So where do we go from here? During the last three years, we have all had our struggles with the ‘new normal’, with some still having struggles to deal with from the pandemic. More often than not, we are getting back to what we used to know as normal. When I attended bauma this year, I saw that normal. People getting together, talking to people, looking at new equipment, sharing ideas on jobs, methods to use: things’ we all considered our usual normal.

I was especially honoured to be invited to visit some local establishments to see how they run their companies. What I saw was that we all have the same issues with hiring, training, and retaining new employees, truck issues, environmental issues, and all of the other issues that come with each different government we deal with worldwide. We all deal with these issues in a lot of the same ways, and some different as one would expect.

Out of this, I saw the strength of the IACDS and our member associations, contractor members and manufacturers. Being open to exchange information and ideas is really what is important to the success of all of our companies and associations. Personally, I got to bring home (from bauma) some new ideas on how to make my company better and some ideas I would have never thought would work in our part of the world, but since it works well for the Munich companies, it can work well in my market. What I also saw, and would like to see this happen more often, is more and better training for our field operators. How the European companies train and certify their operators is more than impressive, something I would like to see here in the United States. Certification of the US operators and companies should be required and not just an implied requirement.

So, back to where do we go from here? In my opinion, we all need to put the pandemic in our past, to keep moving forward and continue to improve our associations and companies. I look forward to seeing all this to happen in the next two years, and look forward to see where our industry goes in the future.