Anyone else in construction seeing any recent downturn in business.

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  • Bertfish

    Throw bread on me
    Mar 13, 2013
    17,608
    White Marsh, MD
    Just curious. How large is your backlog now compared to say 6 months or 1yr ago? Do the tariffs impact your markets in a positive or negative way?

    Seen no real affect due to tariffs with the exception of a general increase in steel prices. Where we win or lose is strength of the American dollar on the international market. Monetary swings can make a good price yesterday in to a bad price today.

    We were 75% export before and it seems to be about the same. I work off of a production schedule which is independent of actual sales (long story) so I couldn't really tell you how large my sold backlog is.
     

    Cuttyfunk

    Active Member
    Dec 17, 2015
    157
    We are slower, which is concerning but overall still busy. After six months of 60-70 hour weeks I will take a little slow down this time of year. That said we are bidding multiple projects and cant get bidders. Just bid a 1.5 mil project and only one bid out of 10 solicited. We practically begged for bids.
     

    ToolAA

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Jun 17, 2016
    10,500
    God's Country
    We are slower, which is concerning but overall still busy. After six months of 60-70 hour weeks I will take a little slow down this time of year. That said we are bidding multiple projects and cant get bidders. Just bid a 1.5 mil project and only one bid out of 10 solicited. We practically begged for bids.


    We have been a bit more selective in which projects we bid. With online bid systems like BuildingConnected.com and procore it’s too easy for GC’s to just flood our inboxes with so many projects it’s too hard to filter through all of the noise. I’m bidding more work but seeing an overall lower win rate.

    I know the situation you are describing and we give priority to GC’s who at least just send us bid requests for products or services we offer and take the time to filter out the crap. Also I’m tired of waiting 60-180 days to get paid so any GC who pays on time gets put to the top of the bid board.
     

    duckslayer

    Active Member
    Feb 3, 2009
    554
    southern dorchester county
    I think I am seeing a typical holiday slowdown I’m in specialty retail sales (tombstones) and we typically see this. Until a few weeks ago we have had record amounts of work.
    I also typically see an election year slowdown. The more they scrap and fight the worse it is until people figure out which way the election is going.
    Hopefully it goes the right way I can’t see Bernie being good for business. Or anything else for that matter
     

    randomuser

    Ultimate Member
    Nov 12, 2018
    5,778
    Baltimore County
    I have been doing what I do for 13 years. My opinion is worth what you are paying for it. Nothing different than the seasonal slowdown. You really can't tell if a market is going to be slower until jan, feb and mar.
    Sales numbers for jan, feb and mar are about 3x what they are in oct, nov and dec. Nothing out of the norm imho. The only way I would see or call a slowdown is looking back so that I can be 100% accurate. If jan feb and mar is = to oct, nov, dec, then I'd say definite slowdown.

    My numbers look like this.
    jan, feb, mar....30 bids per month
    apr, may, june, july 15 bids per month
    aug, sept, oct, nov, dec around 5-10 bids per month

    2017 was good
    2018 was great
    2019 was a repeat of 2018
    not sure what 2020 will bring. I'll let you know with 100% accuracy after it passes


    my opinion now though is that this is the typical seasonal slowdown. Nothing out of the norm.
    I track my numbers through the years to go back and see what the last few did and what patterns are being followed. NBD as of right now. I'll let you know my opinion in feb/mar.
     

    ToolAA

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Jun 17, 2016
    10,500
    God's Country
    I thought I would revive this thread to allow us contractors a place to compare notes.

    Here is what I’m seeing:

    Right now I do almost exclusively commercial construction work, however around tax time we do see an uptick in residential customers who find us online somehow and ask for countertop quotes. I looked up the numbers from last year and we did about 7% of our March and April sales to residential customers. This year we only have 5 residential jobs on the books. Where this time last March we had 16 jobs booked by March 18th. It’s only a very small sample and I not expecting any retail jobs for the next 2 months.

