CONSTRUCTION PHOTOGRAPHS CAN WIN DISPUTES… photographs of a project can be one of the best ways to prove your side of a construction dispute. Unfortunately, few contractors systematically take photos of a project site or if they do, they don’t label and organize them properly. Unfortunately, the result can be the fact that they often miss out on a potent means of winning a construction dispute.

To ensure that you’ll have the photographic proof that you need for a construction dispute, create a policy that requires your field supers to systematically take photos of the projects. Explain the policy to your field personnel and follow up and remind them whenever you review the project. A construction consultant by the name of Roy L. Wilson from Glen Head, New York outlines the following photo policy and procedure:

1. Use a camera that date-stamps photos.
2. Include a reference point in each photo.
3. Include a “scale” in each photo.
4. Develop, label and catalog photos on a weekly basis.
5. File negatives separately from pictures.

Your corporate policy in this regard should also cover what your field personnel should photograph and why:

1. Area surrounding work site before work begins.
2. Site access that is blocked or hindered.
3. Start of new work.
4. Deliveries that affect project progress.
5. Completion of significant work.
6. Weekly random shots.
7. Any item that may result in a dispute.

Although this procedure may appear to be very cumbersome, when it becomes the normal and standard operating criteria for any major project, the advantage that it gives in a legal dispute is enormous.

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“Most of the hunger becomes anger and the anger fury before anything will be done.” - John Steinbeck

“Modern poverty is not poverty that was blest in the Sermon on the Mount.” - George Bernard Shaw

“Every stable government in history has depended on the resignation of the poor to being poor.” - Felicite de Lamennais

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IF LIVING IN THE RIGHT NEIGHBORHOOD… is important to you, the ten cities or towns in the United States where you are least likely to have a neighbor with his car up on blocks will be listed below. I will list the city (town) and the average cost of a home in that area:

It appears that California is the state in which you are most likely to find a good neighborhood, (six of the ten), with Colorado having at least three good neighborhoods and Florida coming in with one very respectable area, topping the list of good quiet neighborhoods to live in. It is amazing when you think about it that only three states of 50 in the United States have cities (towns) listed in this very elite group.

California may have the best neighborhoods, but the guys will probably want to stay out of Anaheim, California as it is predicted to have the highest male to female ratio in the United States in 2020. The single gals on the other hand may want to consider this area. Incidentally, in 2020, Salem, Oregon will have the lowest ratio of male to females in the United States. If the single guys can stand the weather, that is where the action will be.

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“Not he who has little, but he who wishes for more, is poor (only someone that is rich can really believe this).” - Seneca (4 b.c. to a.d. 65)

“We have not yet reached the goal, but… we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this Nation.” - Herbert Hoover

“The worst country to be poor in is America,” - Arnold Toynbee

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IN OUR LAST BOND NEWSLETTER... I addressed the fact that the surety marketplace is “hardening”. In other words, the conditions and circumstances under which surety credit will be extended will become more difficult and more restricted based upon the higher price that surety companies will be paying for their reinsurance. You may find that what your surety was able to do for you last year, they cannot or will not do for you this year. This adds yet another good argument to the concept of setting up a back-up line of surety credit. We would be happy to review your current bonding line of credit and in deference to the bonding relationship that you have, we will be happy to stand in second place with a fully established alternate line of credit and will maintain that line of credit until you feel that it would be to your advantage to allow us provide the surety credit that your organization will need. Feel free to contact us and set up a meeting so that we can provide, what amounts to, the only free insurance that you will ever get. The alternate line of credit is insurance that should your primary line not respond, you will not lose a project or an opportunity to bid.

As a parting shot, John Kenneth Galbraith, my least favorite economist said: “The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building values of privation for the poor.” And from my least favorite woman’s rights activist, Gloria Steinem, we hear that “America is an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of starving people.” (Glib, Gloria is not).

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Charles J. Nielson

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