Barry I. Hudson

WHY THE NEXT 12 MONTHS WILL DECIDE WHICH PRODUCERS, PLANTS AND OPERATORS ARE STILL STANDING IN FIVE YEARS — AND WHAT THIS 12-PART SERIES IS GOING TO TELL YOU. By Barry Hudson and Rachael Mahoney This is the first in a 12-part series on construction materials technology that will appear in Rock Products. – Ed. There is a chart that has hung over this industry for nearly a decade, and most people in it have learned to look the other way. McKinsey published it in 2017.

By Barry Hudson and Ryan Brown There’s a version of this industry that still runs on hand-written delivery tickets and a sales rep’s memory for who ordered what last time. We don’t run on fax machines anymore, not really, not day to day. But McKinsey’s research on this sector says it still reaches for the fax machine as shorthand for how building products companies operate, and the fact that the description is recent and still accurate enough in spirit to sting should embarrass us.

By Barry Hudson and Somesh Voma Step into any aggregate quarry or ready-mix plant and you’ll feel it immediately. Grit. Tight schedules. Relationships that took a decade to build. A handshake still closes deals. A sales rep’s cell phone is an emergency hotline for contractors losing their minds over a pour window. Then corporate rolls out a new Customer Relations Management (CRM) system.