Masonry Magazine January 1969 Page.38
RECORD TURNOUT FOR SPCI CONVENTION
Expansion of existing markets for brick, and creation of new ones, will be strongly influenced not only by new technology and the industry's ability to meet its manpower needs, but also by government money and construction policies, delegates to the annual convention of the Structural Clay Products Institute were told this week.
More than 700 brick manufacturers, distributors and guests attended the five-day (Nov. 1-5) convention at the Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. SCPI is the national trade association of the manufacturers of brick. The convention heard a financial expert, Palmer Webber, of Troster, Singer & Co., stock brokers, predict that the construction industry will be the chief beneficiary of a reduction in the nation's military budget, and that this will help make the 1970's the "biggest construction decade" in the country's history.
Webber said competition in the building industry will increase in the next decade, and as a result the brick industry will change. Some brick firms, he said, will be purchased by, or merged into, larger building concerns, but that firms which develop "strong, professional corporate management" can survive and prosper.
John W. Chapman, Jr., Deputy Administrator of the federal government's General Services Administration, told the delegates that President Nixon's recently ordered cutback on federal construction was designed primarily to make available to the housing industry the manpower urgently needed to meet the demands for homes in the immediate future.
He said that in the 1970's there will be more than $1 trillion worth of new construction, and that the supply of skilled labor will continue to be a problem for the building industry as it attempts to meet this challenge.
Various aspects of the industry's manpower situation were discussed by three convention speakers. Dr. David D. Martin, chairman of the joint U.S. Labor Department-Commerce Department "Study of Seasonality in Construction," said the soon-to-be completed study would recommend a number of different ways in which the federal government might help reduce seasonal fluctuations in building.
He said the study may recommend: Better ways of providing information on all-weather technology; specific weather forecasting services for winter building; provision of local market information to contractors and others; scheduling of some federal and federally-aided construction in the winter rather than summer; removal of any legal barriers to winter construction; examination of the idea of a tax subsidy to encourage all-weather construction; a study of the effects of collective bargaining agreements on "seasonality;" and consideration of the need for further research into all-weather construction.
George A. Miller, Executive Vice President of the Mason Contractors' Association of America, reported that the Masonry Industry All-Weather Committee is in the final stages of preparing a "Recommended Specification for Cold Weather Masonry Construction." He said the next steps for the Committee, which is composed of labor and management respresentatives, will be to launch a research study of the economic aspects of all-weather construction and begin a program of field testing of all-weather technology.
The convention heard reports by two of its member companies on technological developments that offer new market opportunities for brick.
Marlin Miller, Jr., executive vice president of Glen-Gery Corp., said that the growing shortage of craftsmen to meet increased building demands, and the desire for new construction ideas, favor the growth of brick "panelization." He said his company has joined with a manufacturer of precast concrete panels to produce four-inch thick, factory-fabricated, load-bearing brick panels that are about four feet wide and nine feet high. Use of the panels, he said, offers economy and speed of construction to the home-builder.
Glen-Gery also is designing six-inch thick brick panels for use in two-story townhouses.
Basil Saffer, Promotion Manager of General Shale Products Corp., told the convention that the use of brick as exterior facing on factory manufactured "core" or sectionalized homes offers the masonry industry an opportunity to obtain a new market in the low-cost housing field.
National officers of SCPI for the coming year were elected at the convention. Woodrow R. Eshenaur, Chairman of the Board of Glen-Gery Corp., Reading, Pa., was re-elected president of SCPI for his second consecutive one-year term. Charles T. Richards, Richards Brick Co., Edwardsville, Illinois was re-elected vice president. Joseph H. Patrick, Southern Brick Co., Inc., Ninety Six, South Carolina, was re-elected treasurer.