Article source: ConstructConnect

• Sporting events are coming out of hibernation. NASCAR drivers will be pushing pedals to the metal at Darlington Raceway, South Carolina, on Sunday May 17th. Racing teams and officials will be required to practice safe distancing and no fans will be allowed in the stands. The event will be broadcast live on TV and satellite radio.

• Seven days later, on the 24th, the famed Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race (again with no live audience) will be held, as it has been for 60 years, during the Memorial Day weekend. The Indianapolis 500 IndyCar race, though, with 200 laps over a two-and-a-half-mile track in Speedway, Indiana, has been moved to Sunday, August 23rd.

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Article source: ConstructConnect

• Pivot time, everyone! No longer is all the news surrounding the health care crisis entirely about bringing the economy to a near standstill so that ‘social distancing’ can establish fire walls against the spread of the coronavirus. More than half of U.S. states are presently allowing some form of business re-openings.

• New guidelines, ‒ to be implemented in phases, ‒ for conducting operations in restaurants, retail stores, cinemas and so on vary widely by location, but they all include some version of personal protective gear and reduced space occupancy.
  • Shopping mall giant Simon Properties is promising to hand out free masks to patrons upon entry into one of its properties.
  • Also, with respect to face coverings, JetBlue has become the first major airline to require their use by all flight attendants and passengers on the company’s jets.
  • Where cinema screenings will be allowed once again, attendance under Phase One rule relaxations will be limited to 20% of capacity.
  • The at-most ‘repopulation’ aim for many retail outlets is five customers per 1,000 square feet.
  • Desks in schools will be set at least six feet apart. Students will eat their lunches in classrooms. Congregating in cafeterias and gyms will be forbidden.

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Article source: ConstructConnect

• When ‘testing’ is mentioned concerning the coronavirus, it’s important to know that there are two kinds. There’s diagnostic testing, which inserts a thin swab deep into the nasal sinus cavity, to determine if someone is currently in the grip of the virus. Then there’s a blood sample test to establish if one has built up immunity based on a storehouse of immunoglobulins. (There are two ‘makes’ of antibodies, a first-attack kind and a second wait-in-the wings-in-case-the-devil-returns kind.) The more people there are with antibodies, the bigger the potential labor pool to restart the economy. By the way, how long the effectiveness of the second more-crucial type of antibody lasts is still unknown.

• If you check the Uber app on your phone, you’ll probably find there are still a few drivers willing to take you somewhere, to do something … maybe to a workplace judged ‘essential’, or to a medical appointment, or to buy groceries. Depending on which states and/or provinces re-open soonest, they may also be able to motor you to a bowling alley, bingo parlor or tattoo artist.

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Article source: ConstructConnect

• Some in the construction industry have been pinning their hopes for revival on an infrastructure spending package. Let’s look at the financing situation. The U.S. fiscal deficit this year is approaching $4 trillion, with three-quarters of that amount being rescue money. The priority order of relief expenditures has been: income supplements; unemployment insurance top-ups; help for large- and medium-sized corporations; specific industrial sector support (e.g., airlines); aid for urban transit systems and for hospitals; and a first round of small business loans, followed by a larger second round.

• Not even covered yet are state and local government shortfalls caused by tax revenue swan dives. So, will another trillion dollars be set aside for infrastructure spending? There’s always the possibility that a political-gain motivation, seen by one party or the other, may prevail. But with a new debt mountain looming, it seems unlikely to me.

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Article source: ConstructConnect

• Canadians have entered the pandemic unprepared. In total, they have a record high level of household debt to disposable income, a ratio exceeding 170%. The reason for the debt buildup has been an exceptionally strong residential real estate market.

• For years, speculation concerning a runaway housing bubble in Canada has been noted but, for the most part, brushed aside … although it is worth mentioning that there have been some government-imposed steps to cool overheating home prices. Nevertheless, the roosters have finally come home to cock-a-doodle-doo, but in an unexpected way.

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Article source: ConstructConnect

• The website ‘flightradar24.com’ (dashboard heading ‘Statistics’) records that the number of commercial flights globally (as a 7-day moving average) on March 12, 2020, was 101,297. From mid-March on, there was a rapid falling off, so that by April 12 (one month later), the figure had descended to just 29,442, a giant-sized drop of -71%. (‘Commercial’ flights are defined as passenger, cargo, charter and some business-jet flights. Excluded are glider, helicopter, ambulance and some military excursions.)

• Latest month-to-month airport departure statistics (number of actual flights) from ‘flightradar24.com’ show the following: Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport, -59%; Chicago O’Hare, -66%; Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson, -69%; Los Angeles International Airport, -72%; New York John F. Kennedy, -81%; Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport, -82%; Toronto’s Pearson International, -83%; and N.Y.’s LaGuardia, -92%.

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Article source: ConstructConnect

• There seem to be nearly unlimited ways in which society can separate into diverse factions (e.g., along lines tied to income, race, religion, sexual orientation, culinary taste, etc.). There’s one split, though, where the degree of difference exposed by the coronavirus crisis is being magnified to the ‘nth degree’. There are those who have acquired a degree of proficiency in using new high-tech tools, across a wide spectrum of applications, and those who have not. The age composition of the ‘not’ group is inordinately older. (I’m allowed to say that because I’m in the older demographic; they’re my ‘peeps’.)

• Those who are comfortable with digital technology are staying on top of events, be they bad or good, as they unfold. When called upon by employers, they are managing to perform well in non-traditional ways (e.g. working entirely online), most often from their own homes. The counter position taken by those outside the cyber-space loop is that not everyone should need to be instantly accessible twenty-four hours, every day. And that perhaps there’s more joy in not being up on everything.

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