Set, track and monitor your targets and goals for you construction company.
Imagine coaching a basketball team without keeping score. You would put in your best players, call plays designed to outscore the opponent and hope to finish the game with more points. But without a scoreboard, you would not know if you should change your strategy, call different plays or put in different players. It would also be difficult to motivate your players.
Business is like sports in many ways. You cannot win in business if you do not track your progress. To win the game of business, you have to be under budget, ahead of the plan, make money and beat the competition. When your employees do not have goals to meet, they will not work as hard.
Establish Goals and Targets for your Construction Business
Have you established goals and specific targets for your construction business? For example, do you have written goals for your current annual sales and net profit? Less than half of all small business owners set and track annual sales and profit goals. This is like running a business without trying to make a profit.
Specific company targets might include: sales revenue, gross profit, overhead, net profit, profit growth, debt reduction, average project size, number of new customers, new market penetration, proposal-hit ratio, stockholder distributions and company value.
Before you start a project, get the estimator, project manager, field superintendent and foreman together to set overall project goals. Hold a pre-job team meeting to get everyone on the same page.
Plan the project, and develop goals, including estimated versus final profit, proposed versus final completion date, production crew hours, equipment hours, general condition costs, safe work days, call-backs or punch-list items, customer satisfaction, increased change order revenue and prompt payments. Afterward, follow up on these goals with weekly and monthly project team meetings. At the end of the project, hold a general review meeting to decide what areas need improvement, and refine your goals for the next project.
