by Simplar | May 7, 2026 | Financial Management and Risk, Financial Management and Risk, Financial Management and Risk, Growth, Growth, Weekly Construction Message
Despite its vast size ($2 trillion in annual sales) and impact on the nation’s economy, the construction industry remains, at its core, a collection of small businesses. Unlike other American industries, construction has never become a darling of Wall Street,...
by Simplar | Apr 9, 2026 | Business of Construction, Business, Strategic & Project Planning, Business, Strategic and Project Planning, Business, Strategic and Project Planning, Leadership, Organization Transformation
We are discussing how unexamined beliefs about the nature and structure of the construction business transaction have had a corrosive effect on contractor profit margins for the past 50 years. The resulting standard business practices followed by all construction...
by Simplar | Feb 19, 2026 | Built Environment, Business of Construction, Facility Management, Organization Transformation, Partnering, Planning, PM, Procurement, Project Delivery, Weekly Construction Message
In the same way a Law Firm is a team of expert attorneys handling legal affairs for clients, a construction company is a team of construction experts providing construction services to clients. The way this team of construction experts is recruited, trained, and...
by Simplar | Jan 29, 2026 | Built Environment, Business of Construction, Organization Transformation, Partnering, Planning, PM, Project Delivery, Project Selection, Project Selection, Project Selection, Weekly Construction Message
Decision tree analysis is not a scientific way to make decisions but rather a visual representation of the decision-making process that goes on inside the head of decision makers. At first, a decision tree appears as a tree-like structure or graph with different nodes...
by Simplar | Dec 26, 2025 | Built Environment, Business Failure, Business of Construction, Business, Strategic & Project Planning, Financial Management and Risk, Financial Management and Risk, Financial Management and Risk, Financial Management and Risk, Leadership, Leadership, Weekly Construction Message
In my experience, construction firms do not operate under firm budget disciplines like most other industrial concerns. Contractors usually craft project budgets in advance but rarely use them as a management tool. Because of the complexity and variability of each...
by Simplar | Dec 18, 2025 | Financial Management and Risk, Financial Management and Risk, Financial Management and Risk, Financial Management and Risk, Managing Subcontractors, Weekly Construction Message
One of the things that frustrates me about the relationship between contractors and owners is that owners act like they’re doing us a favor by letting us take all the risk in the financial transaction. It’s as if contractors are not trustworthy and owners...
