Odds Are 60/40

By: Murray Corey

As is my way with each Captain’s Chair column, I sit down to write never knowing for sure what will come out – I hope it doesn’t seem that way once I do get it written. Anyway, I have just turned the big 60 and must admit this has given me a somewhat new perspective on life. You hear it everywhere – 60 is the new 40. Believe it, I say.

I have always been fascinated by numbers, so I call it the 60/40 rule, which replaces the old Freedom 55 rule. So far I have been able to stay on the right side of a balance sheet mainly using simple addition and subtraction. Although sometimes one has to use some higher forms of math to understand what is happening, and a bit of optimism goes a long way too.

For those of you who are younger than me, I want to say to you: Do not be afraid! It’s not that bad at all. For those of you who are my senior, I want to say that I have come to realize that I don’t quite know everything like I thought I did. I am much more careful about arguing with such certainty – that is, I leave a little more room for other possibilities rather than thinking I am right about everything. At any rate, I also realize that I have less time left than I had before. Along with the working years I have left, I want to enjoy the time as much as possible with my wife, my friends and family, the water, music, and some travel.

The other lesson I am now learning is the need to plan for the years after work. Planning, not only in a financial way, but also in a “what will you do with your time?” way. Amazingly I hear friends who are already retired telling me they can’t even imagine how they ever found time for work. They are so busy in retirement doing all the things they always wanted to do, never sitting still for a moment. I think we baby boomers are the first generation that is able to look forward to many good years of retirement ahead of us. However, there is still a bit of work to do, so I will move on.

What The Barometer Is Saying

Sometimes I look at our wall and ceiling association and its members as a type of barometer for the business climate. Barometers being instruments that specifically measure atmospheric pressure, but the word is also applied to anything that reflects impending change. What the barometer is currently telling me is that we are in a very tight market with everyone looking to squeeze a few points out of their costs in all their purchase decisions and looking for real value in all their expenditures.

In response to this, the BCWCA felt compelled to lower the price of our golf tournaments that historically sell out. We also chose a golf course that provides real value for the price. Last year we also re-jigged the pricing for the Christmas Dance to make it more affordable and an overall better value. On a similar note, we haven’t increased our association membership fees in over seven years. In the meantime we managed to broaden our funding base to be less reliant on those membership fees. People in business are much more willing to do almost anything that they think might help the bottom line.

So where does this lead us to? As you all know by now I am a realist and I pretty much tell it like it is. Things are so tight out there that the association has lost some of its financial support, leaving us to re-think our current business model. What it means is that our operating margin has been reduced and we will have to make some adjustments to sustain ourselves. Sound familiar? At times like this I could get up on my soap box and preach about the motherhood value of recruiting and training apprentices. I could tell you all about the fall protection courses we have delivered or all the red seal journeymen we have put through our installer program. I could tell you about our efforts to mediate work conflicts, help we have provided to see contractors get paid, or time spent providing the industry with technical information and helping to update the AWCC Specifications and Standards Manual.

There’s enough doom and gloom out there to sink a big ship. How about we take a look on the bright side? I have been reading about all the large construction projects that are coming down the pipe and (unless the world financial markets go into a total collapse) we just might be sitting on the edge of another building boom here in BC. So, what does that mean for us? Well for one thing, just the other day I overheard a few contractors saying it was getting hard to find any good framers. It feels strange to think about, but we are probably just a tick away from a labour shortage. Soon we’ll see contractors rushing out to get workers anywhere they can, such as off-shore, to fill the shortage, and wages will slowly start to go back up to where they were prior to 2008, and the demand for trades training will spike.

If all goes well, the plants will be running full tilt, the dealers’ trucks will be fully loaded, and warehouse workers will be impossible to find. All around prices will improve and we will all be so busy we will be going crazy with no time to rest or relax.
In conclusion, I think that the future looks much brighter and good times are just around the corner. The current nightmare is almost officially over and soon ca-ching ca-ching will be the only sound you hear.

Waking up to all this reality, I have to re-think my own retirement plans and possibly consider phasing myself into it through a reduced work week – make a little more time for sailing and as a result save some costs for the association. Hmmm, that sounds interesting.

Murray Corey is the executive director of the British Columbia Wall & Ceiling Association and can be reached at 604.575.0511