As 2020 is coming to a close, many general contractors are taking the time to set new company goals and revise their organizational strategy headed into 2021. In this article, we’re going to explore a few ways you can set your resource management up for success headed into the new year, and what you can learn from the year behind you.
One of the biggest struggles in construction workforce planning is keeping teams working at capacity, or fully utilizing their time. If a team member isn’t being utilized, they’re essentially “on the bench” and waiting to get in the game. Having team members on the bench creates an overhead cost that will negatively impact your bottom line. If you’re looking to effectively manage your workforce capacity, it’s critical to calculate and understand your workforce utilization rate.
Without question, construction generates a lot of data. In the past, the bulk of that data would be project specific and stored on paper, whiteboards, and spreadsheets. Once the project was completed, that data would often be filed away, moved to a “completed projects” spreadsheet, or worst case scenario – deleted. In most of those instances the historical data would never be seen again.
The culture around construction employment has made a dramatic shift in recent years. As baby boomers begin to retire and millennials now comprising 35% of the workforce, many general contractors are wondering how to make their organization more attractive to younger workers that don’t see construction as a fulfilling career choice.
Construction manpower planning meetings are one of the most important processes your operations team will undertake on a regular basis. In this article, we’re going to discuss three strategies you can use to run more effective construction manpower planning meetings. Getting out of your spreadsheets, setting an agenda, and using data to plan ahead.
As the construction industry continues to move forward and embrace the digital transformation of their core processes, putting a focus on data analysis as a skill set will continue to become more important for all leadership and construction management positions. Construction is making the effort to shift from manual processes to cloud-based, automated software and technology. That shift will inevitably result in a wealth of project and workforce data being captured from every phase a project goes through.
When executed properly, manpower meetings are one of the most effective ways a general contractor can keep their operations team aligned on project allocations, capacity planning, and overall workforce management. These meetings are where information is shared, feedback is offered, strategy is discussed, and most importantly – decisions are made.
Effective construction workforce planning combines two crucial elements for any general contractor: ensuring your people have projects, and your projects have the required people. In this article, we’ll explore the different customizations Bridgit Bench clients have used to better track their team members in order to create more effective construction workforce planning.
Capacity planning is one of the pillars of great construction resource management. Ensuring you have enough people for your projects at any given time can be the difference between profitable projects and finding projects suddenly at risk. It’s no easy task to juggle your entire workforce while being mindful of your project timeline, but if you’re ultimately looking to turn a profit on every project… it’s time to start juggling.
Manpower meetings can seem daunting. Given the fluidity of the construction industry, there are often delays to projects, people moving from one job to another, or a role that may require a particular skill set that could be hard to fill – all moving parts that can be difficult to track and stay on top of. This commonly results in manpower meetings involving numerous spreadsheets, whiteboards, multiple programs and handwritten notes which can make the workforce planning process confusing, inefficient and prone to errors.