Plan on Success
Having been fortunate enough to work for several great contractors in my career I have recently concluded that while they were good to work for that they had actually set themselves, and me up to fail. Please do not think that I think they did this purposely, they did not. For the most part the economy was good, sometimes to good, and I got along well with the majority of my peers and bosses, life was good.
Over the past decade I have been in a position to work with, teach or in one way or another witness what up until that time I just could not see. Why or how my employers set me up to fail, I proceeded to set up the people I was responsible for to fail and the domino principal created a circle because when we failed our employers failed. Now I do not mean that we lost money all the time or even most of the time, we did not always lose money sometimes we were lucky, sometimes we put in extraordinary effort, and yes sometimes we lost money on our projects.
What evaded me for so many years are simple two primary items was typically missing. Proper prior planning and the lack of on going training, now reading this you may be saying no kidding you’re a trainer. This is true and it is the reason that I have finally seen the light – so to speak. I have no doubt that the services we provide could streamline your business quickly. However many items can be completed with no assistance at all just the willingness to change your thinking a little. This is often the hardest thing for many of us to do, particularly for me.
The following is just a short list of process that we see many contractor’s fail to complete. The loss of confidence in your estimates, the loss of productivity in your management methods may result in a loss of money,
Compete a written business plan.
Working proactively instead of reactively.
Having a standard method of estimating that is used from project to project.
Consistently estimating in the same method will result in far fewer mistakes in your estimates.
Breaking out your estimates in small manageable sections.
Knowing you labor burden costs.
Understanding your overhead cost, I would like to say knowing your overhead costs but that is stretching it a little.
Having a bid review prior to sending out a proposal to a client or general contractor.
Utilizing a proposal that protects your firm’s rights.
When starting a new project utilize a rolling schedule to help make sure that you have the three items that your field crews will need,
The information to build the job.
The correct material delivered to the job site, when needed.
The correct tools to complete the job, this includes actual tools and labor at the site when needed.
We hope these items are available to you.
We would like to help you achieve this goal.
Any input to these ideas are more then welcome.
Thank you for reading ours.
