Overview

Today, the GBC represents about 180 general contractors and construction managers throughout New York State. They are small and large (to include many Members on ENR’s Top 400 list), regionally dispersed throughout New York, active in public and private markets (mostly building, but some in other market categories), and are of all labor relations types. In addition, we have over 100 Associate Members in the fields of law, insurance, bonding, financial services, consulting, supply and the like. In 1999, we began accept the membership of subcontractors on a limited, experimental basis, and now include about 20 subcontractor members.

The Membership has one thing in common: QUALITY. The GBC is comprised of quality contractors providing competitive quality products to public and private owners in New York State. The GBC continues to provide substantive and timely services and programs in the same fashion. The continuing support of our Membership even in troubled economic times reinforces the importance of the Association’s mission.

The following article appeared in the GBC's Build New York magazine, Fall/Winter 2001.  We feel it will give you a good overview of the GBC and the programs and services we provide to the construction industry of New York.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S MESSAGE
WHO AND WHAT IS THE GBC? FORTY-FIVE YEARS LATER

The more things change, the more they stay the same. GBC's immediate Past President Charlie Winter asked me a few months ago to write an article reminding the Members and the construction community of what the Association's goals and objectives are. At the same time, I told him we needed to address some of the misperceptions regularly floating around the industry about the GBC. In thinking about it, I realized that no matter the passage of time, the principles under which we were founded remain true and the profile of our Membership remains constant. GBC's founding fathers laid out an enlightened and solid course. Any myths, perceptions and erroneous labels have been repeatedly dispelled. Below are paraphrases of our current by-laws and of a GBC NEWS I wrote in 1988, a year after I proudly became the Managing Director of the GBC. They are worth repeating today. 

THE GBC'S GOALS AND OBJECTIVES 

In our rush to conduct our day-to-day business, it is important and meaningful to restate the Association's long-standing goals and objectives. Our goals were originally written 45 years ago when the GBC was founded in 1956. They have been periodically amended over the years and modernized in the mid-1990s. In essence, they provide the Association's purposes shall be: 

• To further the best interest of the public, the building construction industry and the building construction client by promoting excellence and high standards of skill, integrity and responsibility;

• To stimulate and maintain a free enterprise system through a competitive industry and equitable and reasonable relationships between and among construction team members;

• To be an advocate and voice for the Membership and industry wherever their interest may appear;

• To provide the Membership with management and technological tools through programs and services that will help them better conduct their businesses;

• To promote the development, recruitment and retention of the highest quality people to serve the construction industry;

• To promote the general building contractor as a knowledgeable, trained and experienced construction professional and manager of construction;

• To promote the concept that higher quality buildings can be erected in more timely fashion at a lower cost when directed and coordinated by the general building contractor having responsibility for the results of the entire project; and

• To promote with the public the contribution of the general building contractor and the building construction industry to the public good.

This list of objectives is meant to underline the GBC Member as the risk-taking professional leader of the construction team for the client regardless of the type of project delivery method utilized. Today, our advocacy, education and safety programs continue to strive to fulfill those objectives.

MYTHS, PERCEPTIONS AND LABELS

And then there are the myths, perceptions and labels. Sometimes, no matter how hard we may try, the obvious is not so obvious to some. From time to time throughout our history we have found the need to make it clear to some that the GBC is a full-service general contractors' association representing contractors statewide, regardless of their public or private markets and their labor relations status. 

GBC is not an upstate or a downstate organization. In 2001, one-third (as opposed to one-quarter in 1988) of its Members reside in Long Island, New York City, and Westchester. Upstate, we sometimes have heard that GBC is a union contractor organization. Downstate, we hear GBC is an open shop contractor association. The fact is, we are neither. We are an association representing contractors who simply want to be competitive. We seek to represent the Member's labor relations needs as individual employers, regardless of their union or open shop choice. It has always been our firm policy that healthy competition between the two sectors on a level playing field produces a competitive industry and the best result for the construction client. 

We hear the GBC is a public works contractors' association and its services are directed in that area. The fact is the Membership does at least as much private work as public work and, if anything, the private sector dominates. The four current officers of the association (from Syracuse, Elmira, New York City and Buffalo) probably do more work in the private sector. Two of them exclusively work in the private sector and the other two have mixed markets. Furthermore, the issues of project delivery systems, owner and design education, future people resources for the industry, taxation, insurance, liability, surety, safety, equal employment opportunity, labor laws, marketing, economic development, contract documents, education and training and so much more have little relation to the contractor's specific markets. Federal and state regulators and the laws they work under are made in Washington and Albany and they do not discriminate according to markets.

One more important element to all of this - the AGC of America. All the observations we have made about the growth of the GBC can be said about the AGC of America, an important resource for all the GBC's Members. Their mission, goals and objectives are very much the same. GBC is proud to be one of their largest and most respected chapters producing many of the AGC's leaders and helping to develop many of its programs. 

Today the GBC represents and provides full services to almost 200 general building contractors, over 100 associated firms and a growing number of specialty contractors who were invited to join two years ago. The goals and objectives set by the founding fathers are as appropriate today as they were in the 1950s. The GBC has worked hard to be an association with foresight, professionalism and quality representations. We have built a membership of contractors of skill, integrity and responsibility. The GBC has been true to its goals to do what is best for the public, the construction client, the general contractor and his entire team. This July, I celebrated my 30th anniversary as an employee of this association. I am proud to have served for and with such fine people, especially my mentor, Paul B. Richards, who served the GBC so well until 1987. The founders would be proud of where we are today and where we are headed. They were wise people.