Construction Consulting Firm President Reflects on the Market

Matt Stevens is president of Stevens Construction Institute Inc., a management consulting firm that works with construction contractors and is located in Winter Park, Fla.

Before starting his business, Stevens worked in distribution for Hughes Supply (now HD Supply, who was just bought by ProBuild)—the first five years as a manager and the last four years as the corporate marketing manager.

Stevens only consults with construction contractors because, “that’s my background,” he says.

During this market slowdown, he says that contractors have gotten away from housing and have gotten into industrial and commercial. He explains that the construction industry has always been understaffed and that from 1993 to present, the industry has had a shortage of from 150,000 to 300,000 tradespeople—project managers, craftspeople, superintendents, scheduling people and more.

“We’ve always been short,” Stevens explains.

He says he has seen older contractors smile a little bit more lately, possibly because they aren’t as busy and have the right number of people working for them for a change.

Stevens also says that the industry has “lots of legs underneath the table” to support it and that will help the market rebound.

He gives many examples of what he means by his table analogy. One is that there are areas of the country that won’t be fully rebuilt, such as hurricane-prone areas. He says that people from those areas will move to other places and look for contractors.

“That’s all good for contractors,” he says.

Stevens says that another leg under the table is the people going into retirement who have 401Ks coming mature.

“They will move into retirement,” he says. There aren’t many people I know who want to live another summer in Minnesota or Vermont … It’s very common for people in their retirement years to move and that’s good … that’s certainly not going to hurt us in the construction industry.”

To discuss some of Stevens' ideas with him, he can be reached at clientservices@stevensci.com.

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