Walsh is the owner and project director of Confluence Builders, a design-build and project- management consulting firm. In August, things were still tight after a year of promise. Today, times are lean, but the promise is back with a better focus.
A year ago, we were just post-election, so there was a lot of uncertainty. Now, everybody is facing the new reality and the new economy and just operating a lot leaner.
The good news for the design and construction community is we’re seeing the effects of the stimulus dollars. The question mark in everyone’s mind is, beyond 2011, what’s going to happen? Nobody has seen any signs of new development starting.
The positive thing for the last year has been that everybody is really more focused on what they’re doing. It’s true in our case. We’ve been doing business planning and have really narrowed our focus to three areas.
First, integrative project delivery, where we act as developer-builder or design-builder and streamline the delivery of projects.
Second, being a project-management company like we are serving on the Four Seasons.
Third, providing consulting services to other developers, contractors or architects, where we help with feasibility studies, provide estimating services and help companies operate more efficiently.
As far as development goes, we’re working on a couple of projects in the early stages. We’re pulling together a feasibility study and rezoning a parcel of land in Jefferson County. It will be a nice project when it happens. We’re also working on a few tenant-improvement projects.
I think everybody is learning to adapt to the uncertainty. I feel a lot more confident today than I did a year ago. Maybe it’s just that we’re becoming more accustomed to the new reality of how tough it is to finance projects.
Maybe there is overdevelopment that happened, and it will take a while for all of that backlog to burn off, but long-run, there’s going to be growth in the United States and in Colorado.
People are going to need places to live and shop and go to school and work. I would hate to be in Flint, Mich., right now.
