The Associated General Contractors of America has an excellent publication “The Contractor’s Guide to BIM” that is a great place to start. You may want to ask your network connections, as many business who started in drafting and design have made substantial investments to offer BIM services to specialty contractors. Finding the right candidate and justifying a full-time BIM position will require a business development strategy to keep the BIM department busy. An investment of 6-18 months and $80-100,000 is not uncommon to hear. Get Educated on BIM. MORE >>

The Building Trades Wildcat in Alberta 2010 September 4 by 330Bell The Building Trades Wildcat in Alberta Background: Alberta labour laws are not only some of the most repressive in Canada, they may be some of the most repressive in North America. In Fort McMurray, the work disruptions lasted until the weekend and then on Monday it was business as usual again. At one rally in front of the Labour Relations Board, the business manager for the Carpenters was booed off the stage for saying the union could do nothing to protect workers who refused the order to return to their jobs. MORE >>

And if you build your business structures so that cash and profit are dissasociated from purpose and what really matters to individuals (employees?) you end up with ethically unsound businesses which provide truly crappy products and services and can be truly vulnerable to competitive impact. In North America, an experienced senior person with college age students living in a major metropolitan market will need more than a single young person in an economically depressed town. Business management values MORE >>

I first learned of this trait when much younger, when I decided to learn about and experience Africa to a level most people in North America would consider extreme.  Now this deep learning process is a weakness as well as strength, because the time I spend on these activities can be seen as peripheral to my primary business.  If only I could put the same energy into the core publishing operation rather than these “diversions&# , wouldn’t we do much better as a business? Business management valuesPerhaps.  Frugal, eh. MORE >>

I certainly cannot claim to be an economist who understands pricing theory but have learned one thing through my years of experience in business:  In the real world, pricing has very little to do with the intrinsic worth of our products and services because the value our clients place on the services we provide varies on many things other than the intrinsic, underlying cost of the services or goods we provide. In disaster situations in North America, some people try to exploit these temporary local dislocations and gouge clients for the extra emergency “value&#.  a copy.  MORE >>