    With respect to our commercial projects I’ve called most of our backlog and I’ve had about $100K in jobs that I would say are now questionable, in that they will be postponed for some period of time. That’s only about 8% of our total backlog but it’s still a little alarming. I have several restaurant jobs on the books and 2 are supposed to open next month are still going forward and others which I think will get canceled. I do have one project which was supposed to be all off hours night work. Since the office building where the work was being done now has nobody working, the GC is asking all of the subs to do the work during the day and provide a credit for not needing the shift work. This is actually smart and I wish some of our other night work would figure this out and do the same. Night work is always a pain in the ass.

    Our biggest concern is that customers who are overextended will collapse. I’ve pretty much put the breaks on a few that are past 90 days and I’m trying to use some of our upcoming work as gentle leverage to get some payments sooner than later. It’s a real tough balancing act to know how hard to push now. I don’t want to alienate clients either who I may depend on 6 months to keep the lights on.

    TLDR: Backlog is still solid I have work for 3-4 months at a somewhat reduced pace if most of them stay on schedule. I am reducing prices on large projects which have good funding from well paying customers in order to try and secure work for Q2 and Q3.


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
     

    outrider58

    Eats Bacon Raw
    MDS Supporter
    Jul 29, 2014
    49,818
    We had a great fall and an even better winter. Usually, we drop off just before Christmas. This year, we stayed busy straight through the holidays and right on through January...until now. We just furloughed our salesman(boss is still a salesman though) for the time being, and I have maybe two-three weeks worth of fabrication to do. Nothing much coming through the door now. We are a custom shop, catering largely to Interior designers. Most of them are holing up, for now.

    Time will tell. We've been in business for 55 years. I think we can scratch by for some time. We've seen worse...
     

    tdt91

    I will miss you my friend
    Apr 24, 2009
    10,810
    Abingdon
    We are a small window dealer. service install company selling to mainly contractors / builders and do installs for homeowners as well. We sell Marvin and Kolbe and brought on Harvey as a nice vinyl line about a year ago. 2019 was crazy busy throughout the year right on through the holidays. For me it's been crazy all this year as well except for the last couple of weeks which is kinda nice because I'm getting a well deserved break from the rat race. I have plenty of jobs on the books that will go and some may hold off due to the COVID19. That said I just got 2 new builds today to take off and quote and there are plenty of entrance doors to work on. The boss has us sales guys working from home as much as we can until this global issue is over with. I just hope it don't last too long as a small company may struggle, especially if we can't get paid. I'm sure people that would soon be starting remodel or new work are going to hold off a while so I do think this will mean a significant slow down for our industry (building) very soon.
    Hang on tight guys and good luck out there.
    BTW. I think this is a good thread to do a little networking so please reach out if you are in need for a window and door dealer. (not store front)
     

    welder516

    Deplorable Welder
    MDS Supporter
    Jun 8, 2013
    27,307
    Underground Bunker
    We are seeing a downturn of new stuff , have some older jobs that are so slow and just trudge along at a snails pace . Not looking great but 50 years in business and we will be fine in the long run .
     

    2nd=Good+Substantial

    Ultimate Member
    Mar 17, 2012
    1,623
    The Hereford Zone
    I underwrite bid and performance bonds. My contractors are seeing bids pushed back a week or two. No cancelled bids (yet). They are still getting Notice to Proceed where they were the successful bidder.

    Most of my customers have full backlogs which hopefully get them through for a while.

    I would anticipate those who don't have some cushion in the form of cash and/or available bank line of credit are at greater risk as I saw in 2008.

    I agree with ToolAA's idea of vetting customers.

    I wish everyone the best.
     

    bibitor

    Kulak
    MDS Supporter
    Oct 10, 2017
    1,894
    FEMA Region III
    My wife and I are both in commercial general contracting. She owns a small company that mostly does work for the state. My company is a larger GC (~150 employees) and most of our clients are various state agencies and county governments, lots of school work, K-12 and higher-ed.

