Wisconsin Builder - The A List - Your right to choose

Your right to choose

Candace Doyle

It's the kind of e-mail you hate to see pop up in the inbox. The subject read Offensive Picture, and you know that the message is going to take you to task.

But for what?

In this instance, it was for a front-page photo in The Daily Reporter of the groundbreaking of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Madison.

The e-mailer, who called the building a "baby-killing facility," said the photo "was not only offensive but was once again an attempt to promote your liberal views on your readership."

That sure called for some head-scratching. It was a groundbreaking event, plain and simple, and we cover as many as time permits. For reporters covering the construction industry in Wisconsin, it's about the closest thing we get to breaking news.

That's not to say we didn't get the e-mailer's unveiled message: The writer is pro-life or anti-abortion — this really is a choice, and yours to make.

We're not going to choose — it's not the intent of this writing to be drawn into that debate.

But the e-mailer certainly got us thinking about volatile issues and sensitive projects, and whether a contractor's personal or political views influence what jobs to bid.

Would a pro-choice or anti-abortion — go ahead, pick — contractor refrain from bidding on the $1.95 million project?

What if you're a pacifist? Would that make bidding on the $4.34 million battle simulation facility at Fort McCoy off limits?

Opposed to gambling? Would you forego a piece of Potawatomi's $120 million pie?

The list could go on and on; we're sure you get the point: Do contractors let their consciences be their guides?

Matthew Fuchs, a professor of Milwaukee School of Engineering's Architectural Engineering and Building Construction Department, doesn't know how often contractors' personal convictions limit their bidding decisions, but he's sure they do.

"If you have that adamant of an opinion, you don't bid," he said.

What's more, he said, they shouldn't.

"Are you going to give 100 percent to the project?" he asked. "If you bid on it and you're successful ... you have to put your political, religious, personal animosities aside."

Steve Chamberlin, president of CG Schmidt Construction, Milwaukee, said his firm, whose mission includes "building a better community," must be passionate about a project or it won't bid.

"We are pretty selective about what we do," he said. "We're very active in the community. We have a tendency to prefer and pursue projects that make a difference in the community. We really look at who's the client and what are they doing."

Chamberlin said CG Schmidt is more likely to pursue projects like the Milwaukee Art Museum expansion and the Columbia-St. Mary's project.

"There are projects we won't go after if they're too controversial," he said, "but not because we disagree with them. If it really doesn't have as much purpose, we'd be less likely to get excited about it."

Chamberlin acknowledged that CG Schmidt's mission differentiates it from other companies, but he suspects most contractors approach projects in the same fashion.

"I'm describing an industrywide feeling," he said. "They want to make a difference."

Fuchs added that it's not just the nature of the project that may dissuade bidding. Sometimes it's the owner or, in the case of a subcontractor, the contractor involved.

"There's a whole host of reasons not to bid on a project," he said.

And Fuchs said a contractor's personal or political views could just as easily dissuade a client. He mentioned Miracle Homes, which advertises itself as a company with a "Christian-based philosophy in the way we build homes." And he knows a commercial builder whose letterhead carries a passage from the Scriptures.

"If you don't have that commitment to faith, you have the right as a client to say, 'I don't want to work with you.'"