The inside on outsourcing
The tidal wave of layoffs that swept the multifamily industry over the past several quarters finally caught up with Riverstone Residential sister company CAS Construction Management Services last month. Rumors of Riverstone's death have been greatly exaggerated.
Given the finance-starved state of development and the number of layoffs, abandoned projects and impairment charges that have hamstrung apartment companies this year, CAS Construction's 80 percent reduction in workforce would appear to make good fiscal sense.
"Due to the economic times, capital projects can not get funded and at CAS Construction we had a cadre of people on the bench. So we went through and really right-sized the organization to current projects and current demand, yet I think we took a very conservative approach,"
CAS Partners CEO Toni Portman told MHP on May 22.
CAS Construction remains open, but 28 of its 35 employees are gone.
"It was a tough choice but, quite frankly, we just didn't have the demand. What we've been able to do is take project managers and consolidate projects within our current regional maintenance team, or our CAS Construction team. We decided to keep the business unit viable because we think it's really critical to the continuum of our services offerings, and, with our fingers and toes crossed, when the economy releases capital funding for projects, I think we'll be nicely positioned with CAS Construction still operating," she said.
Ironically, the cutbacks were made about a week after
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