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CAD Management in a New Economy, Part 1
26 May, 2010 By: Robert GreenCAD managers report that the economic recession has wrought changes in their companies — and their jobs.
I've had the pleasure of traveling a good deal this year, and speaking to many groups of CAD managers throughout the United States. I've taken the opportunity to ask these CAD managers lots of questions about their experiences during the economic recession, and how their jobs have been changing as a result.
In the next two editions of the CAD Manager's Newsletter, I'll be reporting my findings and providing advice for how you can best deal with the changes in the CAD manager's role. Here goes.
Has the Situation Changed?
The first set of questions I've asked CAD management groups are as follows:
- Has the way you work — or the workload in your company — changed since the recession began?
- If so, how?
- What are the resulting impacts on your CAD management duties?
- Do you see the economy improving, staying the same, or getting worse as far as your company is concerned?
My goal in asking these questions was simply to evaluate how many CAD managers are operating in a changed environment as a result of the recession, and to gauge how that change has manifested itself. I purposely left the questions open-ended so as to encourage unbiased responses; I didn't want to influence the participants with any of my opinions at that stage of the conversation.
What follows is the feedback I've received.
Gauging the Change
Every single person I talked to has seen his or her business or agency alter the way it works since the global recession began. I've spoken to 10 groups of CAD managers (total attendance of 172) between February and early May this year, and every single participant reported a downward shift in business and resulting operational changes in their company or department. The fact that not one of these CAD managers has escaped unscathed surprised me.
My expectation was that private-industry workers would report massive workplace change, but government agencies would have been somewhat insulated from the trend. To my surprise, local government agency employees have been hit hard as well. I heard many stories of staff layoffs, furlough days, and hourly rate reductions from CAD managers in civil engineering, architecture, manufacturing, building/construction, aerospace, and telecommunication and government agencies alike.
It appears that the root cause of the change has been twofold:
- For private-sector workers, the continuing construction and manufacturing slumps have caused companies to make major staffing cuts as project loads have decreased. Even companies working on federally funded "economic stimulus" projects report that overall business is down.
- For local and state government workers, the declining revenue from building permits, combined with shrinking property tax funds, has spurred staff cuts to balance budgets.
I would like to have had input from federal government agencies as well, but for whatever reason (slashed training budgets?) these agencies weren't in attendance at any of my sessions.
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