    Internally, we have moved nearly the entire office to telework, skeleton crew of critical personnel come in on an as needed basis (child care also being a factor here). I wear hats in IT and pre-construction. We released our COVID-19 directive to our employees Friday and had a project stand-down Monday morning to distribute information, allow for questions, and review communications procedures for various scenarios.

    All of our projects are still active, our field crews are all working. We did see temporary delays from some clients for bids and pre-bid site visits. All are back on the calendar. We have been contacted by the state regarding availability for emergency response. We have multiple on-call contracts with emergency response requirements.

    It’s truly surreal right now, half of my life is cruising along like nothing happened, yet I can’t go out to lunch at my favorite diner. We’ll have to wait and see what happens with the supply chain, I full expect massive delays with long-lead items that aren’t already in the pipeline.

    A pre-bid for UMBC tomorrow will be held outside and a bid delivery for HCPSS will have a live streamed opening, but the delivery is still by hand :shrug:. Events have been fast moving and things could go sideways tomorrow...buy the ticket, take the ride.
     

    randomuser

    Ultimate Member
    Nov 12, 2018
    5,778
    Baltimore County
    My close friend has over 40 houses and he is constantly picking them up to remodel for sale or for rent.
    Just had an est on a 17k siding job on a place that he is debating on hiring the guy and doing it now or holding his cash for a bit.
    His business is down about 30k this month and he is not sure if he wants to outlay 17k for that job to be done.

    He closed on 6 properties in Feb. Right now, decisions on what to do with them are going back and forth. I have no financial interest in his business other than him being my good friend and he and I brainstorm business problems and solutions to grow.
    I said to hold off a few weeks before any serious outlay of cash for anything.
    I saw what happened in 08 when people ran out of money to cover monthly carry cost and could not lower the price of their inventory. They were in a no win situation.
    I have done everything I can to protect myself to weather whatever we have coming, we will see if it is enough.
    If not, we will all end up being socialists so it won't matter. None of us will have to work and the government will take care of us if we hit that point.

    In 08 I now alot of people in his position who went **** up holding declining assets. He and I have weathered the storm before, but it has not rained like it will this time. This is like something nobody has seen before.

    In December, I cut all unnecessary expenses coming into the new year. I'm glad that I did that back then. I'm down to minimum expenses right now and still have 2 months solid pay in the pipe just waiting for money to come in. Surely some will not come through, but most will. Then after that, when it resumes will be tbd by when the quarantine would be lifted. Once lifted I can start making money again, just don't know how long it will be for us to be down.

    I don't know how this will change the way the country works going forward, but I can't imagine anything good coming out of this.
     

    ToolAA

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Jun 17, 2016
    10,500
    God's Country
    Last year our network got hacked and we were the victim of a ransomware attack. Just like you, I'm the IT guy too. We had good backups but when I upgraded our hardware I had the foresight to install VPN capability, setup a static IP and increase our bandwidth. It was more for me to be able to mange the network securely from home and occasionally work from home myself. We'll last Tuesday or so it seemed like things were getting more serious. One of my best estimators has a seriously compromised immune system so I told him I wanted him to work from home for his safety. By Thursday that changed to every employee in our office would be working from home. I'm, small 30 employees total right now 12 in the office. We worked Friday and Saturday to get 10 of the office people setup and trained to work 100% from home and went live Monday morning. There were some hiccups and I realized my phone system which is about 5 years old is not really able to do this level of remote capability, but so far it's working great.

    I told all of my staff that they way we survive this is just like how we survive normally. Give better service than the competition and dont use the situation as an excuse to perform poorly. When the dust settles, customers remember who handled the crisis professionally and efficiently.
     

    bibitor

    Kulak
    MDS Supporter
    Oct 10, 2017
    1,894
    FEMA Region III
    Last year our network got hacked and we were the victim of a ransomware attack. Just like you, I'm the IT guy too. We had good backups but when I upgraded our hardware I had the foresight to install VPN capability, setup a static IP and increase our bandwidth. It was more for me to be able to mange the network securely from home and occasionally work from home myself. We'll last Tuesday or so it seemed like things were getting more serious. One of my best estimators has a seriously compromised immune system so I told him I wanted him to work from home for his safety. By Thursday that changed to every employee in our office would be working from home. I'm, small 30 employees total right now 12 in the office. We worked Friday and Saturday to get 10 of the office people setup and trained to work 100% from home and went live Monday morning. There were some hiccups and I realized my phone system which is about 5 years old is not really able to do this level of remote capability, but so far it's working great.

