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Your Chief Financial Officer
Contractors often wait too long to employ the business management expertise of a qualified Chief Financial Officer. Small and mid-size businesses across all industries have traditionally left accounting to a bookkeeper, hiring an outside accounting firm to close the...
Beliefs and Harmful Bias
Unexamined beliefs play a role in the management decision making process and deeply held beliefs go largely unexamined. That is to say, we aren't even aware that we believe what we believe. The problem arises when these unexamined beliefs affect our decision making...
Profit, Profit, Profit
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." As most of my readers I am sure will testify, I don't often quote Shakespeare. But the confusion around the word profit in the construction industry has driven me to desperate measures. What do we mean when we speak of...
Call 911
Last week we established that the high failure rate in the construction industry comes down to a single cause - a shortage of working capital. Some blame failures on a whole variety of causes: labor unrest, natural disasters, economic stress, market shrinkage, unfair...
Is There a Doctor in the House?
Last week we discussed the irony of the construction industry's traditional low-bid acquisition system. It seems you can't win the game of making money if you pick up all your work by being the cheapest price. On the other hand, you can't even play the game if you...
Low-Bid Acquisition
Browse the Dodge Report and submit a competitive bid, to acquire any work that is available. Simple. For many years this was standard operating procedure in the construction industry. Selecting the lowest qualified bidder was mandated by regulation for most public...
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