◼ COVID-19 / BUSINESS Bloomberg Businessweek March 16, 202034
○ The longest line at ConExpo, the largest
construction convention in North America, is the
line to grab beer. As the bottles of Budweiser and
Bud Light fly over the counter, the cashier at the
beer station says she needs to run to the bathroom.
“I’m getting a little terrified,” she says. “I didn’t
see any hand sanitizer the whole time I was hand-
ing out beers.”
The beer seller, like the vast majority of attendees
at the conference, which takes up 2.7 million square
feet of space, was concerned about the transmission
of coronavirus as about 130,000 attendees converged
on Las Vegas on March 10 for this once-every-three-
years event. But for her—and planners of many trade
shows and events that are going forward despite the
pandemic—the show must go on.
Even as college campuses are shifting classes
online, sports teams are competing before empty
arenas, and governments from Italy to Washington
state are restricting mass gatherings, many American
industries—including construction—are trying to
go about business as usual. In the case of the huge
ConExpo show, plans were just too far along when
virus fears began to take hold in the U.S.
Moreover, given the three-year gap between
confabs, this joint exhibition of construction and
mining equipment couldn’t be easily postponed.
So clients, potential new customers, and dealers
for everything from backhoes and cement mixers
to cranes and road-pavement gear trekked to Vegas
to do deals and get a pulse on the market amid an
unprecedented public-health crisis.● Why would anyone go to a trade
show with 130,000 attendees during
a burgeoning pandemic?“It’s a good chance to know the new technology
and figure out what works better for our company,”
says Jeff Herington, a project manager estimator at
InRoads Paving LLC in Des Moines. “You can talk
on the phone and email, but it’s just different to
speak face to face, and when you have the com-
pany here you can get better answers.”
It’s easy to see why construction folks are eager
to keep meeting and greeting. Demand is smoking.
The industry added 42,000 jobs in February, help-
ing push the overall U.S. unemployment rate down
to 3.5%, a 50-year low. The convention is also a mas-
sive showcase for Caterpillar, John Deere, Komatsu,
Volvo Group, and other global companies to display
their latest products and technologies to buyers
from around the world.
Still, soldiering on during a pandemic requires
some accommodations. Hand sanitizer stations are◀ “No Offense,
Just Makes Sense”prominent, as are exhortations to be careful with
coughs. And the show’s organizers have instituted
a no-handshake policy, complete with buttons that
show a slash mark over a drawing of clasped palms.
That’s a big change for an industry where handshak-
ing and backslapping is still very much in vogue,
but alternatives like fist bumps and foot shakes are
catching on among attendees. Industry bigwigs
are getting into the act: Chief Executive Officer Jim
Umpleby of Caterpillar Inc., one of the world’s larg-
est machinery producers, greets people by bumping
elbows, while Mike Ballweber, president of Bobcat
North America, prefers “shoulder shimmies.”
That doesn’t mean the virus isn’t on people’s
minds. “We haven’t seen anything slowing down or
the need to do anything different, but we have this
black swan out there, and we’re trying to look at it
and understand what to do,” says Ballweber, whose
farm and construction equipment company is part
of South Korea’s Doosan Group. “Just this morning
I was with dealers to talk to them, and that’s the con-
versation I’ve had with every one of them. They’re
not oblivious to the news.”
Volvo, though, is one major manufacturer that
decided days before the show’s start that it wasn’t
coming. Instead, it sent a skeleton crew of local
employees to exhibit its gear, which had already
been delivered to the venue. Although Caterpillar
chose to attend, it allowed employees to choose
to stay home. But it says a lot of analysts and
shareholders—who come to hear presentations,
see new products, and schmooze with company
executives—didn’t show up because of the virus.
“A lot of investors didn’t come, that would be
the one thing that’s probably different this year,”
says Chief Financial Officer Andrew Bonfield. He
says that if investors could instead arrange meet-
ings with managers at Cat’s headquarters outside
Chicago, “they would probably take that rather
than come to a very large event where they may
need to self-quarantine afterwards.”
A group called Women of Asphalt, which pro-
motes female participation in the constructionWhat I’m
telling zoo
visitors
Benjamin Tan, deputy
CEO of Wildlife
Reserves Singapore,
which runs the
Singapore Zoo
It’s outdoors, and the
crowds are light, so it’s
actually pretty safe.
We think it’s important
to have commonsense
measures. As much
as we are open for
business, the last
thing we want is to
have cases spreading
here. We are telling
colleagues, “If you
aren’t feeling well,
please stay home.”
All surfaces are
disinfected regularly.
There’s temperature
screening in every park,
including back-of-
house areas.
The coronavirus
being linked to
zoological disease
has produced some
anxiety. We are against
the wildlife trade. Let’s
not confuse that with
animals that are well
cared for. We’re also
telling people it is safe
to share spaces with
animals—our animals
are regularly assessed
by caregivers and
vets. �As told to
Joanna Ossinger