Jim Kollaer's blog

Standing at the window of an office in the Texas Medical Center (TMC), I was struck by two things. First, how big and diverse the TMC is. Ten years ago there were 42 institutions included in the TMC. Today, there are 54 located on 1345 acres. On any weekday, the population of that medical center is greater than a large portion of the towns and communities in this nation, over 125,000 with 106,000 employees.

Don’t think that it is just the young and inexperienced worker on your team who is more likely to fall; be certain to train all of your field crews, even your foreman, in ladder safety so that they will all be able to go home to their families tonight and come back to work tomorrow.

As we noted in previous posts, we will keep you up-to-date on the latest developments on this project. It seems now that Joe Montana, former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers football team, is caught up in the construction issues at the Millennium Tower commonly known as the Leaning Tower of San Francisco. According to SFGate (the web publication of the San Francisco Chronicle), Montana and his wife have sued Millennium Partners, the developers of the tower, and the Transit Joint Powers Authority, the public authority building the transit center next door, for $2.7 million in damages for the purchase and $1 million in “consequential damages.”

This is the change year for politics, construction, and technology. One wise philosopher once said that, “Every time of change brings tremendous risk, but also brings tremendous opportunity.” Emily Peiffer over at Construction Dive published a paper on 10 Construction Industry Trends to Watch in 2017. Watch if you want to, but I would go further and say that if you want to emerge in a better position in 2018, you had better incorporate some of these changes into your business today.

Construction Dive’s Hallie Busta recently listed six construction documentary films that you should watch if you are interested in construction. One of those films, Block by Block documents the men who are building the tallest building in India, a country not known for its safety on construction sites.

Construction schedules are a lot like peanut butter – smooth and creamy or crunchy. That might seem like a bit of a stretch but check this out. Anyone who has been around the design and construction world for even a short time knows that the project schedule makes or breaks a build’s safety, profitability, and even its ultimate marketability.

With the looming skilled workforce shortages, it will become critical that all of us develop ways to improve our productivity on our jobs no matter how large or small they might be.

We have written about problems in search of solutions like the looming skilled craft worker shortage being made worse by the impending retirement of “the old guys” in the business, the exploding demand for new construction and the lack of new trade skilled workers entering the industry, especially in the US.

There is lots of buzz in the US about women in the construction industry. Questions are being asked about why more women are not attracted to the field, how more women can be attracted to a career in construction, and who are the leading women in US construction.