Monthly Archives: October 2016

Do not lose out any opportunity to get more business

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Generally, entrepreneurs launch their business after identifying the opportunities which are feasible, commercially viable and environmentally sustainable. Most of the entrepreneurs begin their business with a small customer base and become successful. Although small in initial stages, it helps to build a loyal relationship with the customers. This also gives confidence to the businessman that the products are satisfactorily serving their purpose. The success gained at local markets enables the idea of further expansion of business to a serve a large population and to yield more profits. However, it requires the ability to identify the right opportunity and using marketing tactics, creativity along with good networking to increase the customer base. New business-building practices with a clear cut plan are a need for further industry expansion.

Following are some of the ways in which the locally established business can expand their growth to the global markets:

  1. Building trust: Businessmen should avoid narrow focus and use more tactics to obtain potential new customers. Trust building is one of the major ways to achieve the same.
  2. Increasing the network: After having established trust one should leverage it. Entrepreneurs should be in contact with existing network of businessmen and determine who can be most suitable for their product. The customers themselves can be referrals.
  3. Construction of a relationship map: This map of identified relationships will guide in the direction whom to approach for further expansions. Example: recognizing and having a suitable partner with good contacts with clients will help to increase business.
  4. Speaking at events or hosting a workshop at a business level: Whenever a businessman gets an opportunity to deliver a speech or host a workshop it helps to demonstrate a product in front of a wider population, and helps to increase the number of customers. This effort explains the value the product or service provides so that the customer understands it usefulness. However, speeches should be short and concise.
  5. Advertising: Speeches, blogs, newsletter, an instagram post, will engage the customers in understanding the product.
  6. Offer free trail of samples of the product: Free samples of products are good way to get new customers, to obtain their reviews and testimonials. This method gives more feedback on new products and allows improvements to be made. This practice instils the value of the product and how it is better that any other product.
  7. Conducting a case study: The case study” or providing a detailed account of the benefits of your service can be a great way to get new clients. It helps to built new business, since it assumes that the service works and that the customers are happy. It increases the brand exposure, builds trust and credibility within your field.

 

Overall, it is necessary to overcome thinking in old fashioned way and generate new ideas to grow exponentially in market. There is need to stretch and increase capabilities with current

Know the different types of construction tape for jobsites before buying

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In a construction site, a number of tools and equipment are required. They not only aid in the construction process, but are also important in making the construction perfect. Though the heavy equipment or construction vehicles such as the heavy trucks, haulers and bulldozers are considered the most important ones, the smaller tools like construction tapes are equally important. When you use the construction tape for jobsites, they help in the construction process, making sure that the task is done easily and more effectively.

There are a number of benefits that you can enjoy with these tapes. These include –

  • Fixing minor mistakes
  • Protecting the damaged areas of a jobsite by covering them with these tapes
  • Controlling dust deposition on plastic sheets.

However, before you proceed on to buy these tapes for your construction site; it is a must that you know about the different options.

  1.  Painter’s masking tape:

 

Painting constructors are most widely seen to be using these tapes. The temporary dust barriers that are used in making sure that the painting surface remains dust free can be held up by using these tapes. Many a times, there are individuals, who do not take the help of professional painters while painting their house. In those DIY projects and cases, the painter’s tapes are used. They are very good in making sure that no paint residue is left on the surface. In fact, the best quality tapes can ensure that the paint does not come off, when the tape is applied on the painted surface or wall.

2.  Duct tape:

 

These are the most commonly used construction tapes. They vary in quality and thickness and also the adhesive levels also vary. Therefore, whether the tape will hold on for a long period or not; rather its durability largely depends on the quality.

3.  Stucco tape:

 

Amongst the many construction tape for jobsites, the stucco tapes of the red polyethylene tapes are very important ones. These are used during stucco application and they help in holding the plastic around the window up. With the help of these tapes, there is no need for post-stucco application cleaning of the windows.

