Chapter 2 — Further Reading

Everything below is a real organization, publication, or primary source. No specific statistic in this chapter should be taken from this book — go to the source, because construction data moves fast and a printed number is a dated number. Where I have described a resource rather than cited a title and edition, that is deliberate: publications get renamed and revised, and I would rather send you to the publisher than to a citation that has gone stale.

Where the numbers actually live

1. U.S. Census Bureau — Construction Spending (Value of Construction Put in Place). The authoritative monthly series for the size of the U.S. construction market, broken into residential and nonresidential, private and public, with further breakouts by building type. This is the source behind almost every "the construction industry is a $___ trillion market" claim you will read, including the hedged one in section 2.1. Free, updated monthly, and revised — note the revision dates when you cite it. For: anyone writing a market analysis, a business plan, or a bid/no-bid memo that references market conditions.

2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — construction employment, wages, and the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI). BLS is where the workforce picture comes from: employment levels by sector, occupational wage data by metro area, and the fatality and injury statistics behind the "roughly one in five workplace fatalities" figure. The occupational wage data is directly useful when you are building a labor rate for an estimate in an unfamiliar market. For: estimators, anyone studying the labor shortage, and anyone who needs to make a safety case with real numbers.

3. Engineering News-Record (ENR). The industry's newspaper of record for more than a century. Two things to use it for: the annual rankings (Top 400 Contractors, Top 500 Design Firms, and regional lists), which are the standard reference on industry structure and concentration; and the ENR Construction Cost Index and Building Cost Index, long-running series useful for understanding escalation over time. Much is subscription-only. For: understanding who the players are, and for any conversation about escalation.

4. Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA). CFMA publishes a periodic financial benchmarking survey for the construction industry — balance-sheet ratios, margins, overhead percentages, and working-capital metrics by company size and sector. If you want to check the "2 to 4 percent net margin" claim in section 2.4 against current data, or to see where your own company's ratios sit against its peers, this is where the industry looks. For: anyone moving toward project executive, and anyone who found Case Study 2-1 uncomfortable.

The rules that shape the business

5. OSHA — 29 CFR Part 1926, the construction standards. The actual regulatory text, free on osha.gov, along with OSHA's construction resources and its Focus Four framing (falls, struck-by, caught-in/between, electrocution). Read the subparts that cover work you actually supervise — fall protection, scaffolds, excavation, electrical — rather than trying to read the whole thing. The regulation is more readable than most people expect. For: everyone. Chapter 24 works from this framework.

6. The Miller Act, and your state's "Little Miller Act." The federal statute requiring payment and performance bonds on federal construction above a contract threshold, and its state analogues for state and local work. What matters most is what varies: thresholds, notice requirements, and the deadlines to sue on a payment bond. Find your state's version through the state legislature's own website or code publisher, not through a secondary summary. For: subcontractors and suppliers on public work — and any general contractor who wants to understand what their subs are exposed to.

7. The Davis-Bacon Act and your state's prevailing-wage statute (if it has one). The U.S. Department of Labor administers Davis-Bacon and publishes wage determinations by classification and county; state departments of labor do the same where a state statute exists. Some states have none; some repealed and reinstated. Look at an actual wage determination for a county you know — the classification detail explains a great deal about why prevailing-wage estimating is its own skill. For: anyone bidding public work, and Chapter 20.

8. AIA Contract Documents, ConsensusDocs, and EJCDC. The three major families of standard construction contract forms in U.S. practice. The AIA family (A101, A102, A133 for the owner-contractor agreements; A201 general conditions; G702/G703 for payment applications) is the most widely used in building work; ConsensusDocs is published by a coalition including the AGC and is generally regarded as more balanced toward contractors; EJCDC is common in engineered and civil work. Buy or read one complete set of general conditions front to back at least once. Nothing else teaches risk allocation as efficiently. For: everyone, before Chapter 4.

The associations, and what each one is actually good for

9. Associated General Contractors of America (AGC). The largest general-contractor association. Useful for its periodic workforce surveys and economic commentary, its safety and management education, and its role in publishing ConsensusDocs. Chapter offices are often the best single source for what is actually happening in a specific local market. For: anyone building a career in commercial or civil contracting.

10. Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) and the Construction Management Association of America (CMAA). ABC represents the open-shop side of the industry and runs substantial craft training and apprenticeship programs — worth reading alongside the union apprenticeship model to understand the two labor supply systems described in section 2.8. CMAA publishes standards of practice for construction management and administers the Certified Construction Manager credential; its documents are a good statement of what the CM role is supposed to be. For: understanding the labor debate honestly, and for anyone considering certification — see Chapter 42.

11. The Surety & Fidelity Association of America and the National Association of Surety Bond Producers. The surety industry's own educational materials on how bonding works, what underwriters look at, and how a contractor builds capacity. Read this before your first meeting with a bonding agent; going in able to discuss working capital and net worth intelligently changes the meeting. For: anyone who wants to understand Case Study 2-1 from the surety's side, and Chapter 34.

12. Your own state's procurement code, contractor licensing board, and construction lien statute. The least glamorous and most valuable item on this list. Every jurisdictional claim in this chapter — licensing, prevailing wage, retention caps, prompt payment, lien notice deadlines, pay-if-paid enforceability — has an actual answer in an actual statute for the state where your project sits, and the answer is frequently not what a national article told you. Exercise E2 in exercises.md walks you through finding all of it. Bring anything ambiguous to a construction attorney licensed in that state. For: everyone, and sooner than you think.