Construction, a multi-trillion dollar industry, is a critical element of the world’s economy that continues to expand. The construction industry’s diversity and growth present nearly limitless opportunities for contractors and other companies to establish successful businesses.
Despite the wide array of opportunities, the difficulties inherent to starting a business, from hiring and onboarding to marketing and sales, can curtail the growth of even the most talented and innovative organizations. Success in the construction business line requires a focus on top quality and continuous improvement that embraces upcoming trends, tools, and practices.
How to Succeed in the Business of Construction as a Start-Up
There are no golden rules for how to run a construction business. However, many of the most respected, profitable, and growth-oriented firms share common traits that, when considered from a bird’s s-eye view, help lay out a game plan for success. As they cultivate a stable and highly skilled workforce, create clear company goals and vision, and maintain a commitment to client satisfaction, every construction company can improve its long-term plan by adhering to a few basic principles.
1. Research the current construction industry
Collect relevant information about the current climate construction industry to establish a knowledge foundation before starting a company. Conducting deep research allows you to determine which types of construction projects are most common and profitable in your area. This can help you choose the right equipment to purchase and the workforce you hire.
You can find reliable research and updated trends in the industry, like new methodologies or equipment, through national or local print publications or on government websites. Local information about the industry can also help you decide where you want to start your company. If you find that your area already has saturated construction companies operating within, you might choose to base your company in an area with less competition.
2. Review your business plan
A construction business plan can be much more than your standard checkbox activity. The best business plans are living documents that reflect the company’s latest goals and describe how they will be achieved in detail. This might include target markets, services offered (current and in the future), pricing structures, and plans for integrating digital tools like Building Information Modeling (BIM), crew planning software, or aerial drones into the organization.
An exemplary business plan should also encompass the financial aspects of the business, including revenue goals and expense management, along with a competitive scan and analysis that focuses on your company’s strengths, weaknesses, and other opportunities relative to the competition.
3. Find your niche
To stand out in a saturated construction business scene, each company should spend ample time defining what it does best and how its unique skills and strengths might help it attract customers or expand into new markets. For instance, a painting contractor with expertise in all-around paintworks might leverage the experience of its workers to expand from small residential projects into more expansive industrial renovations. Construction businesses lacking specialization might consider a strategy refresh to fill a market void.
4. Keep up with construction standards
The construction business is closely tied to many regulations and standards related to building codes, quality control worker safety, construction crew scheduling, and technology implementation, just to name some. Staying current with the latest standards helps prevent roadblocks that can hamper progress and discourage current and future customers. Important standards to stay up to date on include:
- Relevant OSHA standards for building codes and safety regulations
- ISO 9001 International quality management system standards
- Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards for sustainable building designs
- Environmental standards, including ISO 14001 and local laws
5. Be strategic with marketing
The most successful construction companies realize that brand marketing is crucial to their growth strategy. The web has layered search engine optimization (SEO) and social media into multi-channel digital marketing plans, and these new tools provide opportunities to use marketing dollars properly and grow the business organically.
In the construction network, testimonials and referrals from satisfied clients can become the most valuable marketing tools you can ever ask for. This social proof can be incorporated into Email campaigns, websites, and advertising materials as part of your overall strategy to attract new clients.
6. Invest in software
The diversity and scope of current construction projects make advanced software important for companies regardless of size. While architectural firms and civil engineering benefit from BIM to move foundational processes into the virtual realm, smaller businesses get a competitive advantage from software designed to improve communication, inventory monitoring, project management, and more.
Pro Crew Schedule is a construction crew scheduling software that has created a full suite of construction management solutions to address the challenges of the current industry. These solutions include next-level documentation management, seamless inventory tracking, and a centralized platform for communication and collaboration, among many others.
7. Prioritize on quality
Efficiency, speed, and competitive pricing are valuable metrics, but quality may be the real deciding factor in the highly competitive field. Prioritizing quality ensures that the projects meet safety standards and specifications with minimized delays or rework. Focusing on quality results in your business leads to positive word-of-mouth, satisfied clients, and repeat business. A reputation for high-quality work often allows companies to send out higher bids and still win the contracts based on reputation alone.
8. Learn to say no
As you learn how to expand a construction business, wanting to stay busy might seem vital since you must keep revenue flowing and workers engaged. This tendency makes it difficult to be selective with projects, but pursuing too many bidding opportunities can move the company too far from its comfort zone or stretch resources too thin, leading to poor project performance and long-lasting damage to its reputation. Opportunities should be carefully chosen based on a combination of potential profitability and expertise fit; construction crew scheduling software helps evaluate a team’s workload and schedule, which shows if a company can say “yes” or “no” to a tempting opportunity.
9. Boost team collaboration
Collaboration between clients, contractors, project managers, and employees has been emphasized in recent decades, and rightfully so. Real-time data sharing through construction crew management software help to reduce errors, improve efficiency, and overcome the silos and miscommunication that can plague complex and layered industries. Defining the team roles and responsibilities well is important in improving project collaboration by minimizing confusion and streamlining open communication.
10. Grow your network
Relationship-building and networking enable businesses to grow and change by meeting potential customers, learning about new prospects early, and sharing ideas with owners of similar firms. When several businesses and specialties work together on a successful project, networking in the construction industry naturally happens. Nonetheless, networking can strengthen one’s strength by attending conferences, meetings, and activities many trade associations provide.
11. Adopt a sustainable lifestyle
Since the construction sector accounts for around 40% of global carbon emissions and a comparable amount of energy use, many clients are starting to favor sustainable construction methods. Businesses that implement green practices early on, such as conserving water, reducing waste, and using environmentally friendly building materials, have an advantage over competitors that do so later.
12. Make use of data analytics
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) has led to the integration of data management and analysis into almost every industry, including the construction sector. The cost, integrity, and sustainability of BIM designs are predicted using advanced data analytics, which may also be used to identify possible safety hazards and produce accurate timetables. These skills help in increasing the productivity and profitability of expanding businesses. Businesses must spend money on cutting-edge construction analytics software to properly use their data, visualize important data in real time, and make data-driven, strategic decisions.
13. Stay informed about compliance
Staying updated with the latest industry regulations and standards helps companies stay compliant, take legal action, and avoid fines and increased insurance premiums that can impact the bottom line and your company’s reputation. Construction management software can streamline compliance more easily by storing complete libraries of current standards and a centralized location for the licenses, permits, inspection reports, and safety certificates demonstrating compliance.
14. Have a continuous growth mindset
Keeping up with industry standards, integrating data analytics and other advanced software solutions, and adopting sustainable building practices are all effective ways of the continuous growth mindset found in successful businesses in various industries.
Continuous improvement in construction also requires a willingness to review past mistakes (and successes) and think of new ways to improve quality, safety, and efficiency by adopting new tools and technologies. This effort of self-evaluation and openness to new ideas guarantees that even the most successful businesses move forward instead of staying stagnant.
Key Takeaway
While the most successful and innovative companies in the construction sector share numerous qualities, no two are exactly the same. Each needs a unique set of tools to fit its objectives, culture, and industry specialization. Pro Crew Schedule has created cutting-edge construction crew management software for all processes and specialties, from project and resource management to bid leveling and takeoff. Like our clients, we have embraced a continual improvement approach to ensure the newest features and trends are incorporated into our solutions.
