When we built our corporate campus a few years back, we were thinking about how to create a better workplace for our folks. Our goal was to create an environment to promote teamwork, break down cylinders and be fun. To accomplish this, I considered multiple designs: –minimum walls and many open work areas, our customer …
You’ve heard about an idea locker? Well how about an idea freezer? This post from Jeremiah Owyang talks about one of my favorite ways to enjoy time disconnected from work: The idea freezer. For him, it’s a notebook that allows you to jot down ideas and to-dos as they come to you. The thought is …
Last week while looking though Entrepreneur, an article titled “How Entrepreneurs Can Conquer Fear of Selling” caught my eye. Carol Tice lists “owners who hate selling” as a primary reason businesses fail. While I am not sure it is a primary reason, the brand of a small business is intertwined with the persona of the …
Did you know the oldest baseball park in the country is in Birmingham, Alabama? Rickwood Field was built here in the early 1900s. Until Legion Field was erected, Rickwood was the only major sports facility in town. The park hosted not only the Barons and Black Barons baseball teams, but college football teams from all …
It seems like so far this year, we’ve had three seasons: Winter, then Tornado Season and now Hot Summer. It feels like we skipped Spring entirely. For the last couple of weeks, temperatures in the Southeast–and across the country–have been unbelievably hot, which puts additional stresses on ready mix concrete pours. Temperature, wind and humidity …
It’s no secret that the aftermath of the Recession continues to take a toll on the construction industry. Last week, as I listened to more struggling economic news, I must admit that I thought to myself, “How much longer?” I have seen several of my competitors – companies I have bid against for the past …
As important as office presence may be, I’m a firm believer in pockets of downtime. A break from email and task-oriented duties, however small, always brings me back to a top priority: family and friends. When a customer (who I also count as a good friend) invited me to join him and his wife at …
Recently, I came across this post about failures of leadership. To me, Leadership is much more than following a set of rules or what someone has written in a book. Ideally it is instinctual and second-nature for one in the leadership role to not only guide, but also to learn. Failure is certainly a very …
Several team members from our company were invited to attend the 2011 World of Concrete and Masonry (WOC) in Las Vegas earlier in the year. For those not familiar the WOC, it features hands on events, a chance to network with peers in the industry, interactive demonstrations and competitions, hundreds of exhibits from suppliers from …
On a couple of our projects recently, we needed retaining walls built in “cut earth sections” as opposed to “fill earth sections”. In these projects we needed top down construction and a method that afforded easy accessibility and we were dealing with earth that would only be “cut” and not “filled.” The alternative? What you …
Three years ago we decided to plant a few tomato plants beside our office. That small patch of land has become much more. Our plot has grown into a full garden featuring silver queen corn, rosemary, strawberries, blueberries, cantaloupes, watermelons, squash, turnip greens, cucumbers, peppers and of course—tomatoes. Beyond the beautiful produce, the beds have …
The clickety-clack noise a train makes when traveling down the tracks can be a soothing sound. But hearing that same noise while driving on the interstate is annoying. For me, it’s partly because it gets me to thinking about how the road was paved and how the breaks in the pavement are slowly, but steadily …