Market Forces - Surviving vs. Thriving

Construction contracting is a highly competitive business in a rapidly changing market.

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Leadership Tools: Surviving or Thriving. Innovator or Fast Follower.

The “Invisible Hand” of the market is constantly demanding that construction projects are delivered:

  • Lower Cost
  • Faster
  • Higher Quality

Whether you are looking at your individual career, a contracting business or the whole value stream of delivering completed projects to a customer you must constantly be focused on being competitive.

Just to survive you must be adapting faster than the slowest of your competition.  Survival is not guaranteed and just surviving is not fun.  

To thrive you must be in the top 20% of your competition with a team that can rapidly adapt and scale innovations.  There are multiple ways to innovate:

When you are in a business with single-digit net profits every bit of discipline in operations matters.


Learn how we help contractors define the right strategies and improve their operations


Market Forces - Surviving vs. Thriving
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Market Forces - Surviving vs. Thriving
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Problem-Resolution Cost Pyramid - Earlier is Always Better
An easy way to visualize the cost of problem resolution at different stages of construction is with this pyramid. The cost of the problem is the cost of the problem (1X). Finding it ahead of time minimizes the costs and maximizes customer satisfaction.
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.
Lean Principle - Value Stream
A contractor’s value stream is every step required to take raw materials and information then deliver a completed project to the waiting hands of a customer. Deep understanding of this value stream is the foundation for major productivity improvements.