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What Contractors Say About Risk
Vacation schedules have interrupted our strategic planning series, so we are repeating an important message on risk. If risk recognition and assessment is so fundamental to the construction transaction, why do so few contractors engage in formal risk management? As I...
Strategic Planning
"If you don't know where you're going - you're probably not going to get there." I quote this ancient Chinese proverb every time I talk about strategic planning. The contracting business does not lend itself to long-term planning. Unlike most industrial companies who...
In The Beginning
In my long career as a contractor to a consultant, I have had the good fortune to work with young people who had recently inherited a construction business. Most of these young men and women were already working in the family firm in a middle management or executive...
The Purpose of Business is to Make a Profit
Warren Buffet was a businessman. He never drove a train, wrote an insurance policy, built an office tower, or miniaturized a computer. He strictly analyzed an existing business's ability to make a profit over an extended period and invested an appropriate...
It Takes a Team of Financial Professionals
The unique complex nature of the construction financial transaction cannot be overstated. I make this point repeatedly because my experience working with contractors is they do not see the complexity of the business of contracting the same way I do. The unfortunate...
No Surprises
The instrument rated construction company financial management that we have been discussing these past few weeks is not simply a metaphor. Most of the contractors that failed mid-project when my company was completing construction projects for sureties were surprised...
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