Walsh is the owner and project director of Confluence Builders, a design-build and project-management consulting firm.
I think while the bottom may be near, it doesn’t feel like the recovery is going to be any time soon. Fifty percent of the architecture world is out on the streets looking for jobs, and that’s a telling sign of what’s to come in construction. Projects that are in design today will be out in construction next year. Everyone you talk to sees a substantial drop-off in 2010.
Financing projects is really tough. The requirements to close the loan keep getting more stringent.There’s more money available and banks are trying to find projects, but the box has gotten really small. They’re looking for very specific projects to finance.
Most of the projects right now are public and financed with bonds passed last year. We’re pursuing a number of school projects and, unfortunately, have come up short.
We’re working on Taxi 3, a 100,000-square-foot creative workspace. We hope to start construction this fall. Financing closed about a year ago.
The competitive environment is extremely tough right now. Contractors are crossing their traditional expertise. Everyone is out looking for opportunities. One of my big concerns is that certain companies are doing projects below cost to keep cash flowing. Eventually, that is going to catch up because this is going to be a prolonged recession, or maybe it’s a new reality that will shake out a lot of companies.
We’re staying lean as a company and watching our cash flow. Our customers are slower to pay, which really puts us in a tough position because we have to pay our suppliers.
The good news is we hired a project engineer to help us on a couple of our projects. We’re up to 11 full-time employees. We’re hopeful by the end of the year we’re going to add a couple more full-time employees.
