ENR's Southwest City Scoop: Phoenix
Construction activity had been expected to hold steady in 2020 before COVID-19 crisis
Spending had been forecast to strengthen in the non-residential and non-building sectors this year.
City Grill
Ryan Abbott
Senior Vice President, Southwest and Texas District Manager
Sundt
“There’s unbelievable economic uncertainty in front of the AEC community like every other industry,” Abbott says. “We are continuing to work under these highly unusual circumstances, building critical infrastructures such as hospitals, neighborhood clinics, schools, roadways, water treatment plants, manufacturing sites, government facilities and more.”
He notes that adapting to a pandemic, maintaining critical infrastructure and advancing the economy have demanded that “contractors become ambidextrous in both thought and action.”
“We’re continually designing ways to socially distance, track working teams and work areas, enhance hygiene, regularly sanitize and verify that thousands in our care are healthy before going to work each day.
This is all being done without a supply chain to fully administer the products and services we need to do so,” he says. “We’re not in survival mode; we’re in reinvention mode. For me, the question isn’t ‘How do we do what we were doing?’ The question is ‘How will we do it in a different world?’”
