The recent defaults and plant shut
downs by curtain wall fabricators Trainor Glass of Farmers Branch, Texas on
February 22, 2012, and ASI Ltd. of Whitestown, Indiana, just before last
Christmas, raise the question whether fabricators and suppliers of cladding,
structural steel, precast concrete and various piping products, all of whom
have relatively large capital investments in plant and equipment, can survive
in this market of shrinking orders for their products on major construction
projects.
While a performance and payment
bond surety may step forward to keep production flowing for a time, as
apparently happened in the case of ASI Ltd’s. subcontract for cladding on the Brooklyn, N.Y. Barclays
Center, it is especially unclear where such financial assistance could come
from on privately funded jobs without performance bonding protection. Besides
the tragedy of hundreds of skilled tradespeople suddenly out of work, and
general contractors scrambling to locate and mobilize alternative fabrication
sources, the collapse of fabricator availability for such critical building
systems bodes very poorly for any construction industry recovery to economic
health in the long run. Specifying architects, construction managers, and
general contractors bidding for work on future construction projects of any
sort need to exercise extreme care in evaulating the economic viability of
their fabricators of critical systems across the entire timeline of any
project. Otherwise, the economic difficulties of one fabricator can spill
across the entire project, and threaten the survival of every trade involved.
