2024 Summer Newsletter

BEYOND THE BOOM

By Keith Wayne, President & CEO

Everyone, including the Presidential candidates, seems to be talking about the “Building Boom.” We’ve often heard slogans like Build Back Better, Build that Wall, and more recently, calls for building bridges and infrastructure, as well as initiatives like the CHIPS Act for microchip production.

However, we have been part of this boom for many years. We have been building the “Cloud” via Data Centers, grading the landscapes, installing the deep foundations, and forming the vertical towers that make up our offices, universities and other great institutions which make America the greatest place in the world to live. Nearly forty years of building, expanding, and improving the manufacturing facilities that create numerous jobs for our communities. It seems many are just now realizing the importance of builders in creating these essential assets.

ELECTION-PROOF YOUR GROWTH: WHY ‘WAIT-AND-SEE’ IS NOT A STRATEGY

By Chad Champine, Vice President Industrial Group

It’s officially that time again! Election season is in full swing and with it, the usual rhetoric toward business climate which seems to engulf our day-to-day business operations, while indiscriminately fueling waves of variability, uncertainty, and risk. We’ve entered the period in this four-year cycle where geopolitical risk and economic outlook are inversely proportional, and we work tirelessly to forecast both the potential and the very real risks to our operations.

The everyday businessperson becomes a highfalutin economist, citing the most memorable snippets of the latest Jobs Report, BLS CPI/PPI Index, and commonly regurgitates nuggets of information gleaned from last night’s Mad Money, or this morning’s Bloomberg Surveillance report. Meanwhile, your tenured economists have all silently hunkered down, but not before bestowing upon us their sage “Wait-and-See” advice that your everyday businessperson latches onto and confidently repeats in abundance. We’re advised that “many businesses are simply sitting on the sidelines until a clearer outcome of the game plays out” or that “companies are waiting until after the election when the dust settles, before heavily investing again.”