New Laws Mean New Challenges and Opportunities

It happens every year. New laws, legislation, and policies are enacted on January 1, affecting the way we live, work, play, and pay. While most of us bemoan the event, I look forward to it with great anticipation, as every good business development professional should. No matter how we feel about a piece of legislation, we must always be ready to look at its ability to create an opportunity (or a hurdle) for our firm to address.

Let’s consider a Tale of Two States and examine cause and effect on the A/E/C industry when states seek to address illegal immigration. In June 2001, the Alabama enacted the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act. Among its numerous provisions, it blocked “landlords from renting property to illegal immigrants" and prohibited “illegal immigrants from receiving any public benefits at either the state or local level including publicly-owned colleges or universities and required high, middle, and elementary public school officials to ascertain whether students are illegal immigrants.” According to published reports, the law resulted in as much as a 30 percent decline in elementary school enrollment and a spike in residential vacancy rates as illegal immigrants fled Alabama for neighboring states. The ripple effect of this exodus was reported to have had an inverse impact on neighboring states such as Georgia.

Alabama’s actions followed those of Arizona, which had previously enacted Arizona Senate Bill 1070, Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act. While the provisions were equally as controversial, the effect was an increase in the construction of prison and detention facilities as Arizona sought to hold and potentially deport immigrants. In both cases, facility demand was impacted. What is the lesson we can take away from this tale?

As we begin our New Year and our business development planning for next the fiscal year, it is critically important that we, as business development professionals:

• Read and understand the planning, design and construction impact of state, local and federal legislative changes on our firms' design and construction forecasts;

• Complete scenario analyses that consider both positive and negative facility changes as a result of legislative change;

• Engage in discussions with decision makers, legislators and others to inform the direction and or trending that may present an opportunity or a challenge.

In this New Year, we can choose to respond to opportunities (i.e., RFPs) or to be ahead of them by developing a broader and deeper understanding of what is driving facility and infrastructure need.

Karen Compton, CPSM. Published in the February 2012 issue of A/E Marketing Journal. Karen Compton is principal of A3K Consulting (Glendale, CA), a business development and strategic planning firm specializing in the architecture, engineering and construction industries. Ms. Compton is also the founder of Industry Speaks™, a web-based business-to-business portal that connects AEC firms with experienced consultants, provides peer reviews of consultants, reports on key industry trends, and publishes expert reviews of professional courses and books. Contact her at kcompton@a3kconsulting.com.