    I told all of my staff that they way we survive this is just like how we survive normally. Give better service than the competition and dont use the situation as an excuse to perform poorly. When the dust settles, customers remember who handled the crisis professionally and efficiently.

    We recently had construction completed on a level 3 fiber connection to our building. Unfortunately we are getting dicked around by CenturyLink to make the final connections for the service. It would be so nice to have that operational right now! We have ~40 employees on VPN daily and our upload is capped at 30 mbps, so things are slow for folks. We have duplicate infrastructure at our equipment maintenance facility, service there better, but I haven’t made the swap over yet...maybe this weekend.

    We’re using a RingCentral voip service for our phones, it’s working very well. Our receptionist is able to answer the phone and transfer calls from home and we have video conferencing/screen sharing services through them as well, a real game changer for a situation like this.

    On a side note, I operate a small IT contracting company with a few partners, one our clients basically gave us a blank check Friday to get them running remotely this week. Finished-up getting their organization operational again today. They are a small non-profit and we were able to get them set-up for under $2K.
     
    Last edited:

    Melnic

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Dec 27, 2012
    15,282
    HoCo
    Construction will slow down to a halt when the counties shut down and you can't get inspections done in order to keep going. Government is really good at shutting some things down and still paying people while private businesses have to lay people off or just stop giving them hours. I hope that does not happen, but that is my prediction.
     

    rbird7282

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Dec 6, 2012
    18,538
    Columbia
    Home Depot just emailed me and said they will now be closing at 6pm every day.
    I was supposed to start a bathroom renovation next week and that may get delayed now although I already have a signed contract and deposit


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    PapiBarcelona

    Ultimate Member
    Jan 1, 2011
    7,343
    Home Depot just emailed me and said they will now be closing at 6pm every day.
    I was supposed to start a bathroom renovation next week and that may get delayed now although I already have a signed contract and deposit


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    Meh, stores are still open 12 hours a day except for Sunday.

    They're just balancing slow customer foot traffic anyway, expected increase in call outs, extra time to "clean" the stores.

    During the week, there will still be employees in the store 24/7.
     

    MykR0k

    Banned
    BANNED!!!
    Jan 13, 2020
    207
    Home Depot just emailed me and said they will now be closing at 6pm every day.
    I was supposed to start a bathroom renovation next week and that may get delayed now although I already have a signed contract and deposit


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    Not trying to be a smart a$$ but how does HD closing at 6:00 PM delay a project? Can't you make material runs before 6:00 PM?
     

    rbird7282

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Dec 6, 2012
    18,538
    Columbia
    Not trying to be a smart a$$ but how does HD closing at 6:00 PM delay a project? Can't you make material runs before 6:00 PM?


    I agree completely. But more and more stores/vendors on the supply side (building materials/fixtures etc. will start reducing hours and/or closing.
    Eventually it will start causing problems with lack of supplies for the building trades IMO


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    44man

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 19, 2013
    10,129
    southern md
    I agree completely. But more and more stores/vendors on the supply side (building materials/fixtures etc. will start reducing hours and/or closing.
    Eventually it will start causing problems with lack of supplies for the building trades IMO


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    My metal stud framer just walked out of my trailer ranting that he had to call the supply house with his order, the place is on lockdown, someone inside gets the ticket, pulls it, sits it and the ticket on the dock then you load it yourself and sign then they come out and get the signed ticket

    And they had track but no studs in the Guatemalan and length we needed because the trucks have been delivering late as of late

    So it’s kinda starting now
     

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