4.  Caution tape:

 

The caution tapes do not have any adhesives. However, they are very useful in meeting with the RRP compliance laws. These tapes are used to indicate lead hazards in those construction sites, where asbestos and lead, are present.

5.  UV-Resistant Threshold Tape:

 

During construction, many a times, there can be surfaces that are exposed to the direct sunlight for a long period. In that case, the surfaces can flake down due to the exposure to UV rays of the sun. Hence, the UV resistant threshold tapes are used to protect them.

Now that you have known about the different kinds of construction tape for jobsites, it will be easier for you to know about the right type of tape that is suitable for a construction purpose. In fact, a construction company must have all these different kinds of construction tapes in their possession, so that there is no trouble encountered during the construction.

Renting your heavy equipment can fetch you good money

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Big construction companies are always in search of state of the art technology machines and the ones that are redundant; they have to take the call to either sell it off or to give it to somebody on rent. Selling could be a good option but at times it becomes real tough to get buyers. Not everybody has enough money to spend in buying used heavy equipment and that too when they know that their project is only for a limited period of time and thereafter they may not need the equipment for the next many months. The big companies can’t sell their used machines to another big construction house. They have to look for small companies or contractors who ideally take machines on rent and once the work is over they give it back to the owner.

This ideally leads to two things. Since the owner do not require the machine and also does not want to keep it idle can make full utility of it and in turn can also earn some descent money and the taker in other hand also fulfills his requirement. Therefore it serves the dual purpose and makes life simpler for both the parties. However, there are few things that is needed to be taken care before you put the machine on rent.

Check if the machine is in good order:-

Since the machine was lying idle for days, there are high changes that the machine is not functioning as it should have been and therefore it becomes your priority to check if it is in good working condition. In case you see the equipment has become non-functional, take help of an expert mechanic to fix the machine. Try to replace all the faulty parts with new stuffs and ensure that you give the equipment in the same condition you would like to take had you been the taker. It is also important to paint the machine or remove any dents to give it a new look. Add some stickers on the dent to cover it.

Making an agreement is a must:-

When you are renting your equipment, it becomes very crucial to make an agreement putting every possible clause that keeps you on the safe side and also ensure that your equipment will be in order. You should state in the agreement that if anything goes wrong with the machine then you have full authority to charge penalty. An agreement will protect your rights and also the right of the taker. Hire an attorney who has experience in making such agreements. They may know what all clauses should be there in the agreement and will prepare the draft keeping in mind the interest of both the parties into consideration.

Make a quarterly visit to check your equipment:-

You must clearly state that you would like to make a quarterly visit to check your equipment The person who will be taking your equipment on rent will realize that you give lot of importance to your machine and this will compel him to take good care of your machine.

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Challenges are part of the construction industry. Learn to tackle them

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When you think of starting a business you should also be prepared to take on new challenges that will come along with it. Challenges are part of anything that you do for the first time. Even driving a car is a challenge for you when you are learning it. You got to learn about the gears and brakes and also need to have good control over all its functions. This can be a real challenge for you if you are first timer but once you are in practice it becomes a cake walk. Similarly starting a new business can throw a lot of challenges but it is up to you how to take them. If you take them positively and see them as a learning curve, you will learn a lot from it and will also incorporate it in your business but if you feel irritated or scared then it will take you down and there may be a time when you have to complete wind up your business.

Construction industry is in many terms a highly rewarding industry but at the same time it will equally make your life difficult. Life becomes more difficult during the beginning. You have to foresee many things that you have never tried before and also have to take your chances. You got to be a bit brave in your effort and while you are dealing with different situations. First and foremost you will have difficulties in understanding the construction business as a whole. You have to learn how the business works and that will take good deal of time.

