Editor's Note
Back and to the future

What will you be doing 20 years from now?

Can't really say for sure, can you?

What were you doing 20 years ago?

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Changing Landscape

The Milwaukee that will grow up during the next 20 years is taking its first steps right now, and this baby is going to be worth billions to the construction industry.

In 1998, there were 298 acres of surface parking and vacant lots or buildings ripe for redevelopment in Milwau-kee's downtown area. That didn't include predictions for an almost complete overhaul of the 1,200-acre Menomonee Valley. And it didn't account for an additional 58 downtown acres the Department of City Development deemed "moderately susceptible to change."

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Filling the Ranks

If someone had told construction insiders 20 years ago that 1983 marked the start of something big, they probably wouldn't have believed it.

Just one year earlier, as unemployment levels across the nation hit 10 percent for the first time since the Great Depression, the number of construction workers in Wisconsin dipped below 57,000, the lowest mark in almost two decades.

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Business of Tomorrow

The business of construction has changed dramatically in the last 20 years, what with the development of construction management, design/build and other hybrid delivery techniques. But is the landscape going to change even more in the next two decades?

Craig Capano, engineering and support services manager for general contractor CG Schmidt Inc., Milwaukee, offered a sneak preview. Capano, who's finishing up a Ph.D. in civil engineering at Marquette University, is the former director of the Milwaukee School of Engineering's construction-management program.

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20-Year Plan

Anyone who has ever walked into a job-site trailer knows its anything but glamorous.

That, however, will continue to change. Over the next 20 years, construction trailers will become high-tech centers, complete with computers that allow construction superintendents to be in constant communication with architects and designers through e-mail, chat rooms or video conferencing, techniques that used to be reserved for corporate offices.

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Industry proves anything’s possible

Nothing is forever in the construction industry. There's ample evidence, after reviewing the past and looking to the future, that there is no such thing as rose-colored safety glasses.

Twenty years ago, the Wisconsin construction industry was mired in the doldrums of a stagnant economy. However, 1986 began the climb out of the bottom of a bathtub curve toward, more or less, a high rate of employment and the joy of increased dollar volume.

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