Masonry Magazine March 2006 Page. 21
All work here continues to have a prevailing competition and ask them a question about ing wage; state work does not. What does that mean? What we see is that on non-prevailing wage work, oftentimes there are new players in the market who are paying less than living wages to their employees, which brings the price point down and ruins the rest of the market. It's not so much of a governmental issue as that we need to pay the people who help us build our projects a wage that enables them to have a good standard of living and put their kids through college if they want to.
All I can say is I think a prevailing wage requirement on governmental work-be it state or federal-helps create a better quality of life for the people constructing the work.
Masonry: Which group do you feel has a bigger impact on masonry's future: architects, engineers or general contractors?
Whistler: I would say architects and engineers, for the most part. They're the ones that typically decide whether masonry is going to be used on projects. Let's say 80 percent of the work is non-design-build. Then 80 percent of our future is going to be impacted by the architects and engineers. If it's 20 percent design-build in our marketplace right now, it will be a split 50-50 between architects and general contractors on the design-build portion of the market.
Masonry: What do you like most about being a member of MCAA?
Whistler: It's the collaborative spirit and sharing of ideas. We have been active supporters of a variety of contractor associations, the MCAA being just one of those. It's an age-old deal: you're writing out the check at the end of the year for your dues and asking yourself about the return on the investment and whether you should do it next year.
Our experience as a company is that we have overwhelmingly been blessed with great rewards out of all of our association work. It's very much been an intangible benefit in that ability to call up a peer in a different market who is not your direct your strategy or business plan. Maybe you met that person because you were at an MCAA conference a couple years ago, had a cup of coffee with them, and developed a relationship. It's those relationships that we get out of our association work that often times help us when we're trying to work through issues in our business.
The other thing we have benefited from are joint-venture relationships. So many of our peers are interested in expanding their business in similar fashions that we are. Sometimes when we desire to go after a project that is bigger than something we would normally go into ourselves, we form a joint venture and those projects have been very successful.
Kennison
FOREST PRODUCTS, INC.
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