NJBIZ Conversations: Greg Lalevee

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If any group really knows what’s happening on the ground in New Jersey, it’s the folks who run the big machines that move earth and put up buildings. If you want a sense for how the economic statistics mean in terms of physical structures, talk to those people. And we did.

In this edition of NJBIZ Conversations, Editor Jeff Kanige spoke with Greg Lalevee, the business manager for the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 825. Among many other topics, Lalevee provided an update on the big infrastructure projects, the effects of local and county budget cuts and how the pandemic is affecting the market in general.

“We see a little bit of a pullback and a sense of caution, but it also may be a sense of opportunity when we look at how we were building out here in the suburbs,” he said. “We may just have to change what that is and make buildings that are more responsive to a telecommuting part-time and in the office part-time environment. So that may just be not necessarily a scrapping of projects, but a re-imagination of what they need to look like to serve the needs of the people in the businesses.” Watch the full interview here.