A Typical Project - Cash Flow S-Curve

Ensuring great financial outcomes is the ONLY way to build a sustainable construction business that can serve customers and develop team members over the long-term.

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Cash Flow: A Typical Project - Understanding Cash Flow

A project team has seven basic objectives and those tie into the contractor’s high-level scoreboard.

The basics:

This S-Curve chart shows just the cumulative cash flows in and out at the project level.  Overhead is excluded from this calculation for simplicity. The numbers are all based of the monthly data.

As you can see it is not until month 11 that the project becomes cash flow positive and that is without covering any overhead!  

Look at what happens when you factor in overhead

We are revamping our publicly available cash flow workshop that includes 18 techniques that contractors can use to accelerate cash flow. Stay informed of updates on release.


A Typical Project - Cash Flow S-Curve
Great cash flow is a key driver of valuation and successful successions. Running out of cash is is the #1 reason contractors fail. Improving cash flow improves your Return on Equity. Protect yourself and never let cash flow be the limitation to your profitable growth....

A Typical Project - Cash Flow S-Curve
Great cash flow is a key driver of valuation and successful successions. Running out of cash is is the #1 reason contractors fail. Improving cash flow improves your Return on Equity. Protect yourself and never let cash flow be the limitation to your profitable growth....

Markets (Benchmarks, Trends, Forecasts, and Predictions)
Benchmarks, trends, forecasts, and predictions about the market(s) that contractors work within including the overall economy, specific industry sectors, specific geographies, project delivery methods, regulations, and financing.
The Contractor Scoreboard - A Contractor Must Do 3 Things
This outcome-based scoreboard keeps everyone focused on what matters. Avoid metric overload and diffusion of resources. All other metrics throughout all levels of the organization fall into a hierarchy below these with priorities changing over time.
Sustainable Growth Through Balanced Execution
Building a business is different than building a project. You can’t “PUNCH LIST” your business like you can a project. If you take that approach identifying everything that is wrong or that could be improved, you will over-stress the organization.