Best Practices Construction Law : Construction Lawyer & Attorney : Matthew DeVries : Smith Cashion & Orr Law Firm : Green Building & LEED Litigation

The construction industry is one of the hardest hit in this down economy.  From the top to the bottom, from executive to business development and sales to project management, you may find that you have to dust off your resume to look for new opportunities. 

An article by Joann Lubin in the Wall Street Journal yesterday highlighted a networking pro, George Landis, who had to learn some new tricks as his executive job ended last November.  Landis was described as a "deft conventional networker" who once relied on the traditional handshake.  Times are changing ... and Landis realized it.  He agreed to learn networking in the 21st century. Here are the top tips from his informal advisors, as well as a few of my comments:

• Develop a stronger online identity by revamping your resume.  For Landis, this meant changing his work summary from "a seasoned executive" to "I make sick companies significantly better for owners and employees."  From my perspective, it is also good to create an electronic version of your resume that contains hyperlinks to your work experience, notable projects, published articles and speaking gigs. (Here is an example of my electronic resume.)
• Make better use of LinkedIn, a professional networking website.  For Landis, this meant reviving his inactive LinkedIn account.  You may already have hundreds of contacts in your old, dingy address book.  Now's a good time to search those contacts for their online presence.
• Create a more visible personal brand.  For Landis, this meant finding a new way to position himself as a thought leader in business management.  For the construction player, this means finding opportunities to speak and write.  There are local associations like AGC of Middle Tennessee that enjoy new faces at their lunches. You are also bound to find a local educational institution like MTSU that has a concrete management program that always needs guest lecturers. 
• Get a bigger payoff from industry events.  For Landis, this meant joining the Turnaround Management Association and offering to assist in program development.  When you participate in the event organization, your start to become known as a good helper and volunteer.  Your name recognition and reputation builds.

At the executive and business development level, some of these tips may be easier to do than at the project management level.  But I think it comes back to identifying your passion and making that your job.  Former-construction-attorney-turned-marketing-coach Cordell Parvin shares 5 Keys to Success and Fulfillment and the second one is about finding your major definite purpose.  Perhaps your current circumstances allow you to look for new opportunities. And remember, you may be like Landis in your archaic networking ways, but even a pro can learn new tricks.

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I received an email this morning with the following warning: "The following message is intended for construction audiences only. Do NOT watch this clip alone or in the dark. Please wait 30-minutes after eating before watching this clip. DO forward this video on to a friend or colleague."
 

A couple of my observations about AGC's campaign for its annual convention:

1. This is very smart.  When I usually receive mass email alerts and messages, I put them in a "review later" folder and come back to them later in the week.  Not this one.  It caught my attention and I immediately clicked through the links.
2. This is very timely.  Sending this particular message during the week of halloween was ingenious.  Although the AGC Annual Convention is not for another five months, the message was tailored for the season and I am sure we can expect similar treats over the next coming months.
3. This is very exciting.  What AGC did here was step out of the cookie cutter approach to marketing.  It's a sign of the construction industry embracing Social Media and using technology in new ways.  Kudos, AGC!

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I know that title sounds odd. Before you start flooding my email box with comments about the practicality of Building Information Modeling (BIM) or the utility of social networking like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn in the construction industry, consider the life of the personal computer:

Were you around in the 1980s during the microcomputer wars between Commodore, Apple, Atari and Tandy? Can you believe that some of the first personal computers once plugged into a standard television that acted as the monitor?  It's so hard for me to even imagine that the little IBM ThinkPad that I pound my fat fingers on every day once looked like this? 

Even when I view the practice of law over the past 20 years, I see the dramatic changes that technology has brought. The legal brief is no longer typed on an IBM Selectric with carbon copy sheets and sent to court via courier—it is drafted on a laptop, converted to an Adobe .pdf document, and electronically filed with the court.  The letter to opposing counsel is no longer dictated to a secretary who takes down every word in shorthand—the words are spoken into a digital handheld device, which is connected to a laptop computer that transcribes the entire letter using voice recognition software.  

Given the transformation of how these simple tasks have been performed over the past two decades, it does not seem that far fetched to believe that technology can help sustain or revive a construction company in the years that follow this recession.  Just read what Geoff Smith, Chief Executive for EllisDon told to Reed Construction Data about the livelihood of the construction industry in the post-recession recovery period:

Turning his focus to new technologies, Smith said that Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the way of the future, adding that those contractors who don’t adopt it will be left behind.

“If you don’t (embrace BIM), you’re not going to make it down the road,” he said. “It’ll take a little while to take hold, because it requires some upfront investment on the part of the clients and the builders. But it’s coming everybody has got to embrace it as soon as they can find a way to.”

The same applies to social networking, which Smith has embraced — he’s on Twitter, Facebook and he blogs.  Social media is a key element of the company’s forward-looking strategy, he said.

“The construction industry over past generations has always been about people — we sell people; we put people on a project.

“Now there is the opportunity and the means to sell knowledge, intellectual capital and to create a competitive advantage doing that — and we see the social media facilitating that and creating that opportunity.”

I have written about the future of BIM being "in the pipeline." I have said that mainstream acceptance of BIM is a question of when ... not if.  When I take a step back and look at an industry's acceptance of a particular technology (i.e., the law firm's use of laptops, electronic filing, digital dictation devices, Blackberries, etc.), it is not difficult to understand and agree with Smith's comments about BIM and social media.

The more difficult exercise is to crystal-ball the issue of defining when a particular technology becomes universally accepted ... of trying to pinpoint when everyone (...or almost everyone...) will use the laptop, cell phone, DVR, iPhone, or even BIM.  But as an advocate of technology, perhaps our job is not to predict ... it is to advance, build up, campaign, encourage and support.

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