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You Can’t be a Surety

You Can’t be a Surety

Subject: the role of sureties You Can’t be a Surety So Learn to Act Like One  Thirty years of accumulated study as a contractor, work-out specialist, consultant, and research professor have verified the following realities about risk in the construction industry:...
Risk Encounter

Risk Encounter

Risk Encounter  Project risk in construction is defined in basic terms as unplanned cost or schedule changes that crop up during a construction project. Unplanned cost and schedule changes are ubiquitous in construction and have led to a universally negative...
The Dozer is Not Free

The Dozer is Not Free

Subject: Purchase price vs real price This $250,000 Dozer Is Not FREE I was looking for holes. As a salvage expert working for sureties who were exposed to enormous losses by sudden contractor failure, I was completing jobs across the country and at the same time...
How to Go Bankrupt

How to Go Bankrupt

“How did you go Bankrupt?” “Two Ways…gradually…then suddenly.” (The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway) Subject: financial planning Ernest Hemingway, apparently knew more about business failure than some executives, scholars, and politicians gathered around the recent...
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...