The long winter slog

The long-awaited blog post after an extended delay is mostly winter-related - plus my friend Eric from G5 Insurance must be too busy with his accomplished daughters to poke me about the lack of posting.  

I’ve been busy, in a slow winter way.  I guess I’m also a little tired of talking about the weather, which has been a daily slap in the face of cold, snow and what have you.  Cold wet winters are very expensive and logistically complex for a construction company with jobs spread out over 4 counties and a wide region.  What is true in one area is not true in another. Andrew, our project manager, has had his hands full keeping the job sites open with 3 or 4 different plowing companies which tend to be local in nature.

Trent, our in-house Revit (drafting software) has been busy navigating the various building departments, their changing personnel, requirements and expectations.  Our favorite town to build in, Kerhonkson, has gone from business-friendly to anti-business in head-spinning one year time frame, after Catskill Farms building there for over 10 years, and literally dozens if not more homes.  

The Town of Rochester would never agree they have now pivoted from a place to do business to a place to avoid, but that’s because the new leadership really doesn’t understand the impacts of their changes, be it personnel or process.  But me, as someone who runs a business and has to navigate it, I understand it perfectly well.

It could be a planning board that is looking to obstruct, consciously or unconsciously.  It would be a new building inspector who may be looking for 20 page plans of details rather than the 8 pages that has worked across the Hudson Valley for the past 25 years, because from a résume standpoint he looks great with solid experience in a busy town, but culturally bringing expectations that will be very hard for this rural area to achieve.

Savvy Town Supervisors understand a good cultural fit is as important as a good skillset fit.  This isn’t Westchester, it’s rural Ulster County, and there are few overlaps in what is actually necessary to successfully build a home when one place is hyper-dense, and the other is hyper-sparse.

The problem with a winter severe enough to slow the construction process is that a lack of construction progress also means a lack of cash flow progress since construction progress is necessary to get financing advances or client payments.  And a lot of our costs to run the business happen with or without a lot of construction progress such as payroll, insurance and everything needed to keep the lights on.

On the other hand, we have had the luxury of time to do a lot of office work for these projects that once the weather breaks, we will be not only off to the races, but positioned to pull our scull out in front of the pack.

One thing that is true is that the spring will be busy busy for a lot of subcontractors such as excavators and masons and framers, and that’s when relationships will come in handy so you are able to skip the queue, like buying the Fast Pass when skiing at Killington which allows you to skip the lines, for an extra $75 per day.

New homes going up in New Paltz, Yulan, Narrowsburg, and Kerhonkson.