For contractors, creating a strategy that allows them to scale their business can be a difficult challenge. Construction projects alone can have thousands of moving parts and internal and external factors that can affect the final outcome. Growing a construction business is the same.
Every project and every process implemented are essential to the success of a growth strategy. From ensuring the workforce is right sized at the right time to building strong leadership and management teams, there are a few steps a contractor can take to help facilitate growth.
How to grow your construction company
INVEST IN THE RIGHT SOFTWARE
Estimating, document management, workforce planning, project management – the list of point solutions being developed for the construction industry continues to grow. It’s important to use the best management software for the given task as construction-specific solutions can help reduce expenses, enable collaboration, and improve productivity.
Bridgit Bench is a workforce intelligence solution that was built exclusively for the construction industry. On top of being a full project and people database, workforce intelligence helps to create optimal workforce strategies into the coming months and years.
With real-time updates, Bridgit Bench customers are able to see where their team members are (or will be) at any given time in the project pipeline. Multiple users and better accessibility help to foster collaboration. Forward looking insights help to create informed recruitment strategies to ensure the company is always ‘right sized at the right time’. For a list of top contractor software programs, read this blog.
BUILD AND RETAIN A STRONG TEAM
The people are the lifeblood of every construction company. Developing and maintaining a strong team is critical to growing a successful company. Hiring the right people, offering a clear path for career advancement, and choosing the right incentives are key steps a contractor should be taking. Interested in being a more effective leader? Check out our 5 key components of effective leadership.
Hiring the wrong people can be very expensive and be detrimental to client relationships. Bridgit Bench provides forward looking insight that helps HR teams optimize their recruitment programs to ensure they have sufficient time to evaluate potential candidates. Human resources can also track experience, skills, and certifications to help with individual career development. For more information about human resource planning, check out this guide.
BE PROACTIVE WITH PURSUITS
Contractors shouldn’t waste time hoping for projects to fall into their lap or rely on word of mouth. They need to be proactive and find new projects for the organization by investing in marketing and attending networking events. They should also constantly be in touch with potential clients, investors, general contractors, architects, and engineers that can provide better opportunities long term.
Being proactive with planning includes identifying and preparing for potential problems. The Bridgit Bench forecasting dashboard provides insight into workforce utilization rates. This insight helps contractors determine if a pursuit not only fits into their project pipeline, but also their workforce strategy. Understanding the impact a new pursuit will have on the organization and workforce plan is just one way Bridgit Bench helps to identify and mitigate potential risk.
Interested in a levelling up your career in construction? Check out our top certifications for construction careers.
BE SELECTIVE TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
Growing a contracting company is more than just earning as much business as possible. Taking on more work doesn’t necessarily make a contractor more profitable. In fact, increasing the number of projects can negatively impact a contractor if they don’t have the available resources to deliver high quality work on time and within budget.
Bridgit Bench pursuit tracking helps contractors understand which pursuits they should go after more aggressively based on the availability of their resources. Users are able to create projects as ‘opportunities’ to allocate resources and understand the potential impact to their workforce strategy. This insight is critical for any contractor pursuing multiple projects.
REMOVE BARRIERS TO COLLABORATION
Construction is one of the most collaborative industries. Completing projects on time and within budget requires a team to work together, cooperate, and coordinate hundreds of moving parts together. However, as collaborative as construction is, critical decision making data is often siloed off from departments that could leverage that information.
For example, workforce planning and strategy is often owned by a single member of the operations team and managed in a series of spreadsheets. These spreadsheets often become highly personalized applications that aren’t shared with the larger team. This insight into allocations, utilization rates, pursuits, and project demand is information that sales and marketing can use to pursue projects more aggressively. It’s also information that HR teams can leverage to create informed recruitment strategies to ensure the organization is always right sized at the right time. For tips on becoming a more effective communicator, read this blog for project managers. For information about collaborative general contractor scheduling software, check out this guide.
Bridgit Bench helps to support collaborative efforts by providing both system and custom permission groups. These permission groups help to ensure that the right people have access to the workforce strategy, but without risking any errors or unwanted changes. Our customers have also leveraged the custom permission groups to improve accessibility to their HR team, project managers, sales/marketing, and field management teams.
Bridgit is the leader in workforce intelligence. Our flagship software solution, Bridgit Bench, provides actionable insights and forecasting to ensure mechanical subcontractors and general contractors get the most out of their team and drive efficiency across the organization. Bridgit Bench is cloud based and updated in real time and also has a mobile app. It has seamless cloud integration with several popular applications. For more useful tips and information, visit our blog.
Michel Richer
Michel Richer is the Content Marketing Manager at Bridgit. He got his start in the construction industry at an early age with a local restoration company. Michel is driven to propel the construction industry forward by helping to eliminate outdated, ineffective processes.
