As 2011 comes to a close, it’s time for us to look back on the commercial construction building trends, news and projects of this past year and share our thoughts on the highs and lows in the industry.

HIGH – Everyone was submitting drawings in 2011. We saw drawings for new Chicago restaurant projects, retail construction work, office renovations, school construction and learning center additions – you name it, we saw it. In fact, our commercial construction budget work was back to 2008 levels. It was optimistic and certainly gave us a lot of commercial construction news to talk about around the water cooler.