Posted by Hello my fellow contractors, I’m told it’s customary in a first blog post (this one) to introduce myself and lay out a plan, so here goes: I’m Doug Reitmeyer, a federal government construction contractor, father of two, and long-time lover of Jonathan Livingston Seagull (among many, many other things).
I’ve been doing federal construction contracting for over 35 years and started after getting out of the Army in 1972. I truly love building things – designing & building from the ground up or remodeling – and I particularly like the industrial jobs. Projects from early in my career include: installing a cooling tower, HVAC units, and building an underground tunnel, pipe system and new chillers for the building where they train air traffic controllers for the FAA. I may elaborate on those stories in later blog posts.
Uncle Sam has been very good to me over the years, and I’ve completed more than a thousand federal construction contracts worth over a billion dollars – many projects both large and small. If you’re interested in government construction, then the posts on this blog will be a great resource. The purpose is to provide information that is both entertaining and useful for you, so if there’s anything in particular that you’d like to respond to, just leave a comment at the bottom of the page.
My next post will be about the enormous opportunity available to contractors who are registered with the U.S. Government to bid on federal contracts. After that we’ll discuss why and how to form a corporation for doing government contracting, and an explanation of what you need to do to register your company with the federal government. Later, you’ll see photos and read stories about real contracts just to give you further insight into this business and a perspective that you cannot get from anyone else.
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Much of the basics have been briefly covered in videos over at our Government Construction Experts website (www.GCEXPERTS.com), so if you want to dive right in, then go ahead and click that link.
While construction has been a large part of my life, it’s not the only thing has been consuming neuronal energy, so don’t be surprised if I occasionally talk about what’s really most important to me – my family. Concern for the welfare of my wife, kids (they’re not really “kids” anymore) and extended family was the driving force of my ambitions. And life was clicking along at an ever-increasing pace until my youngest son was in a horrific boating accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury (a/k/a: “TBI”). There is a lot of information about our support and his amazing determination to recover on the Internet and on Youtube, and ABC-TV even did a special report and follow-up story a couple of years ago.
My high school and college background was physics, math, and chemistry. I learned electronics at IBM and from working with my father who retired from IBM after 42 years. In addition, I was trained in nuclear weapons electronics in the US Army, so I’ll probably go off on some tangents here and there about stuff that you might think is cool. However, this blog will be mostly about federal government construction contracting and I certainly don’t want to waste any of your time or lose your interest. So at the beginning of each post, I’ll let you know right up front if I’ll be discussing something else at the time.
On last note for the day – about the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. If you haven’t read it, consider this an emphatic recommendation. You can easily finish it in an hour or two and it brings new meaning every time I go back to it. The overarching theme of the book is this: The main obstacle between you and your success is you. Your beliefs about your own limitations hold you back more than anything else, so BELIEVE IN YOURSELF! Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not good enough or let doubt and fear stop you from achieving your goals. You are a self-fulfilling prophecy, for better or worse, so just do your best, learn all you can from the mistakes and successes of others, and if construction is in your blood, YOU CAN BUILD ANYTHING!
If you are already ahead of me or think you know more than I do about federal construction, then let me know and maybe we can collaborate!
And don’t forget to bookmark this page (or add it to your “Favorites”), leave a comment below, and head on over to www.GCExperts.com to get started.
Here’s to keeping your head in the sky and your feet on the ground,
Doug Reitmeyer