What does 2012 look like for you folks?
Busy?..(don't laugh)
Moderate?
Slow?
Slooooooow?
I have no idea what to expect for 2012...
Doesn't matter, life as we know it will end sometime in the later part of the year 2012 according to many. Going to let everyone go and play.;-)
jud
oh yeah Jud...
I forgot to mark my calender..:-P
2011 has been good. I can live comfortably on years like this. Not a huge billing year, but a very good profit margin. We have sharpened the blade on this thing and when we win work, we rock it.
2012 is a craps shoot. I have several good connections that I am counting on paying off in the new year. If they don't we can still sputter along like this year and be in the black. I am not staffing up until the work comes. No major purchases planned. Refinancing command central, so that should save about $400 per month. All signs point to good things.
I expect work to be busy with new Forest land acquisition surveys and we never run out of plain old Forest boundary surveys in existing Forest lands. Fire Station work will be slow (less capitol outlay going on).
Side business is effectively dead not that I'm doing anything to revive it. Wife views it as work that generates money and I view it as a professional liability that could bite back.
Depends on hwy funding. Private work is dead. Hoping to keep enough coming in that the tax guy doesnt call it a hobby.
You left out Stop and Turn back. I'm considering a new line of work.
I expect the first 1/2 of 2012 to be similar to 2011. Third and fourth quarters of 2012 I think all the teams that are trying to get their man in the White House will try to oil us all up and keep gas cheap and get us happy enough to vote for their team.
I don't really see real estate or development changing much unless Congress passes something that will make investors feel a little better about speculating with cash.
Inflation will climb a little, insurance rates will go up (duh...). And even though the news will tell us that taxes are down, the checks I write to the U.S. Treasury will still be larger than the year before.
>
> I have no idea what to expect for 2012...
I suspect that there will be stiffer competition, due to the fact that RPL's can not find employment, many of these LS's will be starting their solo operation.
Not planning much survey work. I'll do my little bit of corner work for the county if they get some funding. I'll do this just to keep myself in the game as I have other higher priority things on deck.
We been working and planning for years now to build "our house." I worked a lot on it this year building a half mile of road, putting in a water system and such. So 2012 should be it, long hard days all year constructing the house. We are going to do every hour of work on the project possible. So I'm not going to take any survey work unless it's an old very good customer in a bind.
My house project is actually the beginning of a new venture, a precast concrete business to manufacture houses and small commercial buildings. We (wife and I) have put a lot of money into this over the last few years buying the equipment and such. It's taken quite some time because I'm trying to stay as far away from debt as possible (increase the possibility for success).
So anyway, I seems like the worst time to put it all on the line and start a new business. Hopefully in a few years things will turn for the better and we will be in the right position to make the best of it (up and going, lean and mean). Life's experience tells me that you can't wait for things to get good to start building a business. By the time it's up and going strong things turn down. We keep the cash from going out the door by keeping all the work in the family until there is just more work than we can do 7 days per week. Past experience with business ventures has taught me that being an employer and the government regulations/taxes and such will kill the best laid plans. Talk about a deep cash pit. So there won't be any employees until I'm sure that every dollar we pay to have them brings at least one dollar profit back. If it won't do that it's just not worth the trouble.
My backup plan is to go back to survey/civil work in 2013, but there will need to be a lot of upgrade to software/equipment for that to happen. I might even need to take on a younger partner as the hills just keep getting steeper every year. If precision GPS has been taken down by Lightsquared, then my surveying days will be over, I ain't gong back to 2 or more person survey crews for boundary work. That's just to labor intensive and requires one to be an employer (slave and shill for the government).
3-5 YEARS MORE OF THE SAME
I expect 3-5 years more of the same before any kind of serious change in the market. The problem is that fees are off so much, that the recovery will have folks barely earning what they did a decade or so ago. States with ready access to naturual resources will have lots of low to lower wages jobs available and you will have to be happy with a double wide as a status symbol as having made it.
