Bond buyers worldwide, awash in negative-yielding debt, are crying out for fiscal spending. A seven-minute stretch in the German bund market proves it. On Aug. 8, just before 9 a.m. in New York, Reuters published a headline that blared “Germany mulls fiscal policy U-turn.” According to an anonymous senior government official, Germany was considering abandoning…
Budget structures vary by the type of construction a contractor performs. For example, subcontractors typically have a significant amount of their costs allocated to direct labor and materials while general contractors’ budgets are likely to have more subcontracted work on their books. However, despite the differences in where the budget is weighted, every contractor, no…
Dive Brief: Some subcontractors who performed work at the $2.6 billion Encore Boston Harbor casino and resort in Everett, Massachusetts, claim that general contractor Suffolk Construction is withholding tens of millions of dollars for completed change order work, Casino.org reported. The largest claim is from Coghlin Electrical Contractors, which said that Suffolk owes it $30 million…
U.S. coastal communities provide recreation and a laid-back lifestyle for those lucky enough to be able to live in such close proximity to the water, and the flow of tourists sustains small businesses that set up shop there. But all of this goes away if rising sea levels put these areas under water. And according…
I was holding an annual surety account meeting out on the golf course one day with the agent and the contractor. This contractor works primarily as a subcontractor. He is financially strong and has a great reputation. I jokingly said: “If you are going to work as a subcontractor and insist on maintaining such a…
You may refer to them as Good Guy Letters, Sunshine Letters or just a Contractor Letter of Bondability. These letters have been around a long time, and their popularity has seen an uptick in recent years. What does a letter of bondability do? This letter provides evidence that the contractor has a surety relationship. It might…
If you were to ask contractors what they like most about construction, they probably wouldn’t say, “I love preparing bids.” Most contractors love being on the job site, not being cooped up in an office working on numbers. Yet contractors get the majority of their business from bidding on projects. The most successful ones have…
The top reasons contractor succession planning has evolved The following is a guest post from Wayne Rivers, co-founder and president of The Family Business Institute. Succession planning has always been a hot topic among contractors of a certain age, and that’s not likely to change. What has most definitely changed, however, is that today’s discussions…
US construction costs rose 5.7% in 2018 Dive Brief: Construction costs in the U.S. rose 5.7% in 2018, according to Rider Levett Bucknall’s First Quarter 2019 North American Quarterly Construction Cost Report. Of the 12 U.S. metros in RLB’s report, those experiencing the biggest cost increases were Chicago (7.6%); Portland, Oregon (7.1%); San Francisco (6.7%); Phoenix (6.7%); Washington, D.C….
Project labor agreements (PLAs) are a frequent point of contention in the construction industry, particularly when private contractors are forced to sign these typically union-negotiated deals. The pushback is strong enough that stakeholders are doing what they can to get government-mandated PLAs banned at both the state and federal level. In the simplest terms, a PLA is…