Building, construction, and design roundtable.

• Author: Malan, Mekenna
• Position: ROUNDTABLE

This month, Utah Business partnered with Dentons Durham Jones Pinegar to host a roundtable event featuring Utah's building, construction, and design leaders. Moderated by Bruce Bingham of Hamilton Partners, they discussed how COVID has affected their industries, supply chain and labor issues, and their outlook on what's ahead. Here are a few highlights from the event.

How badly has COVID hurt you, and in what ways?

Allen Clemons | Design, Real Estate Development, and Construction Consultant

I believe it's making the industry better because we have to truly plan now. I think if we're all honest with ourselves, we understand that it's the old industry joke, right? At the end of a job, none of us sit around the room and say, "Boy, we sure over-planned that job!" I think now we're having to be far more deliberate and strategic and implement actionable plans that we can actually accomplish because people are getting tired of hearing the COVID excuse.

Brandon Squire | President | Ralph L. Wadsworth Construction Company

I agree that the COVID fatigue is real. It's not only affecting our personnel as far as staffing, but our people don't expect subs to show up on time. They don't expect materials to show up on time. It's impacting their mentality, like, "Nothing's going to go right today," because there's always something that's going to change.

Troy Gregory | President & CEO | Hunt Electric, Inc.

The fatigue on employees is real, and the biggest impact is just having to adapt to the things that happen every single day. Like when a key individual on a project tests positive. We're constantly having to shuffle the crew and shuffle key leadership to fill those gaps and get them taken care of. It's constantly trying to manage change and things that are unpredictable.

Vern Latham | Principal | VCBO Architecture

During COVID, we found that we were pretty productive. We had one of our best years ever in 2020. In 2021, we really tried to get back in the office because one of the things we realized is that as a design profession--and it may be the same with construction companies too--we need to be there together. There's a certain synergy you have as designers putting construction documents together that you don't have sitting in homes around the valley.

Ben Davis | VP, CFO | Van Boerum & Frank Associates, Inc.

We have a hard time getting people to come to the office. In fact, it is 60 percent still, and it's just endless excuses of why they can't come in today. I don't think people are as productive when they're not in the office. What we found is that the people that work when they're in the office also work when they're at home, and the people that don't work when they're in the office also don't work right at home--except even more.

What kind of problems do we need to consider around supply chain issues? Is there any relief...