Vol. 4, No. 21 – October 10, 2005

PLAN NOW TO ATTEND 2005 FALL FLING 

The annual meeting will be held November 3-4 at Harrah’s North Kansas City Conference Center and Casino. The location itself is a reason to attend, but you’ll want to attend the timely and informative program planned for Friday, November 4, as well. 

You probably already know something about Greg Brooks and his expertise from reading the top publications in the building materials industry. Now, you’ll have the opportunity to meet him and hear him speak about what’s happening now in the supply chain, how it affects you and the opportunities that await. His topic will be “Point of Impact: The Coming Shake-Out in Construction Supply.”

 We’ll draw from over 50 years of research to trace the evolution of production home building and its impact on the channel, analyze case studies of successful dealers throughout North America, and examine the unprecedented threats and opportunities facing construction suppliers. 

Greg Brooks is president and CEO of the New Albany, Ind.-based Building Supply Channel, Inc., a training and development firm serving the building products industry.

 Brooks is a 36-year veteran of the construction supply business who spent over 20 years in the field, in all facets of operations, sales, and management. As a trainer, he has developed programs for organizations that include Huttig Building Products, Lumbermen’s Merchandising Corporation, Wickes Lumber, and the National Retail Hardware Association. 

He was a co-founder and editor of ProSales magazine in the 1990s, and is now chief editor of LBM Journal. Brooks is a member of the Steering Committee at the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, and has conducted seminars and workshops on building product distribution trends for thousands of industry executives throughout North America.

AREA MEETINGS START IN NOVEMBER

The Mid-America Lumbermens Association (MLA) announces a series of area meetings to be held at a location near you. Two important topics are scheduled for these meetings, in addition to offering a forum for the discussion of current industry news and issues.

Online HR compliance management 

Human Resources management (HR) is an area that is vitally important to the success of all businesses.  Comply Solutions is the most effective tool available to manage employee training, regulatory compliance and other key human resource issues. A must-attend for any CEOs, human resource managers and safety engineers and worth serious consideration for all MLA members if you ever wonder whether or not you’re meeting all the requirements surrounding employee hiring, retention and safety issues. Among some of the services that will be discussed are on-line delivery of employee handbooks, management guides, training of managers and employees to maintain a safe, non-discriminatory, harassment-free workplace, maintaining regulatory content and notification of compliance law and other management and training tools.  Feel free to visit their web site www.complysolutions.com. Go to the “take the tour” tab to learn much more about this increasingly necessary part of everyone’s business operations.

PostFrame Manager

Interested in attending?  We hope so.  A continental breakfast will be served at the morning meetings and hors d’oeuvres will be served at the evening meetings. They will be provided at no charge. To help us guarantee an accurate meal count, please fax your reply no later than one week prior to the meeting you plan to attend.

We are offering these meetings at 16 locations throughout the MLA territory. Call the MLA office at 800-747-6529 for a registration form or click here. Select the time and place that works best for you and return your form today!

Hancock Lumber is a sixth-generation family-owned business based in Casco, Maine, since 1848.  The company now has 650 employees and operates 10 lumber yards, three Eastern White Pine sawmills, kitchen design centers, a construction financing company and a Marvin Windows store.  Hancock serves as President, Chairman and CEO of the company and was recently named “2005 Public Service Leader” by ProSales magazine.

“We are truly excited to have someone with Kevin’s vision and enthusiasm leading our organization during this critical time for the lumber and building material industry,” said NLBMDA President Shawn Conrad.  “I also thank Sam Dunn for his strong leadership and guidance over the past year, as we transformed this association to give dealers a stronger voice in our governance and more opportunities to be involved in their industry,” Conrad noted.

Also elected to the Executive Committee for 2005-2006 were the following:

LUMBER NEWS – QUICK GLIMPSES 

OSHA Publications and Posters Available for Free… OSHA is notifying the regulated community that there are several required OSHA posters and documents available for free on their web site. This is in response to complaints from employers who have received “official looking” announcements and notices from various companies requiring that employers purchase OSHA documents from them to remain in compliance with OSHA rules and regulations. Companies should contact their state government regarding additional state required posters. The OSHA Workplace Poster as well as other OSHA required documents can be downloaded for free at http://www.osha.gov/pls/publications/pubindex.list

 Source: NLBMDA Advocate, August 2005

Katrina's Effects Could Increase Housing Boom… The National Association of Realtors altered its forecast this month to predict 130,000 additional home sales next year because it expects the hurricane to slow the economy and prevent long-term interest rates from rising as fast as they otherwise would have. If the fixed mortgage rates are lower and the cost of borrowed money becomes cheaper, then conventional wisdom indicates that more people will buy homes.

“The underlying fundamentals [for] housing will be fairly sturdy,” she said. “Basically what Katrina’s done is shifted our outlook, but not enough to suggest there will be new records again as we go into next year,” according to Celia Chen, who studies housing issues for Economy.com.