3-5 YEARS MORE OF THE SAME
A concrete double wide would be simple to make! Five slabs and a dirt floor.
But you are probably right. America will become and exporting nation. Energy, raw materials, food and such. Most Americans will not be able to afford these things. A return to a third world nation of low wage earners supplying things to other rich nations. The reason is because our government, via the voters, have given it all away. Used it up and provided the means for America to be extracted by a few with influence with congress and the white house. Mostly the work of Democrats and Republicans. What do you steal when it's all been stolen?
You would have thought that maybe it would have slowed down with the current resident of the white house. Instead it's gone exponential. Maybe they know the party's about over and so the rush to grab everything while the gettin's good, eh?
Look out for yourself, family and friends. No one else is!
What you mean is
When you say the government did this or the government did that, what you really mean is WE. We did this or that. We elected politicans, mostly from the ruling class, and they did the bidding of their class. This is the history of the country from the beginning, nothing new at all. We have only ourselvs to blame. It is our vote afterall that put these people in office. Not happy with the corrupt politicians you keep sending to Washington BLAME YOURSELF.
What you mean is
Actually I agree. We the citizens of the US are to blame. Everyone want's the bennies and not the taxes. But money does buy elections and only a few have that kind of money. Also the US masses are so dumbed down they actually vote against their own interests. The bigger problem may be they don't understand what in the long run is their best interests or at least never get to vote for a candidate with their best long term interests in mind.
Who knows, maybe if I got to Washington and given insider trading privileges, all the other perks and the offer to join the real club I'd be sucked in also.
The other thing is the bank problem. The best way to rob a bank is to operate a bank. So given the relationship between the powerful in congress and the white house, the commercial banks, which have the Fed to print all the money to gamble with you could imagine, isn't it naive to think the banks are not being robbed by their operators. Then to cap it all off the loses from the robbery are not prosecuted, but rather put off onto the common US taxpayer.
It will all come to an end at some point but the wealth will be all sucked off at that point. So the only remaining question is whether the American people are dumb enough to pay for the dead horse, which they never bought or wanted to own. But maybe we did buy the horse as we voted for the folks that did.
However this works out, I don't think is it going to be pretty. So I'm an oxymoron, starting a new business and building a new house when it couldn't look worse. A contrary optimist without enough time left to wait it out. So I can roll the dice also. Let's hope the revolution is a voter one and not a bloody one.
What you mean is
I've pretty much always been a countercyclical kind of guy. When others are rushing to buy, I sell. When others are rushing to sell, I buy. It has worked out fairly well over time. When I entered college in engineering the nightly news was reporting big layoffs of engineers because NASA was being reduced. Four years later there were many job opportunities and few new graduates. Many of my friends jumped on the oil boom and had starting salaries higher than the current salaries of the professors who trained them.
I see 2012 as another normal year for me. I've been established long enough in the area to get work from repeat clients who pay their bills. Also, the referrals from past clients are enough to keep me from doing any standard advertising like being listed in the telephone book.
Pretty good at the moment, have work to carry us through the New Year and more projects in the bid cycle than one would expect. There is at least one confirmed project scheduled to kick off in February, looks like we are going to throw everything into it which will finish it off quicker, but keep everybody employed through March.
Scuttlebutt is that as we are entering an election year, many plants are pulling the trigger to get essential repairs and upgrades done while they have the ability to do so.
> What does 2012 look like for you folks?
>
> Busy?..(don't laugh)
> Moderate?
> Slow?
> Slooooooow?
>
> I have no idea what to expect for 2012...
I wish everyone a stellar and fulfilling year ahead, as for me I am retired from surveying except for especially cool, interesting, & lucrative projects that might happen along.
I probably passed along 50 jobs last year to my local surveyor pals, hoping to pass along more this year.
I met a guy once, he was sitting on the porch of his beautiful house watching his sprinklers and having a glass of wine in the porch swing.
I said "beautiful place, what do you do?" he said "nothing", I was impressed.