This year the company caught up in terms of IT staffing and technology investments it had been putting off. "We delayed things too long in the past," says Mathews. The three people added to Swinerton's 21-person IT organization, for instance, bring needed skills in technical support of end users, application programming, and network operations.
Mathews' IT investment strategy is to demonstrate value to the business, and by doing that make it much harder to rationalize cutting IT. "People don't buy quarter-inch drill bits; they buy quarter-inch holes," he says. For example, the company recently spent about $500,000 on new storage. "We didn't sell the company on new storage. We sold the company on virtual design and construction--new capabilities that require enormous storage," he says.
The new storage also provides "litigation support" for the company's need to be able to save and retrieve e-mails. "These were opportunities to show value to the business, and are things that can't be cut," he says.
Looking ahead, Swinerton is considering investing in Web faxing, which is less expensive than conventional faxes and saves paper. "We want to be more green and cost effective," he says. Also, Swinerton is investing in wireless networking that can be implemented at major construction sites in a day, providing all the bandwidth workers need. Right now, it takes too long to set up major construction sites, he says, and one of the reasons is the time it takes to get networking in place. "You don't need to wait for a T1 line to get installed," he says. "This has ROI."
Like Mathews, business technology leaders need to get ahead of the downturn. Earlier this month, 71% of the 55 economists in a Wall Street Journal poll said the United States is in a recession, and, on average, they gave it a 48% chance of being worse than the downturns in 2001 and 1990. Most IT and business pros in our survey also see a recession upon us or looming. When the usually upbeat tech managers join economists in seeing tough times ahead, it's time to prepare for the worst, even if you hold out hope for the best.
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