Last updated on October 25th, 2022 at 08:13 am
Image Credit: Joffi from Pixabay.
Construction companies need to concentrate on more than simply building something. There’s also the actual business component to take care of. If you’re a construction entrepreneur, then you’ll need to figure out how to improve your construction company’s profitability at some point.
That’s easier said than done. With all of the moving parts involved, such as fluctuating schedules and material costs, you’ll need to spend a lot of time on it. If you think the process is stressful, you wouldn’t be wrong.
It doesn’t need to be as overwhelming or complicated as you’d think, however. Implementing a few strategies can help simplify the process while putting you on the path to profitability. It’s worth exploring how you can take advantage of each of them.
How To Improve Your Construction Company’s Profitability: 6 Top Strategies
1. Have The Right Equipment
You’ll need quite a bit of equipment when you’re on a project. From pavement riser rings to diggers and cement trucks, there’ll be quite a few things to manage. You’ll need to make sure you’re doing so properly and in a fiscally-responsible manner. That can take more effort than you’d expect.
Knowing when to lease versus when to buy is a significant part of this. If there’s a piece of equipment that you don’t anticipate using too much, then leasing it when you need it could be better-recommended than buying it. The same can be said of outsourcing certain parts of the process to avoid purchasing or leasing equipment to ensure the job is done correctly. Be it preparing groundworks or hiring Earthworkz drilling services for excavation.
At the same time, make sure to maintain your equipment. While this entails short-term costs, it’ll prevent much larger long-term costs.
2. Know Your Costs
Before you can figure out how to improve your construction company’s profitability, you’ll need to know what your costs are. Once you do, you can better determine how to manage them and improve your overall margins. That goes beyond your job costs, but also your overheads.
Your job costs include everything related to completing a project, such as materials and supplies. Your overheads, however, are what keep your business running, such as insurance and payroll. Accurately determine what your costs are and you can better plan for profitability.
3. Boost Productivity
Productivity can be seen as a measure of the effort your employees put in. You’ll want this to be as high as possible, alongside being consistent. To achieve this, you might need to figure out how to boost productivity in your company. That doesn’t need to be as difficult as you’d think.
Properly scheduling employees and allocating resources is a significant part of this, and you’ll also need to make sure your employees are well-trained. When training your employees, ensure you keep safety in mind. You shouldn’t aim to increase productivity at the risk of worker safety.
Keep in mind that there may be other factors that affect worker productivity. External factors, such as family life, may have a role in this, so be patient with your employees.
This section can work under the heading: “Boost Productivity”
Productivity can be seen as a measure of the effort your employees put in. You’ll want this to be as high as possible, alongside being consistent. To achieve this, you might need to figure out how to boost productivity in your company. That doesn’t need to be as difficult as you’d think.
Properly scheduling employees and allocating resources is a significant part of this, and you’ll also need to make sure your employees are well-trained. When training your employees, ensure you keep safety in mind. You shouldn’t aim to increase productivity at the risk of worker safety.
In addition, if you want to help your employees achieve greater success in productivity, provide them with Drone Data Management software. This tool will allow them to manage their time and resources better. Drone Data Management software helps your employees by organizing and managing data on their behalf. By automating tasks, they can focus on other areas of their work. This helps improve workplace efficiency and allows employees to be more productive. Drone Data Management software also provides your employees with access to data that they might not otherwise have. This allows them to make better decisions about their work and how to best use their time. By having this information readily available, they can save time by not having to search for it themselves.
Keep in mind that there may be other factors that affect worker productivity. External factors, such as family life, may have a role in this, so be patient with your employees.
4. Set Profitability Goals
When you’re figuring out how to improve your construction company’s profitability, you’ll need to have goals. With these, you can plan out how to achieve them. When you’re taking this approach, you should aim to have a particular percentage of an invoice as pure profit. That’s what’s known as your profit margin.
Alternatively, you can have a certain annual dollar figure in mind for your yearly profits. Once you have this in mind, you can determine how best to achieve this. You’ll need to make sure you’re realistic with this. If you’re starting a construction company, for example, aiming for $10 million in profit in your first year mightn’t be achievable.
Pick something obtainable and scale up accordingly.
5. Manage For Profitability
High-quality project management is vital to improving your construction company’s profitability. You’ll need to manage the project with profit in mind from start to finish. While this shouldn’t be the be-all, end-all of the project, it should be kept in your mind.
When you’re doing so, make sure to keep track of any changes and costs so that they can be properly taken care of. You may need to change orders and invoices accordingly, to ensure you keep that in mind.
During the construction process itself, make sure you don’t have any workers simply milling around. You’ll need them to be as productive as possible to maximize your profitability.
6. Analyze Results
Once you’ve finished a project, it’s time to look back on it and see where you could have done better. In many cases, that can be how employees could’ve performed their roles better, alongside other operational areas. When you’re doing so, make sure to look at the financial side of things.
See how close to your estimated profit that your actual profit was. If it’s farther off than you’d want, then you’ll need to look closer as to why this was the case. At the same time, you can determine whether you had budgeted everything correctly or if you had underestimated costs.
Focusing on how you can reduce these costs without compromising the quality of a project is recommended. Pay a lot of attention to comparing estimated costs and actual costs. Determining if there are other issues, such as if workers take longer than expected, can also help you figure out how to address it.
If employees are slower at completing a project than you’d like, for example, then consider retraining them.
Top Tips For Improving Your Construction Company’s Profit
You’ll need to do more than follow a few strategies when figuring out how to improve your construction company’s profit. Following a few particular tips and tricks can be more than recommended to help you achieve it.
While there are countless business tips you can use, some stand out from the rest, including:
- Develop A Lead Generation Process – If you don’t have any leads for new projects, then you can’t develop a consistent source of revenue, which interferes with profits. You’ll need to have a lead generation process that addresses this and ensures you have a new project lined up everytime another finishes. Once you do, you can better map out your revenues and profits.
- Increase Client Referrals – Generating new clients takes up a lot of time and effort, which costs money. It also takes time away from areas where you could be generating a profit. One way around this is by increasing client referrals. The cost to acquire these potential clients is much lower, which increases your overall profit margins. You can achieve this by providing high-quality work and an excellent customer service.
- Raise Your Prices – As obvious as this is, raising your prices is one of the more effective ways of increasing your profit. While you’ll need to be smart with this, it’s likely you can get away with raising prices by a certain amount without negatively affecting client generation. Determine what other companies are charging and base your prices accordingly while still remaining competitive. You could find you could make higher margins than you thought.
Though following the above construction company tips could mean making a few adjustments to your operations, they’ll be worth it. If it means increasing profitability while maintaining quality, then you’ll reap the rewards.
How To Improve Your Construction Company’s Profitability: Wrapping Up
Figuring out how to improve your construction company’s profitability can seem overwhelmingly complicated, although it doesn’t need to be. While it can be stressful, it could be simpler than you’d expect.
Implementing each of the above strategies and using as many tips and tricks as you can is recommended. Though that could mean changing a few areas in your company, it’ll be worth it once you see the increased profits coming in.
What’s stopping you from increasing your construction business’ profitability?
