State of the Association

2009 Report of the President

By Tom Daniel

2008 began with a quick start with the MCAA new partnership with Hanley Wood World of Concrete and World of Masonry. There was excitement and anticipation in the air.

Any questions about selling our MCAA trade show to Hanley Wood were quickly set aside and replaced with positive affirmations. The convention was kicked off with Henry Winkler delivering an endearing look at his life with dyslexia and how he overcame his disability. The convention also saw the creation of the very first contractor appreciation party held on Wednesday night in a large ballroom at Caesars hotel. The suppliers of the masonry industry sponsored the party and a staggering 1200 people were in attendance. The event far exceeded all of our expectations. The convention concluded with a farewell dinner and desert party for our outgoing President Frank Campitelli. Frank was roasted by his fellow officers, who along with a few jokes, shared their respect and admiration for his leadership.

The masonry industry had another very successful legislative conference held in Washington DC, in which members of both MCAA and NCMA met with over 60 members of congress and their staff and had numerous members and agency representatives address our group on issues of importance to us.

2009 Report of the President

The MCAA held its annual mid-year meeting in beautiful Park City Utah and realized near record attendance. In addition to our regular social events and business meetings, the MCAA introduced small tabletops for sponsors of our event. In yet another first, the MCAA hosted two educational programs, one on how to keep your company safe from immigration raids and another on pitfalls of contracts. The entire group enjoyed both presentations and members can expect to see a return of education programs in San Diego later this fall.

The MCAA Certification program will take off in 2009.

The MCAA began to accept applications for certification in 2008 and held our first certification test on June 30 and certified the following three firms: A. Horn Masonry, Chicago, IL, Halloran Masonry, Atlanta, GA and Henley Concrete and Masonry out of Crestview, FL. The MCAA would go on to administer another test later in 2008 and certify Dee Brown, Inc. out of Dallas, TX. By the end of 2008 the MCAA had 47 companies registered and working towards their certification. We expect the certification program to take off in 2009.

As an answer to the many firms seeking certification, the MCAA has partnered to offer over 80 new on-line courses on a variety of topics including OSHA 10 hour courses in both English and Spanish. These new courses can be found on the MCAA web-site and are all acceptable forms of education for credit towards certification. In addition to these on-line courses, the MCAA has seen an increase in course offerings around the country on a variety of different topics.

Another change to the MCAA website late this year included the addition of a career center. Employees can place resumes and search job openings from across the country and employers can place job postings and search the database of employees. It is a specialized service that is specific to the masonry industry and only masonry related jobs can be placed and only employees interested in work in our industry can place their resumes. This will be an excellent tool for both employers and job seekers as our economy rebounds and job creation begins again in the months ahead.

Early on in 2008, the MCAA became a party to a suit filed in San Francisco federal court against the Homeland security agency of the US. Our case was successful in getting a stay for the no match rule that was issued by the agency. It is believed that the final resolution of this case will be made in early 2009 and the rule will most likely be pulled back by the agency.

Vision 2020 envisions the industry efforts to recapture lost market share of competing systems by the year 2020.

The MCAA and NCMA Officers began a cooperative effort in 2008 to find areas of common interest that our two groups could work closer together on. The NCMA Officers attended our midyear meeting in Park City and the MCAA attended their meeting in Newport Beach this year. As a result of these two meetings, the idea behind Vision 2020 was born. Vision 2020 envisions the industry efforts to recapture lost market share of competing systems by the year 2020. This will be done by the development of sales teams to sell masonry as a system on the local level. It will be a grassroots initiative to bring together what has been a fragmented industry to work together to make our system easier to understand by the end user. Another segment of the program involves a grassroots effort to have these same teams work to have local municipalities adopt ordinances that would require masonry in their communities. There are current examples of municipalities that have these in place and tools and training to implement these teams will come from the national level. We are extremely excited about the potential of this program and will discuss the details more at our annual meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

Masonry Design magazine was rolled out in 2008 and we saw the first 6 issues of this new publication created. The MCAA has supported the roll out of this magazine by giving Lionheart publishing (the owners of Masonry Design) seed money to start the magazine. The funds from this effort have come directly from the MCAA marketing fund which was developed utilizing the funds from a dues increase a few years back.

MasonrySystems.org is yet another endeavor supported by the MCAA. Funding for this important project was provided by our marketing committee with approval of $150,000 dollars from the marketing fund. MasonrySystems.org also obtained additional funding from other state and local groups and undertook a very large task to inventory and co-locate industry materials in one easy to find and use web-site. The site was rolled out and had a soft launch in late 2008. You can see demos of this site happening at the MCAA booth all week long. Later this year, there will be a major launch of the site to the design community.

While 2008 brought a significant downturn in our economy; your association is working hard to lessen the impact of that downturn by aggressively seeking to implement programs that will help grow our markets. The development of such things as Masonry Design, MasonrySystems.org and the introduction of Vision 2020, will poise our industry to take advantage of the opportunities that await us as the economy improves. I look forward to working with the MCAA leadership and our industry partners in meeting the challenges ahead. I want to thank all of you for your support and participation in the Mason Contractors Association of America and I will strive to make our industry and your businesses as successful as they can possibly be. We hope you have a great week and we thank you for being part of this important event.

Thank you very much!