It has been very difficult to do any kind of planning with the economy the way it's been.  However, I try to look into the future and figure where to go and what to do the best I can.    

 For us, our growth will continue to be in the design of pre-manufactured buildings, generally from shipping containers.  Our biggest road block will be the shortage that is developing worldwide of containers.  Two years ago there were too many, the economic downturn took everyone by surprise.  The fabricators in China quit manufacturing containers, and as the world economy has picked up, a shortage has developed.  It's my understanding that the fabricators are building containers again, but it will take some time for them to get back up to speed and relieve the shortage.  In the meanwhile, the period the shipping companies hold the containers has increased and many containers were bought back from leasing companies and put back into service.  This of course could affect our market in the next year.

 I do expect to see growth in our work with companies that supply to mining camps, which is why I've been going through the licensing process in Canada and Australia.  As the economy recovers worldwide, there will continue to be a demand for materials and natural resources.  

For myself, staffing is an issue.  Like everyone else I've been hit hard in the past three years, and hiring people to gamble on future work is not an option for many reasons.  However, right now our limiting factor has been the ability to get the work done, not the volume of work.  As of now, my son is working full time for me this semester, and he's been coming up to speed very quickly.  We're figuring the best way to work together, and I'm trying to find his strengths.  He's very good with assembling structural models, and good with CAD.

In addition, I was contacted by an associate of mine, Albert Benjamin in Afghanistan who has worked with me on a number of projects in the past, but the past year he's been extremely busy on some projects.  He contacted me this weekend and said he is freed up from the projects he was working on and is available.  That couldn't have come at a better time, this will help us a lot.

I'm just hoping (like everyone) that the recovery continues with somewhat of a constant pace, having ups and downs hurts with planning and work flow.  If we can keep a constant flow of work we can be much more efficient.  

Last newsletter I wrote about how we were dumping our server and putting up our files on Cloud with space we purchased from Go Daddy.  Two problems occurred - the first was after disconnecting the server, I ended up having a new user name on the computer.  For some reason that made the software supplied by Go Daddy stop functioning, so I can't use it to push my files up to the space I reserved.  

 I tried mapping the reserved space as a drive using Windows, but that hasn't worked well either.  For some reason, it won't let me copy over files already uploaded, which is a waste since I have modified versions of the same files (Like CAD drawings).

 The second problem has been with the time it takes.  I have about 100 GB of files to upload, and that is a SLOW process.  Comcast periodically has Internet service interruptions for periods of a few minutes to an hour, and that makes the file transfer stop dead.  

 On the other hand, I did convert over to a peer-to-peer network and got rid of my server.  It's one more piece of equipment gone, and actually my file access is quicker and it's easier to deal with my network.  Using Microsoft Exchange Server in a small network environment is a pain, and I'm glad to be done with it.