissions, achieved quicker turn around times and enjoyed several other important advantages.
A Lifeline for Underwater Homeowners
PMI Seminar
Watermark
8 Spruce Street
Fears mount over double dip recession; could mean job losses, more debt
The prospect of a second recession two years after the last one has people worried that record Canadian debt and slower growth could make another downturn feel worse than before.
Landlord Uncle Sam wants to sell foreclosures
Washington is sitting on nearly a third of the nation?s 800,000 repossessed houses, the result of record numbers of people defaulting on government-backed mortgages.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Ticker, Sept. 24
KB Home said Friday its fiscal third quarter loss widened, as the homebuilder delivered fewer homes than a year ago when a federal homebuyer tax credit helped inflate deliveries and revenue.
Badger Licensing to Provide Cumene and BPA Licenses to LG Chem in South Korea
Construction Needs Troublemakers
I had lunch with Josh (not his real name) the other day.� Josh joined a large General Contractor last year as its first BIM director because the company?s owner came to the realization that his company was falling behind in technology innovation and need to get involved ?in that BIM stuff? (my words, not his).� So, he hired Josh.
Josh is a guy that?s always looking to tinker. He finds out about new technologies, new processes, new services, and he?s the first one to start thinking about ways to adapt them to his organization. He won?t let a title like ?BIM Director? limit his scope to just BIM. So, he?s made himself the inhouse expert in IPD projects, cloud computing applications and smart phone apps. The IT department thinks Josh is a real troublemaker, because he?s pushing them constantly to change their ?old tech?/ ?we can host anything?/ ?MS Exchange Server Rules? mentality.
Guys like Josh weren?t hired by construction companies 10 years ago. But in these days of thin profit margins and hyper competitive bidding, contractors are chanting the ?innovate or die? mantra a lot more often than they used to. However, they have a lot to learn about truly embracing innovation within their organizations.
Josh has his hands full for sure. Why? Well, he?s trying to turn his oil tanker with a canoe paddle. while the captain is in the wheelhouse trying to hold the line. Rather than give Josh the authority that he needs to boldly innovate, his company has tied his hands by forcing him to work with (i.e. around) his IT organization, which, in a nod to the ?Greatest Hits? of 70?s management structure, still reports to the CFO. While Josh is committed to finding new, better ways of doing things, IT is focused on maintaining the status quo.
The owners at Josh?s company haven?t yet realized that they are in an innovation dip. It?s up to Josh to stir up enough trouble to make them wake up to the fact that innovation requires abandoning old practices in addition to introducing new ones.
Tags: construction, construction IT, construction technology, contractors, general contractor, innovation
4-H dairy club will share information
What does it mean to be a 4-H dairy member in Warren County? Find out the answer by visiting the Udder Club on Sunday, Sept.
Park Street Clinical Laboratory
Athi� | Wohnrath: Dow Chemical Building (Brazil)
Alabama Football: Justin Smiley Leaves the NFL to Return to the Tide as a Coach
Justin Smiley always played with a mean streak that embodied what Nick Saban wants everyman lineman to try and accomplish, "Just make their ass quit". Now he's come home, after ending his six-year NFL career, to teach that mantra firsthand to a new group of linemen as a student assistant coach at Alabama.
Lewisboro Tennis Courts Finally Getting Makeover
Friday, September 23, 2011
Solo living drops in Manhattan, up elsewhere
Single living declined during the past decade in Manhattan, though it still is the nation's capital of single-person households. At the same time, living alone grew nationwide.
Existing-Home Sales Surge as Investors Bargain Hunt
Park Street Clinical Laboratory
Panama Expands Canal to Increase Shipping Capacity
An expansion of the Panama Canal should double the amount of goods that can pass through it each year.
Housing market may be making a comeback
Home sales surge: Low prices, mortgage rates bring best figures since June 2010
Timmy Scott, left, waits to spread hay on the yard of this Jay Bell home in Hamilton on Hunter North.