New Collaboration in 2019!

It is with great excitement that I announce the Swindal Group is formally collaborating with a very unique Management Consulting firm called Consulting Collaborative (www.consulting-collaborative.com). John Swindal is now Managing Principal Northeast Office for Consulting Collaborative. This new position will allow John to provide clients old and new with strategic assessments, strategic business plans, Team Meeting and Priority Planning Workshops along with a number of other extremely useful services designed to increase your company’s profitability through management best practices and employee accountability. Please visit www.consulting-collaborative.com and / or email me for additional information including a one-page self-assessment for your own business to evaluate internal management and accountability. We feel this is a great fit and look forward to a wonderful 2019!

Best,

John

New Membership --- MCAA ---

The Swindal Group LLC is ecstatic to be a new member of the Mason Contractors Association of America (MCAA).  Our technical director, Roy V. Swindal, is a long-standing member (30+ years) of the MCAA as the President of Masonry Arts, Inc.  Roy served on numerous executive committees in the organization over the years and considers all of the membership as colleagues and, more importantly, friends.  John served in smaller capacities within the organization and looks forward to becoming a more active participant in the coming years.  The Swindal Group fully endorses the MCAA and all its efforts in the industry.  We could not be prouder to be part of an organization that is such an extremely useful educational, networking, and advocacy group for mason contractors.  Many of the issues we hold closely to our hearts (safety training, change in legislation, workforce development) are MCAA front-line efforts.  We look forward to seeing everyone at the Midyear Meeting.

John

June 13, 2017

Starting Up a Start Up

After many years of lamenting the amount of time executive leadership in a small to mid-size construction company spends on risk management, contract review, contract management practices and litigation avoidance / management we decided to open a consulting company to help other businesses facing similar situations.  When I elected to attend law school well over a decade ago, I never imagined how useful legal training would become in today's construction world.  Over the course of the past 14 years we have saved literally millions of dollars because of access to in-house general counsel.  By no means did we prevail on every claim or win every negotiation, but we learned valuable (and often expensive) lessons (whether we could rightfully acknowledge them as valuable contemporaneously or not).  We did not open this business because we have all the answers, we opened it because we understand the importance of helping a construction business find the answers to the right questions. We have spent countless, exasperated hours running a risk management / risk allocation / self-preservation business under the guise of a construction company.  My father and grandfather simply yearn for the days when a specialty contractor showed up at 6:45 AM with tools in hand with the goal of building something on-time with integrity and being paid commensurately.  Those days are gone...but, we hope that with some of our guidance it will enable other businesses to think more about the brick and mortar on the four corners of a building than the four corners of an RFP, untenable contract, business plan, or a lawsuit.  Contracts and business plans are integral to success in the market today, but you are not alone in assembling and implementing these tools for prosperity.

John

May 18, 2017