Half a dozen years ago, Bryan Scanlan made a risk-management decision to alter his construction company’s relationship with bears.
True, charging his clients on the basis of time spent on the job and cost of materials meant he’d never make a killing. On the other hand, he figured, it lessened the chances that he’d ever get killed.
In the past year, the time-and-materials approach has been for Scanlan Construction what the booster shots he and his wife both took for Covid-19: needed protection.
“If I’d have gave them hard numbers” on a project bid, he said, “I’d have lost my shirt,” he said – one that has his company’s name on it.
Scanlan said push escalated to shove last fall, shortly after he, Ray Kegley and Scanlan’s son-in-law Dustin Gray started rehabilitating the Fountain Avenue building now home to the Firefly Boutique and the Pretzel Company.
“Within a month of (the coronavirus) breaking out … trying to get our hands on anything” seemed impossible, he said. “On one job, I waited 18 weeks on a garage door.”
The black metal framing for the storefronts “took 13 or 14 weeks” to arrive, and “we couldn’t get windows because a lot of the (shop workers) were off (with Covid) and the office help was coming in at night” to build them.
Then wait time for subcontractors joined the trend.
“We deal with a lot of smaller contractors (with) 5-7 people in their group,” he said. “We couldn’t get plumbers for 10 days. The same thing happened with our electrician.”
And when there was wood around to knock on, it seemed hideously expensive.
Plywood, once $13 a sheet, rode a SpaceX rocket to $65 a sheet. Two-by-fours, which went for $2.35 before the pandemic have climbed to $8.99.
“And I got a letter Monday that concrete is going up $8 a yard” to a grand total of $175 yard, Scanlan said.
In the midst of all this, he called the Paycheck Protection Plan “a godsend.” “Two thirds of our people got Covid, and we paid them the two weeks they were off. Longer than that sometimes.”
Despite a 10-day shutdown and erratic wait times, Scanlan crews finished their Fountain Avenue project just a month later than planned – though with some mental wear and tear along the way.
“In our profession, we’re always trying to work ourselves out of a job; we’re trying to get things done,” Scanlan said. “And when we’re just sitting there, it’s nerve-wracking.”
Costs are now moderating, he said, but “the world is different.”
His sense is that “we depend way too much on China” and “have to get back to producing stuff in the United States so they don’t sit on a boat on the ocean.”
And spring’s arrival has introduced new fly in the company ointment: Some of its hardware had been ordered from Russia.
That kind of problem “is just going to be the new norm,” he said. “Things are going to be screwed up.”
Gladly, there was one bit of good news Tuesday as our interview ended with Scanlan’s announcement that “I do have to go meet a plumber here shortly.”
That meant:
1. He had been able to locate a plumber.
2. That it hadn’t been in a hospital.
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