Larry Stewart

Dsc 6417 10713170

US

http://www.ForConstructionPros.com

Larry Stewart is a content creator for the construction website ForConstructionPros.com. Larry has worked more than 30 years discerning the information needs of construction professionals and striving to answer them by creating award-winning magazine stories, rich web pages and ground-breaking events.

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S1.E11: How Renting Equipment is Helping Solve a Contractor’s Labor, Materials-Availability Issues

When Johnson & Galyon traded its equipment for rentals, they freed up people and buildings where they can stage materials with long lead times. Here’s how it helps them get the ‘very best pricing’ from subcontractors.

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S1.E10: Some Benefits that Convinced Johnson & Galyon to Spend More Renting than Owning Fleet

In deciding, the general contractor was ‘confident’ renting all of its equipment needs would cost more. Here’s how the move improved project and fleet management to make it a good investment.

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S1.E9: Contractor Counts the Ways Renting Improved its Equipment Operations

When Johnson & Galyon decided to rent all of its equipment needs from a single rental partner, they expected machine performance to improve but CEO Doug Kennedy seems a little surprised at how deeply the value penetrated into his company.

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S1.E8: The Surprises that Eased Johnson & Galyon into a Rental Partnership that Adds Value

How the east-Tennessee general contractor made it look easy to ensure pricing, quality and service it could depend on in structuring its commitment to rent all of its equipment needs from a single partner.

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S1.E7: What Changes Convinced Johnson & Galyon to Trade In its Equipment Fleet for Rentals?

One of East Tennessee’s biggest general contractors took the long view of challenges presented by new equipment, vendor practices and labor availability to gain big improvements in equipment performance.

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S1.E6: How Jon Ballmann Turned a 5th Grade Dream into an Earthworks Business

Drawn to construction by the heavy equipment, Jon Ballmann’s fascination for earthworks has spread to all aspects of the business and kept his right-sized company growing at just the rate he wants since graduating from high school.

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S1.E4: Smart Grader Blade Satisfies Earthmover’s Quest for Versatility that Grows

Ballmann Earthworks is built on machines that not only do a lot of different jobs but also are efficient doing a lot of different sizes of jobs. Here’s how Jon Ballmann weighs the cost and payback on a ‘Cadillac’ grader attachment.

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S1.E5: Contractor’s Smart Investments Recruit Just the Equipment Support His Company Needs

Small earthmoving contractor Ballmann Earthworks continues to grow well beyond its owner/operator stage with the leader’s commitment to enlisting dealer fleet support so that he can nurture his business.

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Check Out Cat Trials Video History and Awards at the Cat Visitor Center

Check out CAT trials and awards at the CAT Visitor Center.

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Cat Operator Challenge Veteran Offers Pointers for a Championship Run

Ballmann Earthworks keeps growing in a competitive commercial construction market on the strength of customer-first workers and the care their company owner takes to know and fully employ their skills.

How a Contractor Keeps Crews that Sustain Business Growth

Ballmann Earthworks keeps growing in a competitive commercial construction market on the strength of customer-first workers and the care their company owner takes to know and fully employ their skills.

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S1.E3: How a Contractor Keeps Crews that Sustain Business Growth

Ballmann Earthworks keeps growing in a competitive commercial construction market on the strength of customer-first workers and the care their company owner takes to know and fully employ their skills.

How to Get in on Caterpillar's Global Operator Challenge This Season

How to Get in on Caterpillar's Global Operator Challenge This Season

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S1.E2: Count the Values Supporting 15 Years of a Single-Brand Earthworks Company’s Growth

When Jon Ballmann can fill a machine need with a Caterpillar he does, going to Fabick Cat where he balances sales price with support that softens his risk and helped the skid steer owner/operator to shift into sustained heavy-construction momentum.

Jon and Julie Ballmann welcome another growth tool to Ballmann Earthworks.

A Story of How Grade Control Technology Makes It Rain for a Small Contractor

Here’s how Jon Ballmann turned a 5th Grade fascination with heavy equipment into a 20+ year construction business, and how he has kept it growing since graduating from high school.

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S1.E1: Contractor Explains How Technology Literally Built His Fledgling Earthworks Business

Jon Ballmann built his earthworks business from a skid steer in college to what he admits as having achieved his goals in his early 40s. Here’s how customer focus and technology got him there.

TouchPlan helps teams visualize workflow in ways that cut manpower peaks and fix schedule drift, plus it simplifies identifying process improvements.

Boldt Adds Tool to Lean Construction Toolbox

TouchPlan helps teams visualize workflow in ways that cut manpower peaks and fix schedule drift, plus it simplifies identifying process improvements.

Get good at finding cracks near the edges of things to set the breaker point on. If the target doesn’t break, reposition at another spot closer to the edge.

5 Tips to Improved Hydraulic Hammer Operation

Notoriously self-destructive hydraulic hammers require finessing manufacturers’ operating instructions to fit ever-changing demolition working conditions where the difference between a job well done and misuse can be a matter of inches.

Sensors and processing power mounted on the Cat GB124 Smart Grader allow the attachment to interface with the loader and switch the loader joysticks to control the moldboard, with automation features like those found on full-sized graders.

Automation Technology Now Pushing the Productivity Curve of Mighty Compact Machines

New sensors and processing power on skid steer and mini excavator attachments enables adaptive creep-speed cruise control, switches loader joysticks to control dozer and grader blades and backhoes to replicate large-machine automation

Positive results for drug tests of construction workers increased more than 12% in 2021, according to the 2022 Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index.

Construction Gets a Big Bump as Workforce Drug-Test Positivity Reaches 20-year High

Positivity for cocaine and marijuana is climbing among federally mandated testing of safety-sensitive workers. Positives are rising faster in post-accident tests than preemployment for cocaine, marijuana, opiates and oxycodones.

The annual percentage change in the Case-Shiller Home Price Index illustrates a dramatic acceleration starting in 2020, and the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank is warning of a potential housing bubble forming.

Case-Shiller Index Reports Scorching Home Price Gain, Perhaps 'Unhinged from Fundamentals'

S&P Dow Jones Indices says January's 19.2% gain in the Corelogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index was the fourth-largest reading in 35 years of history. Home prices' meteoric rise began in 2020, and have recently raised housing-bubble concerns.

Shaded areas indicate periods of inferred exuberance. Real house prices have risen much more steeply in the past year than in the run-up to the Great Recession. The Exuberance Index in the bottom panel tests market temperature and the confidence upper bound is the abnormality threshold. Current readings indicate U.S. housing showing signs of exuberance for more than five quarters through Q3 2021.

Dallas Federal Reserve Rings a Housing-Bubble Alarm

Recent acceleration of already speeding housing price increases are reviving mortgage-backed securities and have tripped the early-warning thresholds of some novel statistical tools being monitored post-Great-Recession.

When NASA returns to the Moon with the Artemis program, it will put in place sustainable infrastructure to allow deeper study of the Moon than ever and get ready for human exploration of Mars.

NASA to Fund Universities and Bechtel to Develop Robot Construction on the Moon

NASA selected proposals from Colorado School of Mines, Missouri Science & Technology and Auburn University, and will fund their technology development up to $2 million over two years. Bechtel will be the industrial partner to the construction teams.

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Housing Starts Leap in February just before Fed Rate Policy Turns Cool

Starts rose about the same percentage as existing home sales fell in February, just before the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, war in Ukraine rattled the global economy and COVID surged in Asia.