Building with wood is poised to be the next big trend in green construction and the United States Forest Service (USFS) is working diligently to make it a reality.

The environmental benefit of using wood in building products creates fewer greenhouse gasses than commonly used materials. And wood – including beetle-killed trees - harvested from Colorado and throughout the Rocky Mountain region could become a major resource in this next step of green building.

The most common New Year’s resolutions among Americans are to lose weight and exercise more – among almost 25% of us. But if you combine all the health-related resolutions (stop smoking, eat healthier, etc.) improving health constitutes almost 50% of our top concerns and changes we plan to make this year.

Month 1 is about to end and even if you’ve fallen off your path, it’s not too late to get going again. Improved health brings a sense of well-being. It makes us sharper in our jobs and other pursuits. And for businesses, good health among the team can result in less down time and reduced insurance premiums. 

A new year is a new start. What you do in the next 12 months will determine where you are this time next year. Where do you want to go in terms of operations and efficiency, safety, business management, marketing and environmental stewardship?

As the saying goes, you won’t know how far you’ve come until you know where you started. To chart progress, we need benchmarks to know those starting points. Where are we right now and where do we want to go?

Almost all landscape firms are impacted by the lack of trained and skilled employees. Most say they could do more work—and move up the backlog—if they had more people. This situation is pushing many companies to think differently about how, when and where they recruit.

Following are 3 strategies that challenge traditional recruiting methods. They were shared by a key HR and recruiting team member with a Denver-area landscape company.

ALCC members often cite hiring great staff as one of their biggest challenges. If you face a staffing shortage, have you considered hiring a US military veteran? There are many resources available to help you connect with vets and find quality employees. These resources serve the entire state of Colorado, so even if you are along the Western Slope or another town outside Fort Collins/Denver/Colorado Springs, there are tools available to you.

Industry job fairs are a key resource for finding people with experience and others looking for a new career. This year, ALCC is taking 5 new tactical steps to attract these job seekers to member organizations and to a great industry.

The two most critical elements to sustaining life as we know it are water and soil. But when it comes to which one gets the spotlight, water always seems to win. It keeps the upper hand if for no other reason than it washes us off when we get dirty. Yet, as the soil nerds are quick to point out, there are more living organisms in a single teaspoon of soil than there are people on earth.

Those who dig the dirt and all it brings to life will be glad to know 2015 has been designated by the United Nations as the International Year of Soil, which has in turn been endorsed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Soil Science Society of America (SSSA).

There are several points of interest related to OSHA in the spending package recently passed by Congress.

Many of the changes - whether taking affect or anticipated – could impact the green industry.

Get ready! When the new year starts, there will be many calls to action to get you ready to become a greater-than-ever person in 2015 than you were in 2014. So how did you do this year? Do you need a massive overhaul – or just some fine tuning?

Here are a few thoughts about work-life priorities as shared by one of the industry’s nationally-known thought leaders, Jeffrey Scott. He will also be in Denver to kick off ALCC’s 2015 CEO Exchanges on February 10.

Job Fairs are an effective recruiting tool, because they can attract a lot of people who are most interested in what you do. If the promotion is targeted to the right audience, masses of people won’t show up – but the ones who do come to the event are prime candidates. It’s still quality over quantity.

In 2015 ALCC’s second go-round with a job fair on February 25, 2015, arises from lessons learned at that risk-taking event in 2014.