the company. Richard Arnold, Stephanie Kirschner, Randal Merrill, Jerry Keller, and Jose Castrejon were the employees chosen to fill the new minority shareholder positions. In 2008, Stephen Roat was elected president. Despite the companys recent success, the shareholders started to notice warning flags of a changing and declining marketplace. In December 2008, the country experienced the worst recession since the Great Depression of the late 1920s. Every facet of the nation and its economy was affected by this recession from the building and housing markets to the banking and automobile industries. McGill Smith Punshon, Inc. was forced to downsize, shrinking its salaried staff, workloads, and salaries of the remaining twenty-eight employees. MSP hunkered down for a period of approximately two years. If not for project diversification, MSP may not have survived the recession. Project opportunities came predominately from the educational and corporate office building marketplaces. Several key projects relied on the 54