Source: LBM Daily, September 26, 2005

Mississippi Steps Up Efforts to Salvage Timber Downed by Katrina… The Mississippi Forestry Commission estimates that the value of trees damaged in the state by Hurricane Katrina may be as much as $2.4 billion. The strategy to salvage timber and revive the state’s hard-hit industry involves setting priorities: pines before hardwoods.

“The hardwoods can wait a little longer,” explained Lloyd Huguley, a senior resource forester with Plum Creek Timber. “They may last until December. Pines tend to deteriorate faster. They can be infected by fungus. Right now, we’re concentrating on the broken and downed trees.”

Source: LBM Daily, September 29, 2005

Construction spending climbs to new high… Construction spending climbed to a record high in August, helped by a renewed boom in housing. Even bigger gains are expected in coming months, spurred by the massive rebuilding required in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The Commerce Department said Monday that total August spending rose by 0.4 percent, the biggest increase in three months. It pushed building activity to an all-time high of $1.11 trillion at a seasonally adjusted annual rate.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online, by Martin Crutsinger, October 3, 2005

Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act… President Bush signed the Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act, and Congress began work on another relief bill. Most of the tax relief provisions benefit victims of the hurricane; a few are available to all individual taxpayers and businesses. Among the latter are a tax deduction for persons who provide rent-free housing to Katrina victims; exempting charitable cash donations for hurricane relief from the 50 percent income limitation and the phase-out of itemized deductions; benefits to employers under the work opportunity tax credit for hiring hurricane victims; and an employee retention tax credit for small companies who transfer workers to other locations or continue paying them.

Source: Last Week in Washington, published by North American Retail Hardware Association, October 3, 2005.

Busy Days for Forest Product Companies and States in the U.S…. Plum Creek Timber Company and the states of Wyoming and Pennsylvania all had important days on Monday. Plum Creek announced that it would purchase some 650,000 acres of timberland in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The land, currently owned by Escanaba Timber, LLC, will be sold for $345 million. With this purchase, Plum Creek will own approximately 1.2 million acres of productive forests in northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Forests in the state of Wyoming are being ravaged by bark beetles. Not only are the beetles causing tree deaths, but officials worry about the increased risk of wildfire from the felled trees. “It’s extensive. It’s from border to border. All of our mountain ranges have it,” said Terry DeLay, a Medicine Bow National Forest forester.

Source: LBM Daily, October 4, 2005

Georgia-Pacific and Weyerhaeuser Cut Jobs… On Wednesday, both Georgia-Pacific and Weyerhaeuser announced job cuts.

Georgia-Pacific will cut 1,100 jobs from both North America and Europe, citing cost concerns. The company has also spelled out a number of initiatives in its North American and international consumer products businesses that are targeted to simplify and improve the manufacture and delivery of products to customers, while reducing operating costs significantly.

“We’ve made tremendous progress in our North American consumer products business since the acquisition of Fort James,” said Michael C. Burandt, executive vice president of Georgia-Pacific and president of North American consumer products. “These latest initiatives are important steps in our continuing improvement. We remain absolutely committed to continuing to meet all of our customers’ needs with our strong, efficient and world-class asset base.”

Source: LBM Daily, October 5, 2005

NAFTA Rules in Favor of Canada in Latest Chapter of Softwood Lumber Dispute… The North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) has ordered the U.S. Department of Commerce to change the way it calculated log-seller profit in one province. Canada contends that, if the Commerce Department implements the profit calculation as ordered, the countrywide countervailing rate on Canadian lumber would fall below 1%, and the entire countervailing duty order would have to be revoked. According to the British Columbia Lumber Trade Council, the percentage cut would change the duty rate to 0%.

NAFTA has set a compliance date of October 28, 2005.

Source: LBM Daily, October 6, 2005

Interpersonal Failure

According to a new study by Leadership IQ, a leadership training and research company in Washington, D.C., 46 percent of newly hired employees will fail within 18 months, and only 19 percent will achieve unequivocal success. But it isn’t technical skills that these new hires lack – it’s interpersonal skills.

The study, conducted over three years, surveyed 5,247 hiring managers from 312 public, private, business and health-care organizations about their failed hires, defined as anyone who was terminated, departed under pressure, or received disciplinary action or significantly negative performance reviews. Collectively these managers hired more than 20,000 employees during the study period.

The results showed that the top reason given for 26 percent of new hires that failed was that they couldn’t accept feedback. For another 23 percent, the main problem was that they were unable to understand and manage their own emotions, or assess those of others. A lack of necessary technical skills was the primary reason for failure for just 11 percent of failed hires.

The survey data revealed another troubling finding: Eighty-two percent of respondents reported that in hindsight, their interview process with these employees elicited subtle clues that the hire could be a bad one. But during the interviews, managers were too focused on other issues, too pressed for time, or lacked confidence in their interviewing abilities to heed warning signs.

“The typical interview process fixates on ensuring that new hires are technically competent,” explains Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ. “Technical competence remains the most popular subject of interviews because it’s easy to assess. But while technical competence is easy to assess, it's a lousy predictor of whether a newly hired employee will succeed or fail.”

Source: Inside Training, September 28, 2005, from the editors of Training magazine

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