| Richard Fisher
Title: President, Associated Subcontractors of Massachusetts Inc.
Age: “Getting younger every day”
Experience: 40 years
Richard Fisher kicks off 2014 as president of the Associated Subcontractors of Massachusetts Inc., the only state-wide trade association that represents all subcontractors. Also president of Redwing Construction, he discusses his goals for the upcoming year, and where he thinks the commercial real estate industry is headed in 2014.
Q: Please tell our readers a little bit about yourself.
A: I’ve been involved in ASM for about 10 years. I got involved via one of my colleagues in the industry. I have a lot of interest in the legislative initiatives ASM takes on, and the monitoring of legislation they do on Beacon Hill, on behalf of the construction industry and subcontractors in particular.
Q: How did you get involved with the legislative side of ASM?
A:You get bitten often enough, you want to do something about it, but as a single company, you can’t. You’re pretty helpless. You can’t take any kind of proactive or remedial action by yourself; you’ve got to do it with other people. Trade associations are really important, to represent the interests of similar companies, and ASM represents the interests of all subcontractors, across the board, union and non-union, for the whole state. We all have common concerns, especially legislative ones, and that’s how I got involved in ASM’s Legislative Committee.
When I started in the business, I was a smaller company doing residential work, and I got paid all the time, on time. I didn’t have any problems until around 1990, when the economy collapsed suddenly. I thought I was doing pretty well and I could ride that out, but as you get bigger, you have to start working for companies you don’t know so well … and you don’t have those close, personal relationships that you had with your customers when you were really small. In the commercial world, it’s hard to get paid. It’s hard to get paid on time, and it’s hard to get paid for the work you do. Legislation around payment, making sure subcontractors get paid, is pretty important to me.
Q: Where do you think the industry is headed in 2014?
A: I think the economy is still pretty vulnerable. It is starting to trend back to a normal state. I’ve not found a lot of the people I’ve talked to feeling that there’s a healthy profit margin in the work that’s out there now – a lot of it was bid earlier when things were worse, so the price points are very suppressed. Subcontractors, general contractors, probably owners as well, have been suffering calculated losses to wait this out. They’re eroding their asset base, but realizing that radical downsizing can be an even worse catastrophe for the company. I do think there’s more opportunity for work, and that price points are showing a little bit of recovery, but not a lot. There’s been an awful lot of focus on residential rental space in the past four or five years; my observation is that the real estate community thought that was the only way to go. Now commercial office space and other types of construction are beginning to revive, but I’m not sure how balanced this recovery is. I’m a bit skeptical, but we don’t have much choice; we have to move forward.
Q: What are some of your goals in your term as president?
A: ASM is a terrific resource in the construction industry for all participants. We’re a major stakeholder, and in order to accomplish anything that’s complicated, you need collaboration – people need to work together. I would like to see us, during the time that I’m going to president, really focus on interacting more with state agencies, other trade associations, other business groups, and all the other stakeholders in the construction industry, to try to make it more productive. There’s a lot of progress that we could make, and we could make it a whole lot faster and more effective if we work together. That’s been one of the core values behind our legislative work – we are looking for equilibrium and balance in the rules that we all work by.
Top Five Reasons To Belong To A Trade Association:
- There’s strength in numbers.
- The benefits of aggregated purchasing.
- Networking opportunities – members are part of a community, not just the industry.
- Information – it’s the lifeblood of business.
- A terrific golf tournament (specifically at ASM).
