Construction businesses face ineffectiveness as one of their biggest challenges. According to a report from The Construction Industry Institute, only 43 % of time spent working in construction is productive. This often has little to do with your workforce’s motivation.
Rather, the operations within your construction business might be why your crew is ineffective, resulting in slow or failed projects.
Streamlining operations in your construction business allows you to make more bids and estimates, improve accuracy, and hit your project deadlines more consistently.
But you can only do this if you make specific changes, such as reducing meetings, using effective communication, investing in the right technology, and hiring the right crew.
Here’s a look into the construction business and how you can improve your operations for better service delivery.
Table of Contents
The Benefits of Streamlining Construction Business Operations
Construction businesses run on strict timelines, processes, and deadlines. Therefore, there’s a lot you can gain from improving operations. Here are the top benefits.
Improved Project Timeliness
With streamlined operations, your construction business can hit its deadlines better. For instance, information will only go through fewer people before it’s acted on, making enacting plans much quicker.
Moreover, with a greater focus on your crew’s health and well-being, you can boost their motivation, leading to more timely project deliveries. Therefore, your work will always be finished on time and more efficiently.
Additional Bids and Estimates
By streamlining the operations of your construction business, you get a better understanding of your clients. This includes their primary problems and challenges and the solutions they’re looking for.
With this information, you can make better bids and estimates and win more jobs, leading to higher profits and excellent customer service delivery.
For instance, by improving your data collection process, you can better understand what clients want in a bid and make better propositions for why they should use your services instead of the competition. Customers can also trust you more and see the value you offer their project through transparent communication channels.
Improved Accuracy
Fine-tuning your construction business’s processes allows you to be more accurate, reducing wastage for your business, crew, and clients.
For instance, with a better, software-based estimating process, you can order the right quantity of materials and equipment needed for a project, avoiding overrunning costs due to overestimation.
You can also save your business and clients money by investing in more accurate payment processing systems, ensuring clients only pay for the services they ordered, and you get the right payments on time.
The Best Way to Streamline Your Construction Operations
To enjoy the benefits of streamlined construction business operations, you must transform a few things about how you do your business and handle your crew. Here are some of the most effective changes your business can make to improve operations.
Hire a Top-Notch Crew
Hiring the right crew is crucial to ensuring your business operates efficiently. Having the right crew take care of work orders and service requests will reduce the time wasted on supervision and, more importantly, yield happier customers satisfied by the quality of your services.
Paired with the right construction workforce management, you can realize significant gains in operational efficiency since your crew will be using optimized schedules for attending to field service requests, and the right tech will always be attending to the right job that matches their skills.
Reduce Meetings & Increase Their Effectiveness
Meetings are important in running any business smoothly. However, having too many can have a negative effect.
You should reduce your crew’s meetings to the bare minimum, using the least amount of meetings to establish, recap, or refine processes, project goals, and timescales. Having fewer meetings saves your crew and in-office admins a lot of time that could have been spent on service delivery.
You can create a strict meeting schedule with clear agendas that will ensure they’re effective, reducing the need for unwanted and interruptive meetings outside the schedule. Each meeting should have delegated individuals responsible for various presentations or talking points with clear channels for follow-up once the meeting is done.
Use the Most Up-to-Date Construction Software and Equipment
Many construction businesses are modernized. Therefore, you need to invest in the right general contractor software and equipment to be competitive and effective in your operations.
Using modern construction machinery improves the quality of work and significantly reduces a project’s lead time. Moreover, you also need a smaller crew to complete a single job, allowing you to handle more projects spread across smaller teams.
Buying and setting up the equipment will often have high initial costs, which will pay off in the long run as you better handle and complete service requests. You can offset the costs by looking at various financing or ownership options for the equipment, such as loans and leasing.
Software will help you streamline and improve most day-to-day operations such as invoicing, scheduling, and inventory management, allowing for smoother working of your construction business.
Invest in Sustainability
The construction industry is a massive waste generator. According to data, waste from the construction industry totals over 146 million tons, with most construction businesses discarding up to 30% of unused materials.
Investing in sustainability directly improves your construction business’s operations since you’re more conscious about waste, thus more accurate in making bids and estimates and procuring equipment and materials.
You can also switch to more efficient construction methods such as modular construction and working with reclaimed materials to keep costs and wastages down.
Use Effective Communication
Encouraging effective communication is crucial if you’re to streamline operations in your construction business. There should be concise and clear communication between the client, your business, and your crew, from the project’s planning to its handover.
Investing in effective communication ensures everyone is on the same page and understands their roles in the project, leading to faster and better service delivery.
You can improve communication by having few but effective meetings and providing accurate documentation, typically software-based, that will allow all stakeholders to easily track the budget, milestones, and other changes made to the project.
Software can also allow for real-time collaboration between crew members, leading to better service delivery and problem-solving while on the field.
Have Better Supply Chain Monitoring
Supply chain issues can significantly affect processes and operations in a construction business. If you don’t have the equipment and materials needed, your crew cannot start or continue with a job, leading to massive delays and challenges that make it difficult to hit the deadlines.
Using software-based inventory management can help stay on top of supply chain issues, using predictive analysis to anticipate spikes in demand and seasonal supply chain bottlenecks that can be easily averted.
Invest Only in the Right Processes
Construction businesses lie right at the center of infrastructure and economic development. You must find clever and effective ways to improve your processes and ensure minimal wastage, excellent customer satisfaction, and high yield from your construction business.
Author Bio
Ralph P. Sita, Jr., CPA – Is a lifetime successful serial entrepreneur. He is the Co-Founder of FieldBin, a home service management software designed for trade business owners. While in high school and college Ralph worked for his father’s HVAC company as a mechanic’s helper and then ran a few jobs with his brother Tommy.
At even a younger age he would help his dad calibrate thermostats and polish old copper and brass fittings…nothing was ever wasted! In addition to FieldBin, Ralph Co-Founded Cybrary and serves as both CEO and Founder of TrainACE and GamePlannerPro.com.
