The Difference Between Managing and Doing
By Leslie C. Shiner, MBA

How did you start your business? Most contractors started their company by working in the field. Then, as the businesses grew, they left the field and entered the office to better manage the business. And if they decided to focus on business growth as a goal, then they have discovered the need to spend more time “managing” than “doing.” But often, that is easier said than done.

Safety as a Core Value
By Lloyd Franke and Gary Lewis

“Don’t allow time pressures to impact safety practices and procedures.”
A six thousand pound ceiling tile fell and killed a passenger in a passing car. If people outside the Boston area hadn’t heard of the “Big Dig” before, they certainly were aware of it now. An initial investigation indicated that several people in the design process had noted the potential problems with the ceiling hanger design that had failed—and that the design was not changed.

In another construction accident, when workers unbolted scaffolding from a building, it fell on a car and killed the driver. Pure accident? No. A worker did not follow the required removal procedures.

Time is Money: Creating Profit from Construction Schedules
By Brian Wasserman

We all know the phrase “Time is money,” but have you ever stopped to figure out how much it costs when a job runs late? Say a $1 million project is scheduled to last 50 days. That’s $20,000 per day. If the project runs 10% over (that’s just five extra days!), it will cost an additional $100,000 (five days times $20,000 per day). On most jobs, that would represent the job’s entire profit! And there’s also the opportunity cost—what’s lost from not working on other projects because we’re working on this one.

Risk Management in Estimating
By Leslie C. Shiner, MBA

When creating an estimate for a job, it’s just that, an estimate. Some contractors refer to it as an educated guess, others joke that it’s an uneducated guess. But creating an estimate may be necessary to get the job.

Estimators must create bids with an eye toward profitability. A key way to increase profitability is to analyze and include risk factors in your estimate by understanding the three types of risk inherent in each job—contractual, financial, and operational.