Where are the true Masters in Construction? I am not talking about those that have ventured out to get a Masters License in their prospective trade, I mean real masters. American culture and probably world wide to some extent has moved us away from becoming masters at what we do. Marketing pushed to us is stated as "buy this or do this and get an instant result". We start to believe that in a very ......

For those of us in the construction industry, we know the Estimators that are more cynical than the average Joe. They appear to be more prevalent than the fun loving young estimator. The duties of an Estimator change that fun loving young kid into the cynic through years of performing one of the most difficult jobs in construction. So what makes it such a difficult job? The most difficult part of ......

Measurements are critical to good construction. Not just in constructing walls, placing tiles, and balancing mechanical systems, but also in tracking contractor's performance on the project. A minute cannot go by where workers are not measuring boards, conduits, walls, concrete volumes, and hundreds of other things on a construction site, but are contractors measuring things for their own betterment? ......

So what does it take to be a good estimator? Being great with numbers? Having a desire to color on drawings all day? There are a few key traits I have found in my career that really separate the great estimators from the rest of them. Let's recall how I defined an estimator's job as: finding the lowest cost solution to the project as would be acceptable to the client while identifying the potential ......

So what does weight loss and construction productivity have in common? If you track the inputs you are much more likely to get better results. In 2008, a study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine that shows that keeping a “food diary” may double your weight loss. What they actually found was that the more participants recorded what they ate, the more weight they lost in the ......

Measurements are critical to good construction. Not just in constructing walls, placing tiles, and balancing mechanical systems, but also in tracking contractor's performance on the project. A minute cannot go by where workers are not measuring boards, conduits, walls, concrete volumes, and hundreds of other things on a construction site, but are contractors measuring things for their own betterment? ......

For subcontractors, the best way to control and increase profit is by managing labor productivity. Too often, project managers, foreman, and executives focus on material buyouts, squeezing subcontractors, and cutting back on overhead to make gains on profits, but these actions pale in comparison to what can be accomplished by having highly productive labor. There is no doubt money to be made by being ......

Last week we bid a few jobs. This week we bid a few jobs. Next week we will bid a few jobs. I am sure we all know which ones we won and which ones are lost, but do we really know what happened. Are we tracking the metrics of the projects we win? And I don't mean just a won/lost column? To get really good at something, we must track metrics about how we did. Think about any NFL football team, they ......

By now most of us have seen the change order and contract boat image that has been circulating around the internet over the past several years. The big boat is rightly called the change order and the small dingy is called "Original Contract". This brings forward a very interesting question about how people think. When you view the image it enters into your mind that this must be Contractor's set-up ......

When managers in construction start beating the drum of more production, the message that is typically received from the crews is “you need to be working harder”. While this may be true in some instances, most of the time this is not what is being said. In construction, especially for subcontractors that are performing the labor, money is made or lost in the amount of work being put in per hour charged ......

Business management for years has taken the advice of statisticians: that if you don’t or can’t measure something, then you can't manage it. In construction, this simple truth is the key to being successful. Management of bidding, projects, labor, or profits is not just a group of tasks that you must perform, it is taking in facts, analyzing those facts, coming to conclusions, taking action, and then ......

The current Congress has passed the 2,300 page Financial Reform Bill which will have major impacts to the construction industry. After the 2008 elections there were three bills that were the focus of the new government: Healthcare, Global Warming, and Financial overhaul. All three of these have major impacts on the construction industry and with the Global Warming bill effectively dead, it is clear ......

Construction companies stand on three (3) pillars that define good business; Get Work, Do Work, and Monitor Work. If all three of them are done correctly and efficiently than the business will thrive. Getting work has a lot to do with generating an estimate on a custom product that has never been produced before, so what ensures that you have a good estimate? In the manufacturing world, it becomes ......

pro·duc·tiv·i·ty (pro'duk-tiv'i-te, prod'?k-) n. The rate at which goods or services are produced especially output per unit cost of labor. Or if you prefer how much does it cost to install a unit. For subcontractors this is a very critical item since the majority of our profit is dependent on the productivity rate. It is also much more difficult in construction since the units and the ability to ......

If you have been involved in bidding work you have probably at one point in time been apart of the Best and Final Offer (BAFO) routine. In private work it is typically called "scoping out" the sub numbers. It is a process where you are expected to give your best and final proposal for the work after you have turned in your actual bid number. It may be preceded with a list of questions or changes in ......