Brian Turmail, who leads public affairs and strategic initiatives at the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) joins us this month with his thoughts on how trade associations have changed in his 15 years there and the construction industry outlook for 2024. He also leaves us with a terrific lesson learned from the early days of TSA.
Q: Can you tell us about your work at the AGC? What are the primary issues you manage and opportunities you seize on an ongoing basis?
As AGC’s vice president of public affairs and strategic initiatives, I have a bit of a split role. On the one hand, I oversee the association’s communications efforts. This includes our work to generate media coverage of the industry and the issues that are important to our members. I oversee our digital and multi-media operations including our in-house video production team, social media operations and our podcast. I also handle more traditional forms of communications, including overseeing our member magazine and various newsletters. If I am doing my job right, our members know what we are doing on their behalf, public officials know our priorities and the public is aware of the benefits of a strong and successful construction industry.
Meanwhile, the strategic initiatives side covers a lot of sins. I help oversee our workforce development efforts – like many other sectors of the economy, the construction industry suffers from chronic workforce shortages. I spend a lot of time on our Future Focus efforts trying to anticipate how construction will evolve and what that means for how we operate as an association. And I oversee many of our programs that recognize contractor excellence and encourage greater improvements throughout the industry.
Q: During your 15 years there, how has the trade association landscape shifted in terms of what your members expect from you?
The landscape for trade associations has definitely shifted during the past 15 years. When I arrived at AGC at the end of 2008, our members largely thought of us as an advocacy operation. They looked to us to be their voice in Washington, D.C. While advocacy – especially when it comes to pushing back against new regulations – remains core to our operations today, our members look to us for a lot more than representing their interests in Washington. They look to us to educate them about all manner of new techniques and technologies. They look for us to better understand how to comply with regulations and federal mandates. They send their employees to our training programs and any number of our in-person events.
They look to us and the many affinity partnerships we have established to save them money on the things they need to operate their businesses. We are where they go to connect with each other and the people they need to know to be successful. They expect us to lead the industry as it works to become more efficient and less carbon intensive. They also expect us to make sure the industry has a seat at the table in setting policies to address climate change.
We help them with their workforce recruiting and finding new ways to attract more diverse workers and leaders. We are their resource for figuring out how to improve their employee retention rates and how to protect their workers on the job sites. We are helping them address a very real mental health crisis that is causing too many in our industry to take their own lives.
We are funding academic research, awarding scholarships to construction students and organizing volunteer charity days for our members. We are their source for summarizing the latest news about the industry, for analyzing how economic trends are impacting the construction market. We even provide standard form contracts for them to use in their businesses.
In other words, we have gone from being the voice for the construction industry to an indispensable part of the industry.
Q: How healthy is the construction industry in the U.S. and are there threats to its continued growth that need to be addressed?
In early 2024 we will be releasing our annual Construction Hiring & Business Outlook. This preview of the coming year for the industry is based on survey responses from nearly 1,300 of our member firms across the country. What they are telling us is that demand for most types of construction should remain strong in 2024. Not surprising considering the amount of money Washington is putting into infrastructure and construction, contractors expect a lot of the demand for construction in 2024 will come from the public sector. They also expect manufacturing and data center construction to remain strong. But the markets for retail, office and lodging construction are likely to shrink in 2024.
Among the threats contractors are most worried about are workforce shortages, the impacts of high interest rates on private sector demand and the threat of a recession in 2024. They are also worried about the potential impacts the ongoing flurry of new regulations will have on their ability to remain competitive and productive.
Q: You reference the importance of leading with “good cheer” in your Linkedin profile. In what ways is that important to you?
We spend the majority of our waking hours at work. We should take it very seriously and always strive to be the best possible professionals, to constantly learn and to help coach and support the people who work with us. But if we are going to spend so much of our time at work, there is no need to be unhappy. We must find a way to work and lead in a way that is supportive and when possible, cheerful.
Life is too short to spend most of our time being unhappy. Being cheerful and supportive is key to making people feel included at work. And people who feel more included are going to be more vested in doing a great job and constantly improving. I have worked for people who lead through fear and intimidation. And that can be a good short-term motivator. But the better way to lead people is by setting a positive example, supporting your colleagues, and leading with good cheer.
Q: Can you leave us with a favorite story or lesson learned from your time in the Administration?
I entered the administration via a spokesperson role at the Transportation Security Administration in its very early days. Although I spent less than two years there before moving to DOT, I have something like eight years-worth of stories from those days. One story that left a lasting impression had to do with the rollout of the first set of TSA screeners. We had selected Baltimore Washington International Airport as the first place to get federal screeners and had been working for months on the deployment schedule. We finally selected a rollout date, which happened to be a Monday.
A few of us went over two weeks before to brief local airport and airline officials on our plans and schedules. When we shared that the plan was to start on a Monday, the airline representatives got really upset. They told us that Mondays were the busiest business travel day of the week and if anything went wrong, it could really impact their operations and bottom lines. We promised to share their concerns but figured the odds of changing the schedule were slim, especially given all the time spent planning and the fact we would have to keep the private screeners on for at least one day of an additional work week if we delayed the federal rollout.
We went back to TSA headquarters – at the time it was a GSA warehouse – and raised the airlines’ concerns to the agency’s leadership. We expected pushback on changing the rollout date. But instead, the team made the immediate decision to switch to a Tuesday. This made a lot more work for everyone, but helped appease the airlines’ concerns and actually gave us a slower day to get started screening passengers.
The lesson I learned is that no matter how good your plan is, you need to take the time to listen to others and address their concerns. And because the leadership of the TSA was willing to be flexible, we rolled out federal screeners to every airport in the country on a Tuesday, instead of a Monday.
Make a good plan, then be flexible.
