February 2005 - Framers Seek Answers to Industry Challenges
By Mandi Harding

A roundtable of southern Nevada framing contractors has been meeting over the past few months to collectively tackle some of the industryâs concerns and challenges that are impeding everyday business.
ãThe framing industry is going strong, not unlike every other area of construction in the valley. Yet, framers have had some thorny issues crop up over the last 12 to 16 months which have made keeping costs low and making a profit very challenging,ä said Richard Thomas of Gary G. Day Construction.
Thomas noted the increased cost of studs, steel and nails have been dramatic and unstable. The end-user is also feeling the impact of these prices because itâs hard to bid a job six months in advance and know what the cost of materials is going to be at the commencement of that project.
As a commercial framer, Trey Harris of TRC Framing can testify to this sentiment. Harris had won the bid on a project scheduled to start six months later. When it was time to start, steel costs had doubled. Harris couldnât afford to eat the difference on material costs nor could the owner afford to pay double the previously anticipated costs. The solution came by delaying the project in hopes that steel costs would adjust or stabilize closer to what they had been.
To add to the concern over material prices, the summer of 2004 found framers with a labor shortage, which led to a bidding war.
ãTradesmen and carpenters were scarce commodities. Laborers were going to the highest bidder. One day you would have enough crews working on your five to 10 projects, the next day it was like a ghost town. We were turning away work because we didnât have the manpower. Labor demand was greatly outpacing available labor supply,ä said Ryan Stewart of Framecon, Inc.
Discussions held at the roundtable didnât see a timely end to the problem, especially considering that the first few months of the year were slow and many workers left to find work in Arizona and other greener pastures.
ãItâs one thing that they have followed the work, but I donât think we will be seeing their return considering Phoenix has surpassed us with a lower of cost of living,ä said Danny Riley of Vegas General Construction. ãAffordable housing is still very much a reality there.ä
To compound the climbing cost of materials and the shortage of labor, material theft has been on the increase, helping put framers in a real quandary.
The National Equipment Register noted in its 2003 Equipment Theft Report that ãestimates of the total value of equipment stolen annually range between $300 million and $1 billion. These statistics do not include losses from business interruption such as short-term rental costs, project delay penalties and wasted workforce and management time.ä
This report also reveals that recovery rate of construction equipment is about 10 percent.
Even more bleak is the 10 percent recovery figure despite that fact that over the past two decades systems for tracking and inventorying equipment to stop thieves in their tracks has been implemented and sophisticated.
Construction equipment is comparatively speaking easier to establish an owner. With decals, a unique paint job, serial numbers, a LoJack security number, Global Positioning Systems so on and so forth.
The effort to show ownership of 10 bunks of lumber and 100 boxes of nails is a different story.
ãWe all get our wood from a handful of lumber companies so there isnât much I can do to differentiate my bunk of wood from the framerâs down the street, let alone identify it should it be recovered,ä Thomas said. ãMy company estimates that on a project near Blue Diamond Road we lost $86,000 in materials over a four-month period of time.ä
Robin Mounger of K&K Framers emphasized 2004 as an especially tough year for materials losses, ãOn one project we lost $30,000 in lumber in one night.ä
Another FCA member had half a dozen company trucks stolen from different employeesâ driveways. The thieves werenât interested in stealing the trucks as they found out later. The operation involved driving the trucks to a remote location and torching out the toolbox to sell the tools, which are considerably easier to sell, and leaving the truck abandoned.
The framersâ roundtable will be meeting regularly to further consider solutions to these issues and is in the process of setting up meetings with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Departmentâs Construction Theft Detail to devise a security plan that can be tailored to their specific needs, and reducing the violation of theft on their jobsites.