SURPRISE We’ve Run Out of Money

SURPRISE We’ve Run Out of Money

SURPRISE We’ve Run Out of Money! What surprised me most over the many years my consultancy finished hundreds of jobs for sureties after contractors had failed mid-project was how many contractors were surprised when they ran out of money. Most of them believed...
Don’t Shoot the Messenger

Don’t Shoot the Messenger

DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER Subjects: finances, CFOs, accounting In our industry the accounting function is not given the status and significance it should have. In more than half of the construction failures I dealt with, the following scene played itself out over and...
The Flash Report

The Flash Report

The Flash Report  Last week I highlighted the critical day-to-day usefulness of liquidity ratios in alerting a CEO that he might be flirting with financial difficulty. Today I would like to back up and take a look at the bigger picture – the CFO’s critical role...
Liquidity

Liquidity

Liquidity If I learned anything from ten years operating the world’s largest workout firm for sureties engaged in construction bonding, it’s that liquidity (or the lack thereof) is the most important predictive metric on a construction company’s balance sheet....