By Brian Sullivan
The Construction Industry
As per the experts at Forbes, ENR and ACEC, it looks like 2018 should be another growth year for the construction industry, although it appears that growth is predicted to slow. As stated by Andrew Nelson, Chief Economist at Colliers, in his State of the US Market Report, “While nearly all indicators point to robust fundamentals in 2018, there are some headwinds to look out for in the coming year. The biggest concern is the availability of qualified workers with labor shortages growing in key sectors, especially those with a high proportion of immigrant workers.”
Building Envelope Restoration
As growth slows, the A/E sectors that are anticipated to remain the strongest are the “necessities.” The services performed by the exterior restoration industry certainly qualify as necessities. We often empathize with our clients when they lament about performing projects that are driven by compliance with facade ordinances, or solving immediate issues like active leaks or unsafe conditions. as opposed to opting for interior improvements that are driven by the “wants” of building occupants.
Once again, we anticipate continued growth in the Building Envelope Restoration industry as the economy continues to improve, and deferred maintenance becomes a larger priority. In New York City, sun setting sub-cycle B and the approaching deadline for sub-cycle C of the 8th cycle of NYC’s facade ordinance known as FISP (formerly Local Law 11/98) will provide steady work for all Qualified Exterior Wall Inspectors “QUEWI”, in Q1. The combination of proactive building owners quickly reacting to work identified in sub-cycles 8A and 8B, along with building owners who, for various reasons, are trying to complete work identified in sub-cycle 7C will likely lead to another positive year across our niche.
Sullivan Engineering
Our Leadership team recently completed a two-day planning session with our EOS Ben Berman During that time, we revisited, and recommitted to, our core values: purpose/cause/passion, core target (goals by year 2025), our 3-year vision and 1-year plan. We clearly identified the objectives that must be met, and the new processes that will be required:
We are again targeting significant revenue growth for 2018. To proactively prepare for this growth, we spent a substantial amount of time and resources recruiting, hiring and on-boarding eight new team members in 2017.
- We have already added one new team member, Sarah Barber, and anticipate bringing on several more superstars shortly. It’s our philosophy to always try to have the right people in the right seats before they are needed to ensure that we have time to properly develop our team members for the roles and responsibilities they will tackle.
- We are again expanding our Manhattan office, within the same building, to accommodate this additional growth. The benefits of being in a WeWork space have paid off tremendously over the past year as it easily allows us to move to larger spaces while maintaining a consistent address with little impact on day-to-day operations
- We look forward to one of our team members getting married and starting the next phase of his life with his wonderful fiancé. We also hope for more exciting milestones from other team members.
- So far. 2018 has provided one individual accolade for a member of our team. Rebecca Reilly was named to the Irish Echo’s “40 under 40” list. Rebecca is a tremendous building envelope consultant, who exhibits our core values day in and day out. She provides topnotch service to our clients, and is often specifically requested by many of our repeat clients to oversee their projects. No doubt several of our other young stars will have great accomplishments/acknowledgements as well.
If you have any feedback on how we can continue to improve, please share it with us. We would love to hear your thoughts. I hope we all have a great 2018!
