About a year ago, our team at Englewood Construction thought it would be a great idea to share our commercial construction news and experience through a blog. At first, I wasn’t sure. I’m an old-school guy so I like to talk to people face to face, or at least over the phone.

But, everyone assured me a commercial construction blog would be an affective way to engage with our peers, clients, the media and anyone else who had a shared interest in everything from retail construction trends to restaurant construction costs. So I took a leap of faith and HardHatChat.com was born. As usual, my team was right.

Twelve months and just 34 blog posts later, I find myself very proud of our little blog. More than 5,600 people visited HardHatChat.com in its first year. And from the emails and calls we’ve received, you find it as worthwhile as we do.

One thing that strikes a chord with most of you is information on trends in the industry, whether it’s insights on general commercial construction trends, or more concentrated areas like retail construction trends, restaurant construction trends and industrial construction trends. So stay tuned, as we’ll soon be predicting 2011 construction trends.

Commercial construction checklists have also ranked high with you, so we’ll continue to write more of those in 2011, as well as other popular commercial construction blogs on topics like construction costs, commercial construction tips and commercial construction best practices.

Of course if you ever have a particular construction question you would like us to address or you want more information on a topic, just let us know. We’re honored that you have found HardHatChat to be a great resource for your needs.

I also want to acknowledge some great supporters of our blog who have helped broaden our readership. Hat’s off to Procore Technologies, The Blue Book, Retail Traffic, BidClerk, Realcorner.com and the U.S. Green Building Council.

But most importantly, thanks to our readers, my team at Englewood, our clients and vendors. Your continued help, suggestions and new projects provide us with much of the valuable content for this blog. I appreciate each and every one of you.

And if you think writing a blog was a new and exciting venture for Englewood Construction, wait until you read what we’re up to in my next post.

www.englewoodconstruction.com