President's Message: Pick Up the Phone & Call Someone!

Under normal circumstances, I’d be using this article to welcome you to BCMC and encouraging you to take advantage of all our industry’s premier event has to offer, from peer-led educational sessions and plant tours to robust conversations with suppliers on the show floor regarding their latest innovations. More importantly, BCMC is the place where we all get together and talk with our fellow CMs about the challenges we are facing in our businesses and share ideas on how to solve them.

There are a lot of challenges to overcome right now, am I right? At a time when the housing market is attempting to make a V-shaped recovery from the COIVD-19-related slowdown and starts are nearing a volume we haven’t seen since before the Great Recession, lumber costs have skyrocketed. If you can even find the lumber in the grades you need, you’re likely in a situation where you are left either delivering product at a loss or alienating a customer.

On top of that, our customers want our product, and they want it immediately, while we are still struggling with how best to attract enough of a workforce to get our production line capacity up to meet current demand while also safeguarding them from the pandemic.

These two things would likely have dominated our peer-to-peer discussions during BCMC, whether it was on the show floor, outside session rooms, or after hours at the hotel lounge. That’s the greatest value SBCA and BCMC provide to our industry; they facilitate the flow of ideas and give us all the opportunity to solve our biggest challenges together.

So while we can’t all gather for BCMC this year, that doesn’t mean you have to solve your problems alone. Look at the list of Board members on the left side of this page. Every single one of these individuals are committed to helping our industry grow and succeed. They are constantly talking to one another and helping each other out. 

I think of Roger Helgeson. In last month’s issue (August 2020), there was a great story about what he and his company went through when the state of Washington closed for business due to COVID-19 earlier this year. He talked to several of us during that challenging time and got a lot of advice. He may or may not have chosen to follow any of it, but he certainly gained a lot of perspective he wouldn’t have had otherwise.

You have that same opportunity. If you are struggling with something, please don’t try to solve it by yourself. Lean on SBCA and its Board members. Pick a name from that list and reach out to them. You can find their phone numbers on the SBCA website. Since you can’t go to BCMC this year, bring the spirit of BCMC to your plant and seek some outside perspectives.

We are all stronger together, especially in these challenging times.