With an infusion of public funding behind builds of all kinds around the country, many contractors are thinking with aspiration. Indeed, despite the challenges of labor and materials, the timing just may be right for growth-minded owners. Ready to expand your capacity? Here’s strategic advice, along with support to make bidding and bonding easier too.
The New Optimism: Anticipating Problems
In construction, bumping into challenges that delay the project and pinch the bottom line are generally a given. It’s not a matter of “if,” but “when,” and it stands to reason that larger projects face larger problems. In fact, a McKinsey study found that big builds “typically take 20% longer to complete than originally estimated – and often run as much as 80% over budget.” Despite these unpleasant numbers, it is possible for general contractors to successfully take on larger projects, as long as they work to anticipate what could go wrong and build their “response ready” capacity. Specifically, experts at Construction Junkie suggest general contractors anticipate these kinds of “common challenges before they arise, in order to mitigate the impact of construction delays on their bottom line”:
Faulty scheduling.
The most common…pitfall for large-scale construction is an unrealistic timeline. When scheduling is misaligned or constricted from the start, delays will snowball throughout the entire timeline to completion….In the past, project scheduling relied mostly on manual insight and calculations, which could take months of collaborative effort to complete, or adjust – but today’s GC’s can leverage more advanced digital tools to dynamically tune their construction schedules.
Budget failures.
While an accurate bid goes a long way towards maintaining a budget, a wise man once said “an estimate is only valid at the moment it is written”. The time elapsed between project conception and final completion poses a huge challenge….While individual factors (such as rising material costs) may be impossible to predict, maintaining timely and accurate digital records can help GCs catch creeping costs before they skyrocket out of control – and adjust or amend their plan of action, accordingly.
When it’s time to scale up, having the right partner on your side, and bid bonds at your fingertips, come in handy too. Colonial Surety’s here to help, with a surety line of credit, speedy bonds, free financial intel, and more. Everything you need to grow is right here at Colonial Surety via The Partnership Account® for Contractors.
Once qualified for The Partnership Account® you’ll use our power of attorney to issue your own bid bonds, in minutes. That means you can wait on material pricing and still hit the deadline. Order performance and payment bonds with speed and ease too. Plus, you’ll bid and win more than ever as you leverage your:
- surety line of credit—in writing;
- private digital dashboard;
- daily snapshot of single and aggregate limits
- ability to update work on hand—and increase your aggregate.
Get started right now—and get your free scores too:
Think Digital: Leverage Technology
For most contractors, scaling up means it’s time to stop relying on spreadsheets and emails to manage projects and lean meaningfully into the ways digitizing can boost capacity. For example, consider how AI-driven tools can help address all kinds of bottlenecks, by “revealing unconventional workarounds, methods, and routes of progress which enable even a stalled project to move forward.” Supply chain failures are a particular challenge general contractors need to be prepared to work around, especially on larger projects, and here too, digitizing can make a world of difference, as industry experts point out:
Material and equipment shortages can create major roadblocks to project completion. If a manufacturer or supplier fails to deliver as expected, or (worst-case scenario) stops producing an essential component, tracking down alternate resources can pose quite a challenge. Even when alternative options are readily available, the reconfiguration required to adjust to changes in timing and cost can be massively time-consuming – and expensive. Today’s more advanced GCs are leveraging digital tools that can assist in this type of scenario, tuning assumptions about what inputs will be available so that construction continues as quickly as possible.
Ease and speed. That’s what winning contractors count on–and that’s what Colonial Surety provides: The Partnership Account® offers qualified contractors a surety line of credit—in writing—and a private digital dashboard, providing daily snapshots of single and aggregate limits and bond capacity. Go ahead: update work on hand, increase the aggregate and hit the green light.
Pre-Qualify and Get Free Scores Here.
Founded in 1930, Colonial Surety Company is a leading direct seller and writer of surety bonds and insurance products across the USA. Colonial is rated “A Excellent” by A.M. Best Company and U.S. Treasury listed. Let’s connect today: Colonial Surety.