GTS attended the fourth annual Glazing Executives Forum on September 30th at the Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, as part of GlassBuild America: The Glass, Window & Door Expo, Sept. 30-Oct. 2, at the same convention center.  Although overall GlassBuild attendance was down year over year, over 7,000 attendees were in Atlanta for the expo.

Just over 100 attended the Glazing Executives Forum, a day-long event that consisted of:

• A "State of the Industry" panel discussion led by Henry Taylor, Architectural Services Team manager, Kawneer Co., Norcross, Ga.; Rod Van Buskirk, president, Bacon and Van Buskirk, Champaign, Ill.; and Newton Little, executive vice president, Ace Glass, Little Rock, Ark.
• Economic forecast from from Jeff Dietrich, senior analyst, Institute for Trend Research, Concord, N.H.
• Breakout sessions on Estimating, Software Trends, Legal & Contracts, Talent Management and HR, Storefront & Curtainwall, Protective Glazing, LEED Projects, and Fire-rated projects

Before the group got into the day's agenda we watched a video on Leadership from Robert Trainor, CEO Trainor Glass.  He spoke about the importance of "over managing" projects to ensure you have easy, real-time access to all the project details so you can manage net profitability by job.  He stressed the importance of having systems and processes in place so that you can attack problems and resolve them quickly.  Additionally, he mentions having the appropriate reporting and anlysis in place so you don't make the same mistake twice.  The video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyBl5TWFPKU .

During the "State of the Industry" panel discussion, Kawneer's Henry Taylor shared a chart showing "non-residential building contracts awarded trend 1970-2013." In 2010, the square feet awarded is 993.2 million, a 40.5 percent decline since 2007's 1,667.9 million square feet. "We're still anticipating a 15 percent drop next year," he said. " A potential for a strong recovery’s out there if all the projects go through, but recovery’s going to be slow."

For the short term, Taylor advised companies to focus on core competencies and manage cash flow with a "cash is king" mind-set. For the long term, think about technology, he said. "Now is the time to upgrade or improve technology," he said. "Also take a look at your key positions and make sure you have the right people in the right position. Look at your facility, your process flow, now is the time to change those. You won’t have the time in 2011.

Henry's presentation slides can be found at http://www.myglassclass.org/courses/StateoftheIndustry_GEF2009.pdf

Economist Jeff Dietrich predicted a similar decline in non-residential construction in 2010 (12%) with a recovery coming in 2011.  Jeff's message was very similar to the panel - Conserve cash and implement technology and process improvements to emerge from this downturn stronger than the competition.

The two breakout sessions I attended were "Estimating" facilitated by Newton Little of ACE Glass and "Trends in Software" facilitated by GTS's own, Erik Miller.  There was a great deal of information shared during these round tables.  Below are a few of the specific bullets I thought you might find to be of interest:

• The majority of the attendees used GDS Storefront Estimating http://www.glazesoft.com/
• Key Metrics used to measure the effectiveness of estimators:
• • Dollars Closed / Dollars Bid; compared with,
  • # of Jobs Won / # of Jobs Bid; and lastly,
  • Profit Dollars per job
• Group felt it was a best practice to have completed a AIA Prequalification sheet.  Florida Glass was cited as a best practice of posting their pre-qualification form http://www.florida-glass.com/prequalification.php
• Group felt it was a best practice to set daily goals for the field crews.  Field crews should be rewarded when they outperform the daily productivity goals
• Field crews should be measured against historical benchmarks for productivity.  In other words, a team of three should be able to set so many lites of glass per day.
• Group felt that real-time infomraiton is needed to take corrective action as a job progresses.  30-45 days after the job is too late.