When was the last time you sat down and thought hard about how your business actually runs? Not the org chart. Not the strategic plan in a binder. The actual processes. How a project gets bid. How a change order gets routed. How a forecast gets built. Most owners can’t answer those questions clearly….
Here’s a number that should make you uncomfortable: $31 billion. That’s what the U.S. construction industry loses to rework every year. And if you think that’s somebody else’s problem, pull up your last three projects and look at the change orders, the RFIs, and the schedule slippage. Somewhere in there, you’ll find rework. You always…
Last week I was in the room with the leaders of SMACNA Western Washington. SMACNA is the association for sheet metal and HVAC commercial contractors. Owners. Senior PMs. Operations heads. Contractors who pay for ChatGPT, Claude, or Copilot and aren’t sure they’re getting their money’s worth. The room was sheet metal and HVAC. The problem…
I. What Nobody Says at the Retirement Party Every construction executive retires with a list. The tower was topped out. The hospital delivered the baby six weeks early. The multifamily deal that finally came in on margin after three that didn’t. Nobody at the retirement party talks about those things for very long. What they…
If your jobs consistently feel less profitable than your numbers suggest, the answer probably isn’t in the field. It’s in how your costs are being tracked—or not tracked. Indirect costs are one of the most misunderstood areas of construction accounting. When they’re not properly identified, allocated, and reported, they create a distorted picture of job…
Not long ago I was working with a GC bidding on an $80 million multifamily project. Blood, sweat, and tears. Months of work. Their best people on the proposal. I asked them one question. “Who is the final decision maker?” They looked at each other. Then back at me. “I don’t know.” Eighty million dollars…