Being the boss is a pretty good feeling for most people. Those of you who own your business or have management authority draw a certain comfort from calling the shots and being able to tell subordinates what to do.
While contractors are certainly not the enemy, a sales pitch can sometimes seem like a strategic battle. Both require a plan, both require knowing the customer, predicting his or her next move and having a countermeasure to accomplish the plan.
Steel is one of the most widely used of all building materials. The list is as long as it is varied; columns and beams, stud framing, concrete reinforcement, doors, door frames, ladders, sheet metal, lockers, bolts, nails, and on and on. It would be impossible to build a building without using some steel.
This is not a pleasant article to write, because it has to do with failure. But don’t equate failure with being a loser. Thomas Edison failed with thousands of different filaments before finding one able to sustain the light of an incandescent bulb, and he most certainly wasn’t a loser.
The past year, as you may have noticed, has been a challenging time for the building materials manufacturing industry. But despite the economic downturn, new materials continue to come to market.
Plastering being one of the oldest of occupations, or as I am fond of calling it, the second “oldest profession” is represented in the United States and Canada by the Operative Plasterers’ and Cement Masons’ International Association, which was chartered in 1864 and is the oldest of all the active building trades unions in North America.
The material in the Steel Framing Alliance’s “A Guide to Fire & Acoustic Data for Steel Floor, Wall & Roof Assemblies” was prepared as a reference for fire and sound rated cold-formed steel framing assemblies.
Over the past year, domestic steel stud manufacturers experienced one of the most volatile, unsuspecting and outright damaging markets in recent history. The ups and downs of 2008 have tried and tested each of the nation’s steel framing manufacturers, and shaken the building products industry to its core. So, how did we cope with it and what are we going to do as manufacturers in order to survive?
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