Without effective strategic planning, it isn’t easy to obtain success in construction management. Strategic planning is a critical aspect of your business operations. It focuses on your construction company’s future by understanding resource availability and operational priorities, setting out clear objectives for desired business results, and developing action plans on how to achieve them successfully. The process itself implements and creates decisions that guide your company’s direction, ensuring that it is adaptable to the many changes in modern business and industry today.
In this blog, we hope to impart appreciation in having an effective strategic plan to keep your construction company right on track. Allow us to contribute what we know and help you develop your very own strategic plan.
The Importance of Strategic Planning on Your Business
Strategic planning is crucial to figure out the direction of your construction company. A well-thought strategic plan focuses on your overall efforts and ensures that all your crew members and other parties work towards a common goal.
- Strategic planning aligns all resources to obtain optimal results.
- Strategic planning assures that all of your plans and actions are logical, contributing to efficient project delivery and overall standard construction processes.
- Strategic planning prioritizes your financial needs.
- Strategic planning builds your construction business a competitive advantage.
- Strategic planning integrated with subcontractor scheduling software lets your teams and stakeholders involved and communicate what needs to be done effectively.
Another crucial aspect of strategic planning is to help you effectively handle and reduce risks. When you develop effective strategic planning, it helps you:
- Analyze possible risks that may occur in your construction business.
- Eliminate uncertainties.
- Implement risk control measures on a higher level
- Mitigating the impact of risks, if ever they occur.
What should be the goals and plans of your construction company?
Most often than not, good strategic planning begins by defining your company’s mission statement. The great mission statement for your company is something known as a living asset by your organization and its members. So as you define your mission statement, you should start to have an idea about the company’s goals and targets. Ensure that whatever strategic plans you have must be aligned with your company goals.
Your company goals are the ones that fuel your strategic plan. There can be several different types of goals you can set. They can be financial, operational, leadership, marketing, human resource, and sales. And as for your construction company, below are some competitive goals to set:
- Deliver high-quality projects
- Use construction technologies like builders schedule software
- Be data-driven
- Keep construction systems and processes
- Invest in team training and staff
- Client satisfaction
- Connect the worksite towards the office in the most effective manner
Again, your goals should define your strategic plan, your company’s mission statement, and every single thing you do within a project. The more specific you become with your goals, the better. Never stop improving overall only productivity. Be more precise, like, “We will enhance worksite productivity by fifty percent by improving communication thru the deployment of project management software.
How Can You Develop a Strategic Plan?
Strategic planning that is best curated for a construction company typically involves a six-step framework. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all model but a highly recommended process that has proven to benefit all construction companies. Below are some of the best practices you can apply to develop the best strategic plan unique to your business needs.
1. Study your company mission
Your company mission states the project owner’s perspective regarding the scope of the company goals and activities. By defining your company mission, you build an internal baseline. You may start asking the following questions to figure it out more:
What are your construction company and project objectives?
What is your construction company good at? Make a list of all your core competencies.
What are your commercial objectives?
2. Examine the business environment of your company
A survey about the construction business environment reveals specific project opportunities that may call attention to possible threats and risks to a company’s activities. Make sure you know the economic factors that may affect your business activities. So, by studying the present market and business environment and construction trends, you are establishing a healthy external baseline.
- What are some external factors that impact your construction business?
- What are your client demographics, needs, behaviors, expectations, etc., that could help you with decision making?
- What are the different market dynamics?
- What competitive variables can you further analyze?
3. Analyze your company resources
The main resources in construction include the inventory system, construction capacity, the marketing system, personal, finances, knowledge, and organization. Following identifying such resources, their unique strengths and weaknesses are also defined.
- How can you innovate?
- What makes you better than the rest of the competitors when it comes to your resources?
Analyzing your company’s resources is extremely important, as it identifies whether you can execute effective strategic plans. Apart from the resources mentioned above, you should also examine business capabilities and determine operational vulnerabilities. Doing everything accordingly allows the management to advocate for the proper type and resources to support your company goals.
4. Develop Effective Tactics
By simply mapping the possible activity areas, a tactic is developed. It could follow one out of numerous strategies that should be adjusted according to your company’s conditions and resources. In selecting the most optimal tactic/strategy, a careful analysis of benefits and costs should be mainly considered in the strategy implementation.
- In what logical order should activities be done?
- What must market and company conditions be considered?
- Who is going to do what?
When you develop effective tactics, you establish a strong vision statement for your company. While the future of your business is impossible to predict, ensuring that there is a unified vision helps you define your construction business’s perspective outlook.
5. Align and execute strategies
Your strategic plan should balance all your company’s short and long-term goals and operations to meet your overarching mission. The key here is always to communicate your strategic objectives at every level and any possible opportunity internally. In addition, external communication with your subs should be aligned as well. Your teams and stakeholders must understand the significant roles they have to play and the decisions they need to make in executing the plan.
- What are the activities needed to obtain before reaching a goal?
- Do you have the right team to support the actions needed to achieve a milestone?
- What steps are necessary to take to support further actions?
6. Ensure your strategic plans evolve
It is essential to recognize that your strategic plans are not set in stone. It is more advantageous to assume that your plans are continuous progress. So, to ensure the plans continue to be helpful, you have to make adjustments if necessary constantly.
The success of a plan relies heavily on the systems and people involved in its creation. Therefore, the right team must be involved in the planning process. Pay attention to your business objectives, including how they are achieved, because this must be clearly communicated.
7. Review, Measure, Modify
Adjust your plans if necessary, and then start again. Throughout the process, it is crucial to communicate across your company. Once the plans are in place, they should be shared with your team members and stakeholders. Your plans for the company should not just be available for executives but also on your teams. If there are people who have first to understand these plans, they are your crews.
Changes can be made to your plans too. And that is one of the many reasons you have to let everyone know about the updates being made.
Start Your Strategic Planning with Construction Schedule Software
Now is the time to develop strategic planning to keep your next projects within budget and on time. It is a lot easier to do than you actually think for all you know. Thanks to construction software solutions like Pro Crew Schedule. It aids efficient planning and schedule by serving as an integrated work environment. It works as a central hub for you and your team where everyone can be on the same page, taking tasks head-on without worrying about any risks.
Pro Crew Schedule is a reliable construction scheduling software that turns your strategic and actionable plans for scope, time, quality, and cost into a detailed calendar. It is easy to use, a mobile software application that improves efficiency in every aspect of your business, including how you laid out your strategic plans.
Save more time throughout the process with its powerful features that let you distribute and collect information, update details, and track coverage in one place. Get started with Pro Crew Schedule and enjoy a 30-day trial for FREE!
Key Takeaways
Now that you have a clearer idea of what strategic planning is and why it is crucial to improve your business outcomes and expand your construction business, it is the right time to sit down and begin writing your own. It is not an easy task, but it will be a roadmap towards huge success.
