Lee Dodson’s contractorside.com Website Gets Down to the Business of Empowering Contractors, Tradesmen in The Construction Industry
Los Angeles, California (PRWEB) July 19, 2013 -- Lee Dodson, owner of contractorside.com, announced today a major push to place building contractors on a level playing field with clients, news organizations, state and local agencies, and the Federal government.
During the last six years, Dodson states, the construction industry suffered dire hardship as the economy plummeted. The industry’s normal share of economy until 2008 ran in the 23-26% range, today it is less than 8%, marginally up from 3% in 2009.
Contractors abandoned their small businesses at an alarming rate, preferring to change occupations or to take employment with major builders if possible. Latest information from California reveals a 5% license renewal rate, the average age of a contractor is 58.
Additionally, public perception of the construction industry is at an all time low. In an upcoming article in The Brenner Brief e-publication, Dodson enumerates reasons as to why contractors and trades people have left, and are leaving the business in droves. The main reason is money.
The business has, indeed, shrunk, and with the pullback many reliable clients have left the market. What is left, Dodson says, is a very tough market that sees hard times in the building business as an opportunity to negotiate tough deals that leave the contractor taking cash-flow jobs with little or no profit.
Encouraged by biased news services, unregulated by any agency, and tight budgets give rise to post contractual negotiations, or just plain cheating, and the contractor/ tradesperson has few options. Court is expensive, regulatory bodies have their own agendas, and the public believes construction is a means of larceny on the part of the trade.
The contractorside.com was created as a venue where the tradesperson can detail his or her experience, good or bad, so others in the trade could discover if a problem was on the horizon. They could find out how to work contracts, specifications to avoid said difficulty or to avoid the situation entirely.
“Look,” says Dodson. “People in the trades ‘do things,’ they make things that we all need, and they are generally held in disdain as uneducated, but they are not. Contrary to commonly held regard, they do what the others cannot do. They deserve respect, but now they have to fight government attitudes, regulatory delay, and often, deal with difficult clients and situations.”
“This website gives the trades a voice,” Dodson stated flatly. “I’ve seen almost every building situation in my career from bad weather to clients fighting each other, but there’s nothing worse than not being paid. The tradesperson is the business, and if that person is damaged people are put out of work, bills don’t get paid, and that’s where we are right now. It’s time we stood up for ourselves by standing together.”
Dodson created contractorside.com six years ago under the name thecontractorsside.com. The site did well, but its creator was not satisfied with the robustness of the operation, so he honored all contracts, expressed and implied, and set about a new incarnation. He was seeking a new experience for his clientele.
The creator brought on a new programming staff from Colossal Ventures, and with the invaluable assistance of Colin Ryan, head of the company, set to work adding the availability of mounting pictures, sound bites, videos as part of users’ postings. With that, Dodson added space for other trades people to comment on postings and to add articles that might be of interest to the users.
The concept of mounting both negative and positive posts was paramount in Dodson’s mind. “We’re setting about changing the business by giving, once again, a forum where anybody in a vital business who has something to say has a place to say it.”
Dodson notes that women in the trades or connected by family are very interested in posts. “contractorside.com is research,” the creator states. “for free. If the person or business is listed, the user can check them out for what to expect in doing business with that particular entity. And, if they have a gripe or an “atta boy,” the user can post it.”
“I discovered that many in the trade are uncomfortable writing things down, good or not-so-good, but they have no problem telling the story, so I put space to talk it through on audio or video. It works. We’re get inquiries already.”
In some cases, the post is legally delicate, whistleblowers, and the like, so anonymous posts are accepted. All posts are edited before final approval by the company, and are referred back for edit if necessary, but most are posted expeditiously.
contractorside.com is the answer to Yelp and other websites that can be critical of people or companies in the construction business to level the field for trades people with this resource.
Dodson spent forty-one years in the construction trade, has written many articles for trade magazines, has served as expert witness in court cases, and has acted as mediator in many construction related issues. He is currently contributing to The Brenner Brief e-newspaper and has written and published two books, Infiltration, a fictional account of a terrorist attack in southern Arizona, and This Never Happened, a high desert murder mystery.
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