I am writing this on the winter solstice, the darkest day of what has been a very dark year. It seems like every day in 2020, we awakened to some fresh, new pain, our country like an aging body that discovers new knocks and pangs and tweaks as it tries to navigate the normal day-to-day. These are, indeed, remarkable times, and that was best summed up for me when I heard someone say, “In the future, when historians say they are studying 2020, their colleagues will ask, ‘Oh really? Which week?’”
The metal construction industry holds hope for 2021
Coming from that situation, you can’t help but feel positive about 2021. When you’re at the bottom of the pit, the only way out is toward the light.
In our 2021 State of the Industry, every contributor exuded a positive attitude about the coming year:
- Alex Carrick, chief economist, ConstructConnect, foresees growth in the construction economy, especially in the residential market as increased mobility due to work-at-home programs prove successful.
- On the labor shortage front, Tim Seyler, president, Metal Buildings Institute, announces a new workforce development coalition of construction associations that are pooling their efforts and is dedicated to attracting young, new talent to the industry.
- Metal Building Manufacturers Association general manager, Tony Bouquot, reports on the optimistic attitude at the annual meeting in December that is propelled, in part, by manufacturers already seeing “a shift in the market” due to “an increased demand for larger buildings being used for warehouse and distribution centers to support the shift toward e-commerce.”
- The residential metal roofing market will get a boost from the surging real estate market and increased mobility of the workforce, says Renee Ramey, executive director, Metal Roofing Alliance. “For homeowners who have found their forever home, their focus will now be on investing in long-lasting improvements and renovations,” she writes.
- Architect Rick Harlan Schneider, AIA, APA, LEED AP, principal, ISTUDIO Architects, Washington, D.C., discusses how the move to biomimicry design is making our buildings perform better and fit into the environment around them more seamlessly.
- The economy is driven in large part by small businesses, and Art Hance, president of the Metal Building Contractors & Erectors Association, speaks to how its members are taking advantage of increased demands for metal buildings and adjusting to a fast-changing environment.
- James Bush, chair, Metal Construction Association, reports that “most of those in metal construction appear to have weathered 2020 well.” Going forward, new opportunities will arise in certain market segments, while the depressed starts of this year gets spread out over the next two years.
- Cofounder of METALCON, Frank Stasiowski, FAIA, believes that the next decade will mimic the Roaring ‘20s of a century ago. The CEO of PSMJ Resources, Newton, Mass., says investments in technology by designers and architects have positioned them to take advantage of the new mobility and deliver a design revolution.
There is a sense of optimism among all those contributors that I hope is contagious and allows our country to recover from the dark times we’ve lived through. With luck, we will learn to be more resilient because resilience is what is getting us through. And hope.
Hope has arrived in the form of vaccines that are now being distributed, and the long, difficult process of inoculating an entire country has begun. Predictions among experts vary, but it will take at least until summer for the whole country to have been inoculated.
Still, that’s progress, and on this darkest day of the year, we have hope.
