My recent blog on The Competitive Advantage Nobody Needs generated some interesting responses on ENR.com. There were some very insightful comments, even from the one responder that thinks everybody is a crook in the construction industry. Bidders that short circuit the specifications are taking something of value from the owner of the project. In the [...]
It was recently reported in ENR that the staff of a Florida electric utility thought they knew how to replace a steam generator better that the experts they were trying to hire, and at a lesser cost. So, they decided to do it themselves to save some money. The results were not good. The costs [...]
It was announced by the federal government that the recession ended in June 2009. That is 15 months ago. Why do I have a difficult time in believing that? My recession events calendar still has it continuing. My forecast for the construction industry is that a meaningful recovery, not just an announced recovery, will not [...]
Caltrans is reaping some major initial cost benefits from depression style pricing in the construction industry. In a recent ENR.com article on saving over $2.4 billion, they stated the bids were coming in 20% to 40% less than the estimates. On one project the bidder actually proposed a 21% shorter time frame than estimated by [...]
