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Letter From The President                             

John Loftis – President, FMCA

Ladies & Gentlemen,

I can’t say enough about how excited I am about the upcoming FMCA Florida Dock & Marine Expo on May 14 & 15, 2010 in Orlando at the Hilton, Walt Disney World Resort.  We have awesome vendor and sponsor participation with what some of the vendors are saying will be some of the greatest deals offered to the marine contractor in these rough economical times.  We have some excellent seminars available to you as well as possibly an outdoor product demonstration.   Our board meeting will be open to all of the general membership that attend and we look forward to hearing input from the each one of you on how to better the organization and the industry as a whole. We have lowered the price on the show and seminars to attract more people.  Your entry fee goes back into the organization supporting all of the statewide and local issues that we are facing day in & day out while learning about New Innovative products as well as attending well thought out seminars. PLEASE COME GET INVOLVED.  You can go to www.MyFMCA.org to learn more and register.

 On another note…

I don’t know about everyone else but it has been a breath of fresh air to get calls and go look at work.  The appearance is that this year is going to be better for the Marine Contractor then last year.  I certainly hope this is this case.  As a Marine Contractor, we need to capitalize on every little opportunity large or small these days and make the absolute best of them.  It is a new time when “No Job is to Small” and “We can’t be Choosy” is our model that we operate off of.  We have refined our overhead’s.  We have streamlined our businesses to the core.

We are now ready for productive and profitable work that will increase our margins better than ever.  In doing this though, we need to use every tool made available to us and The Florida Marine Contractors Association is one major tool to have at your resources. 

 Part of what makes this organization GREAT is the dedication and hard work that comes from all of the membership to include the Contractors, Associate’s and Vendors.  It is everyone of you working together to improve your businesses in this industry as a whole.  It is time for EVERYONE to get involved.  This is YOUR organization.  Example, it wasn’t too long ago that we had one of our Chapter Director’s put on a Chapter Meeting in Orlando where we invited officials from the Division of Workman’s Compensation, Department of Labor, Department of Professional Business Regulation, 4-5 local counties as well as even a software writer for the one of the county’s.  I would say that there was approximately 20 plus officials from these agencies all in one building eager to help us and our industry.  The question was asked as to why we don’t have more contractors there?  Don’t they care?  Don’t they want to be educated on these issues?   If I had to guess, we had maybe 5-6 Marine Contractors in the room.  Out of that group, only two were from the general membership and the rest were on the Board.

I know we advertised the heck out of this meeting and called people to generate interest but still could not get them to the meeting. 

We need your support and your involvement on our issues both locally and statewide.  If we all don’t band together and get involved, the damage will be to our industry as a whole.  We have accomplished some great things but in order to keep up the momentum, we need YOU.

 I am dedicated to giving you all the tools you need to make your business run better and smoother.  In this issue, I am including an article that will demonstrate how I got involved at our local government level in the county I work in, the success we had & the tools I used that FMCA provided to me.  I want to encourage you to use the same tools and go to your local counties and do the same.  We will endorse you but you have to make it happen.  I was successful here and I know you can be too. 

 I look forward to meeting with all of you at the May Dock & Marine Expo. 

 Respectfully,

 John Loftis

President, FMCA

www.myfmca.org