For the past four years, members of the ABC chapter presidents executive council, the ABC national executive committee, ABC national staff and ABC national committee chairs have been working on an ongoing strategic plan for the association. The purpose of the plan is to give the association a road map that will allow it to better meet its value proposition that, "Based on the Merit Shop philosophy, ABC helps its members develop people, win work, and deliver that work safely, ethically and profitably for the betterment of the communities in which they work." In all, over 60 volunteers and staff, from across the country, have worked on the strategic plan.

There are six major parts of the strategic plan. This article will cover the first three...outlining the specific actions that will be taken to achieve each section.
First: ABC will be an association of high trust, high collaboration and effective communication to deliver value to our members. To accomplish this, the objective is to reinforce, reiterate and improve best practice processes among the 70 chapters of ABC across the country. In addition, ABC plans to educate members and the public that the ultimate customer of the association is the member. Each member must understand the value of belonging to an association that fights for his/her right to bid on construction projects...regardless of union affiliation or non-affiliation.

The second goal of the strategic plan is to establish ABC's members as the world class standard for health, safety and environment in the construction industry. Among the objectives are to increase the number of members who participate in the Safety Training Education Process (STEP) that ABC national provides. Based on safety records, members are able to achieve various levels of safety recognition including silver, gold, platinum, and the newly added diamond level. This self-evaluation tools causes construction companies to take a deep look at everything they are doing in the area of safety and to plan ways to improve up on them.
A comprehensive marketing plan is being developed to not only promote STEP among members, but also to have it become one of the industry standards for measuring safety. An additional objective is to get every ABC member to sign a pledge that theirs will be a drug and alcohol-free workplace. Drug and alcohol abuse is responsible for more than one third of all on-the-job accidents. By taking the pledge to be drug and alcohol-free, ABC members can be leaders in keeping jobsites safe.

The third strategic goal is to increase the political influence of ABC to advance the Merit Shop philosophy and Free Enterprise. Four years ago, only three or four states forbade politically-driven, union-only project labor agreements. These union handouts prevent over 80% of construction workers who have consciously decided not to join a union from working on projects that their own tax dollars help pay for.
Much progress has been made, and now 22 states outlaw union-only PLAs. Coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, those states are mostly right-to-work states, and have the best economies in the country. ABC's goal is to educate politicians...federal, state and local...that open competition is a good thing, and that it helps keep the cost of construction projects low, which benefits all taxpayers.
Next month, this column will outline ABC's strategic goals 4, 5 and 6; and will give readers a better idea of the important work ABC staff and volunteers are doing in our effort to promote the value proposition outlined in the first paragraph above.