From time to time, I like to share construction industry tips I pick up. Heeding advice on field advances has saved my team tons of time and money, and hopefully you’ll find the same is true for your business. A few of us recently attended the Birmingham chapter of the Construction Specifications Institute monthly meeting …
To me, two simple words can be the foundation of long-term business relationships: character and culture. When these values are the same between a buyer and a seller, opportunity for long-term growth exists. We have always looked to build customer relationships with companies and individuals who have a similar character and culture as ours. Roughly …
While most of us are suffering from the Recession’s effects in one way or another, there is a silver lining inside our current cloud. Recessions let us step back and observe the way we do business, often providing takeaways for our businesses as we move forward. From the reading I have done, innovation and great …
When my work requires travel, I reward myself by staying somewhere listed in the Historic Hotels of America directory, which is closely affiliated with The National Trust for Historic Preservation. The HHA is an association of hotels and inns scattered across the United States, usually in urban areas, which were usually built in the beginning …
After talking with someone about the movie Taking Woodstock, I got to thinking that this monumental event took place prior to the advent of the Internet, cell phones, social media sites and even before the invention of the fax machine and overnight mail, which surfaced in the early 1980s. Even without these tools we now …
Because of the current imbalance of supply and demand in the commodities market, the cost of construction has been trending downward over the last year or so. Some of our projects take years to develop, and before this correction, the previous several years saw 3-4% increases annually. It’s hard to come back to your customer …
We recently priced a pro ject in Atlanta (a little less than $1 million job), which had several general contractor bidders and a ton of subcontractor quotes. In fact, there were a total of 20 subcontractors competing for $70,000 worth of HVAC work. Amazing. What’s even more amazing is that our cost was exactly the …
As I’ve mentioned in previous entries, green building is a growing focus for Stewart Perry’s business. While our appreciation for the land works its way into every project we take on, our own corporate campus and our recent work constructing the Ruffner Mountain Nature Center have had green interests at the very heart of the …
Effective community service is an essential part of every company’s resume, and it has been an active portion of our extra-curricular efforts over the last 25 years. Community service does several different things simultaneously: Foremost, it helps whichever organization or charity we are supporting It helps bond my team in a setting outside of the …
A small but growing portion of our business is what I would call “green building.” After the construction of our new LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) silver certified office building last year, we have been exploring several other projects in the Birmingham area as a way to diversify our business, encourage environmental sustainability …
Every once in a while someone comes along in my life so inspiring and benevolent that it makes me ask the great introspective questions about who I am and what the real purposes of life are. The person motivates me to be a better individual, and when faced with a dilemma, I ask myself, “what …
Being prepared is something that I can never get too much of. In business this means always looking around the corner to find the next job or being careful not to spend foolishly, and at home it means having that rainy day fund for when the unexpected happens. I’ve been involved with the Boy Scouts …