Que sera, sera

Close your eyes and concentrate.

Forget everything else and think of construction. Think of buildings going up, tunnels going down and thousands of workers moving around construction sites.

Now picture a cloudy mirror. Do you have that image in your head? Good. Now picture those clouds parting, revealing to you the future of the construction industry.

Did it work? Didn't think so. Maybe a Ouija board would work better. Perhaps we could pull out some tea leaves or tarot cards.

Maybe not. Maybe it's just too hard to unplug from the present to dream of the future. The future won't pay today's bills. It won't build today's projects. In many ways, it's not even as exciting as the present.

It's hard to see the future with one of the largest transportation projects in the country standing in the way. It's right there in downtown Milwaukee. For many in the industry, the Marquette Interchange reconstruction is the future. Twenty years ago, they dreamed this day would come. Now it's here. So who cares what's to come in the next 20 years?

Thankfully, a lot of people. And they see big things. They see science fiction made reality. They picture contractors on the moon. They're making robots that will build buildings.

Twenty years ago, many of these same people thought robots would be on work sites today, so any talk of the faraway future needs to be balanced with a hint of skepticism. But that doesn't defeat the purpose of dreaming about what might come.

Gazing to the horizon is in the nature of most leaders in the construction industry. Beyond the day-to-day operations, there's no real point worrying about what work you have. Your success depends on what work you'll get.

So the people who sit in university labs piecing together robots and the people working on moon buildings at NASA are performing a variation of the work that contractors, architects and engineers do every day. It's just that those people are looking in a different direction.

Will those two visions ever intersect? Probably. Does it mean Wisconsin contractors might one day work on the moon? Maybe.

As Doris Day said, "Whatever will be, will be.

- Chris Thompson