Estimated reading time: 2 mins
Unruly cogs in the workings of any company spell bad news, halting progress and ultimately ensuring that processes are never quite as streamlined as you’d like. This rule of thumb is only exaggerated in the construction industry, where tight deadlines and generally risky environments especially mean that even slight setbacks could have a catastrophic impact.
As such, there’s even more pressure than usual when it comes to managing your construction company. Unfortunately, as many companies find out the hard way, there are also more than a few unexpected and industry-specific cogs along the way that stand at risk of unraveling those efforts altogether.
Your best chance at avoiding that is to take this potential for problems into account beforehand, ensuring that you factor for and overcome setbacks before they take hold. Achieve precisely that by considering the following potential problems and what to do about them.
Outdated equipment
Outdated equipment might seem like an obvious thing to avoid given the crucial role that tools and machinery play in everything that you do from a construction point, but the speed with which this tech moves makes it all too easy to fall behind. As well as stalling your processes, equipment that’s not at the cutting edge of the industry is eventually at risk of becoming a safety hazard. The best way to avoid that is to ensure regular maintenance on the equipment you do have, and speedy hydraulic cylinder repairs or similar if issues do make themselves known. Equally, it’s vital to keep one eye on developments as they happen and make sure that you’re investing in major machinery upgrades where you can, including developments such as robotics, 3D printing, and AI.
Too set on tradition
Typically in business, tradition serves us well because it’s tried, tested, and proven, but a construction manager who sticks too avidly on the side of traditional, on-site construction could also find themselves in trouble. This is especially true considering that construction has always been open to, and dependent on the elements. Keeping on top of this is all about leaving tradition in place of advancements like modular construction, which sees many modern companies constructing large parts of a project in factory settings. This has been proven to speed production times by up to 50% and ensures ongoing, fast turnovers regardless of otherwise out-of-control elements.
Unnecessary meetings
Construction companies, in particular, often fall foul to unnecessary and time-consuming meetings. This reliance on whole company get-togethers does make some sense considering that safety is such a priority, but it’s also vital to weigh up whether or not these disruptions are always necessary. The ability to communicate many of these same messages through email, text, and clearer safety processes in the first place especially facilitates the reduction of meetings to once or twice a week, thus speeding up production and keeping everyone happier as a result.
Streamlining a construction company needn’t be difficult, but it does rely on your ability to identify these unruly cogs and consider what you can do to eliminate them from your processes.
