The credit crunch is affecting those of our customers who rely on construction and real estate loans to pay for development. A couple of projects where the bank went out of business have been stopped until re-financing allows them to finish up. We have been fortunate in that some of our larger customers have weathered the storm. In fact, in Las Vegas one of the major strip projects that we're working on was able to push through and will be opening next month.

At ValleyCrest, we continue to believe that design/build is a great opportunity for clients who want to use that kind of service to get their projects designed and built in a more efficient way. We are very focused on productivity, we continue to invest in training our employees, particularly in our field level, but we also find value in training with our staff level employees.

At our sister company, ValleyCrest Landscape Maintenance, division President Roger Zino and his management team are working closely with customers to align their landscape needs with business needs. In some cases, this has actually resulted in an increase in spending as customers look to improve their occupancy rates and property attractiveness to draw in and retain tenants. In other cases, the division has worked with customers to reduce non-essential landscape spending while improving the landscape with recommendations such as reducing the amount of color changes per year, better water management and other applications of emerging technology.

Another thing that is very important for us is that we're extensively interviewing our customers through very robust customer service questionnaires to make sure we understand what is challenging them and driving them. We?EUR??,,??ve been conducting these surveys for a number of years and it has proven to effectively help us mesh our business model with customer needs.

An area that is getting stronger is updating the landscape on existing properties. There's going to be a lot of work in ''re-imaging'' properties that have grown stale in looks, need to be updated, or properties acquired as a result of the real estate downturn. Customers want their properties looking great for resale or to help attract new tenants -- which is a great opportunity for growth in the landscape industry. We are tracking existing structures being retrofitted into more environmentally-sustainable buildings more closely. We believe it could be a significant growth area for us given our expertise in green design and construction. A recent report from McGraw-Hill Construction noted that today green building comprises 5 to 9 percent of the retrofit and renovation market activity by value, which translates to roughly $2 billion to $4 billion of major projects annually. The report estimates that by 2014 projects in this sector could account for 20 to 30 percent of the market, which if accurate would equate to $10 to $15 billion in spending on major retrofit projects annually.

The founder of our company, Burton S. Sperber, has now experienced four recessions in his 60 years of business. He recently sent a note out to all ValleyCrest employees on what he considers are the 3 B's of Business, three points I couldn't agree with more are the fundamentals of getting our company through this recession: ''We need to bid our work accurately, buy products at today's market value and build our work within budget.''