Issue 4 of 9: Financial Partners

Construction Ownership Transition Issue 4 of 9: Are Your Financial Partners, including Bank and Surety, Onboard with the Transition?

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Succession: Ownership Transition Issues - Number 4 Financial Partners. Construction is a cash-intensive business. Ownership transitions require even more cash.
  • Engage them very early in the process to understand what they are looking for. Because they see this a lot, they often have great advice for owners making transitions. 
  • Start building the relationships with the management team early.
  • Get a good understanding of the capital and collateral that will be required to be left in the company for the bank, surety, and insurance.  
  • Build these requirements into your financial model of the transition and build some cushion in because things will never go as planned.
  • If a personal guarantee will still be required from the current owner(s) for a period of time, set a value for what that guarantee will be worth for them if they are willing to take that risk at all. This will typically be a percentage for what is guaranteed paid annually.  
  • Depending on the exit strategy, this may or may not be that big of an issue, but the financial partners are one of the major stakeholders in the transition. 

Issue 4 of 9: Financial Partners
Continue building value in your business, yourself and your key team members with a good succession strategy....

Issue 4 of 9: Financial Partners
Continue building value in your business, yourself and your key team members with a good succession strategy....

Contractor Growth Cycles and Decision Points
As contractors grow, they must make decisions and changes around five key areas. At these decision points, they may be experiencing some or all of the eight typical symptoms including stress, customer complaints, and inconsistent growth.
Degree of Discretionary Time with Growth in Role Levels and Business Size
The degree of discretionary time that someone has in doing their job grows with their role level - for example from crafts person to VP of Operations. For similar roles, that time decreases with company growth as the job roles become more tightly defined.
Impacted Productivity - Highly variable Labor Scheduling (Level Your Schedule)
The biggest risk for a specialty contractor is the performance of on-site labor. One of the biggest impacts to labor productivity is having a schedule that requires large variations in labor.