As it is with any business, time is money. However, this rings particularly true with construction companies. Along with competition within the industry, these companies also face tight budgets, deadlines for project completions, high costs for labor, materials, and equipment, and other aspects that make efficiency a key part of a company’s overall success. Thus, if you are in charge of a construction company, you know all too well the importance of being able to manage operations in the most efficient way possible. Therefore, if you are looking for ways to make your business even more efficient and productive, here are several ways to increase your construction company’s efficiency.
Hold Regular Meetings
To stay on top of what is happening with your company’s daily operations, make it a point to hold regular meetings with foreman, contractors, and others associated with a project. By doing so, you can not only get updates on the status of a project, but also bring up any issues that may be leading to decreased efficiency. For construction companies, some of the most common issues in this area include attendance, break times, and use of cell phones on the job. By addressing these issues promptly, you can keep employees performing in a highly-productive manner, ensuring you lose neither time nor money.
Time Management
In many companies, poor time management is one of the leading causes of inefficiency. If this is a problem with your company, one of the best steps you can take is using one of the many apps now designed to provide accurate time-tracking. By incorporating a time-tracking app into your company’s operations, you will be able to simplify the payroll and time sheet process, allowing employees to submit electronic time sheets through mobile devices. Along with this, many of these apps come with GPS features, enabling employee movements to be tracked at all times while they are on the job. Finally, time-tracking software can alert you to excessive overtime hours, letting you know a project may be going over-budget.
Improve the Planning Process
For many construction companies, mistakes often occur during the planning process. As an example, if you fail to properly plan for the correct amount of materials needed for a project, then find yourself running low halfway through, chances are you will run past your completion deadline and also face additional expenses. To keep this from happening, take the time to thoroughly plan out even the smallest details of an upcoming project. From labor costs and equipment needed to having enough materials to finish the job on time, planning well can save you plenty of time and money.
Use Building Information Modeling
Known throughout the industry as BIM, Building Information Modeling is being relied on by more and more construction companies for increased efficiency. Considered to be state-of-the-art software that can revolutionize the industry, BIM allows you to create digital images of buildings that have yet to be built. By doing so, you can examine various aspects, calculate labor and material costs, try out different engineering theories and ideas, and much more before you have ever spent that first dollar or poured that first slab of concrete.
Emphasize Proper Training
In the most efficient construction companies, proper training is one of the most important areas that is emphasized. From high-level supervisors to entry-level laborers, making sure everyone working on a project is properly trained can save time and money in many ways. For example, if a supervisor learns new and improved ways to install steel beams, they can then pass on that knowledge to their crew, enabling a job to be completed in a much smoother fashion.
Be Willing to Listen
Most of all, be willing to listen to your workers who are on a job day in and day out. By doing so, you can often become aware of problems much quicker, and in many cases, it is the workers themselves who come up with the best solutions. By letting workers be your eyes and ears on a project, many problems can be solved before they become major issues.
