By Janice
Kaspersen
From
bridges in Brazil to building renovations right around the
corner, it’s now possible to find projects on-line.
How
do you find new work, especially if you’re a brand-new company?
Are you missing some of the best opportunities because you’re
not looking in the right places? How much time should you
be spending each week - or each day - scouring for job announcements
and requests for proposals (RFPs)?
When
J.C. Brummond started Latitude Constructors and Engineers
in Seattle, WA, earlier this year, he already had the answers
to some of those questions. With a staff of experienced construction
professionals, a willingness to travel far in pursuit of the
right project, and a taste for the unusual, he wanted a comprehensive
source for project leads.
For
nearly five years, Brummond has used an online service called
ProjectGuides.com to find work and keep up with who’s doing
what in the industry. The Internet-based service provides
subscribers with a daily list of preproposal announcements
and bid opportunities, RFPs, bidders lists and bid results,
and project awards in selected categories. Members can search
for qualified professionals, post RFPs on-line without charge,
and advertise their services to buyers. A new feature, Project
Connections, will allow companies to maintain their qualifications,
capabilities, experience, and resumes on-line to be viewed
by qualified buyers.
Choosing
Your Category
As
president of a construction and environmental remediation
company a few years back, Brummond used the service to locate
work throughout the western United States and Hawaii. He has
stuck with it, he says, because it allows itself to be tailored
to his current needs. "You don’t have to weed through
if you don’t want to. If you want, let’s say, engineering
consulting - boom, plug it in, that’s all the service will
send you. Or if you want bridges, it sends you bridges.
"Originally,
my primary use for it was from the perspective of a subcontractor.
I’d look for big jobs. Some of them I could tackle by myself.
On others, I would wait until I could see who the prime contractor
was, and then I would know whom to speak to. It allowed me
to track and match up my specific talents with the talents
of others. Now what I use it for today in a start-up company
is another completely different application of the service.
I pull down about a dozen categories, everything from various
regions."
The
challenge a project presents is as important to Latitude as
its geographic location. "I haven’t focused this new
company on one particular type of work. What I’m looking for
is opportunities that fit my needs, my personal desires, and
the talent of the group of people who I have in the office,"
says Brummond. Just before starting Latitude, Brummond was
the project manager for Hunt-Kiewit - a joint venture between
Huber, Hunt and Nichols Inc. and Kiewit Construction Company
- on the $500-million, 46,000-seat, retractable-roof Safeco
Field baseball stadium, the new home of the Seattle Mariners.
He and other members of Latitude have worked on subway tunnels,
wastewater treatment plants, bridges, and many other specialty
construction projects on three continents.
ProjectGuides.com
lists more than 100 industry categories, with more occasionally
being added. A sampling: "Architecture/Engineering-Civil/Dams
and Levees," "Construction-Infrastructure,"
"Construction-Roads," "Culverts, Catch Basins
and Collection Systems," "Design/Build," and
"Liners, Geotextiles, Membranes." Some leads are
listed under more than one category.
For
one basic monthly fee, ProjectGuides.com lets subscribers
pick 15 categories - any combination of geographical locations
and industries. Brummond has started out with more than that
because his work area covers Western, Southwestern, and Southeastern
US and Canada and because he’s searching in a variety of industrial
categories. "I went through and picked everything I could
and didn’t worry so much about the price. At some point, about
six months from now, I’m going to say, ‘I found this to be
very valuable in these categories, and these categories I
don’t need anymore.’" Because he has chosen many states
and provinces, he gets anywhere from four to 30 announcements
each day in each industry category. In all, ProjectGuides.com
says it delivers roughly 3,000 leads a week to its 10,000
subscribers in all categories. Its sources are local and national
publications, government agencies, private companies, and
other online sources.
Brummond
also tracks categories in which he won’t necessarily bid,
such as "Architecture/Engineering-Building." "Although
we don’t do architecture or engineering from a design standpoint,
I like to know who’s out there and which owners are advertising
for architects and for engineers so that I can track the projects
at a very early stage. An owner might be advertising for an
architect or an engineer for something that’s three or four
years down the track."
Replacing
Paper
Brummond
used to rely on the Seattle-based Daily Journal of Commerce
to find out about jobs in the Northwest; Dodge Reports,
Commerce Business Daily for federal job announcements;
Engineering News-Record; and local newspapers. "ProjectGuides
(www.projectguides.com)
seems to wrap up all that into one package," he points
out. "For chasing work, this is all I’m using right now,"
although he still receives printed copies of some of the publications.
"For some reason it’s easier for me to sit in front of
a computer and scroll through something - delete, delete,
delete, delete, delete, save that one - than it is for me
to flip through the pages of three or four different magazines
at once. Now, exactly what that’s turned into in real dollars
and saving my time, I don’t know. I’d just intuitively say
this is a smarter way to do it.
"Although
my bread and butter is in the Northwest, for the right job
I’d go to South America," states Brummond, who has worked
there before. "It would be a rare project that you would
go for, but you might just find one of those little golden
eggs somewhere in this package."
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