It is important that you do not run out of patience because if you do then you have lost it forever. You got to remain as calm as you can and analyze how things turn out. You may find people who are close to you leaving you for better opportunities and you can’t do anything to hold them. Though you need them more than they do, you are unable to retain them by offering more money. This is one of the challenges that you have to encounter and got to successfully win. Attrition has been a big problem for many construction companies. So you are not the only one who will experience this. You should be ready for it and keep a back-up ready.

Marketing your company can be another challenge that you need to tackle especially when you are new to the business. Since people do not know you, you will find hard to get work. So be ready to see no work for few days and do not get frustrated. That will lead you nowhere. Form a marketing strategy where you deploy a team who will be actively marketing your company and the business activities you can perform. Take suggestions from the marketing team and provide them with all the necessary help they require. Start it from taking up small work and once you see money rolling in you can eye for bigger projects.

Heavy Equipment and Texting is a bad combo

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We always like to be in touch with our friends and family members but there are times when the medium that you use to stay in touch with them can prove to be fatal. You may say that you are just trying to communicate a simple thing to someone but if you are communicating you should not do anything else other than talking to the person on your cell phone. You can’t be working as well as talking both at the same time. It just does not go well with each other and has every potential possibility to inflict serious injury to you or to someone else.

Most of the accidents happen while the person driving the car is talking to someone and driving at the same time. Now as far as the talk is normal, he has his sight on the road but if he gets to hear something exciting, his attention gets automatically diverted. So you may have your eyes on the road but definitely not your attention. The chances of you bumping someone on the road increase manifolds.

While you are operating heavy equipment in a construction site, you got to be extremely cautious about what you are doing. It has been seen that many experienced operators use their cell phones and keep on texting people while operating the machine. This is a very bad combination.

The operator may be quite experienced and has superb control over the machine but he is still playing with fire by diverting his attention on the cell phone. It has been observed that texting is more dangerous than speaking over the phone. While you are texting, you continuously have to look at the cell phone and therefore you lose your sight on the site. You will not even get to know if something gets on your way and by the time you realize it may be too late for you to control.

According to a research, it has been noticed that while you are texting, your eyes off the road/jobsite increases by 400% and the chances of moving into a different lane is increased by 28%. So one can simply figure out how dangerous it is to text while you are operating the construction equipment. Now the most horrifying detail is that while you are texting, it increases the chance of an accident by 2000%. These statistics unanimously speak one thing. The construction business owners should put a ban on using cell phones while working on the jobsite. The operators may expect some emergency calls but that can be easily dealt by providing the number of the supervisor on duty. So if there is an emergency in the family, they need to call the supervisor and he will inform the operator.

The contractors should also develop a cell phone free policy for all the operators and also construction workers on the jobsite. This will ensure the safety and well-being of all the employees working on the jobsite.

Renting heavy equipment is far better than leaving it idle

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A person belonging to the construction industry has to go through different phases. Some are good, some bad and some even ugly. It is very evident that all construction companies make good money during the good times but the problem arises when the tide turns for bad and they do not have work in hand. This is when most of the companies take difficult decisions like sacking employees or disposing their resources, which heavy equipment are also a part of. It is certainly not wise to give away those expensive pieces of metal at a dirt cheap price and therefore if one has an option that can avoid them to sell the machines, they should pick that up.

Renting heavy equipment is considered to be the most viable option one can consider if they do not want to really get rid of their machines. If they pick this option, they will be able to make money on a monthly basis and can also retain the stuff once the tenure ends. This means that they never lose their title from the construction equipment and has every right to claim the machine once the period mentioned in the agreement is over.

Few things one must consider before they think of renting their heavy equipment.

Finding a taker who will take good care of the machine:-

It is very important that you get someone who will treat your machine with the same care that they would have taken for their own machine. It has been witnessed that people who rent heavy equipment use them very roughly and not care much of its maintenance. Thus, it deteriorates the quality of the machine and you may find it giving a lot of issues. In order to avoid this kind of problems, you should mention in the agreement that you can make visits to check how they are treating the machine and the visits can be in an interval of 3 months. In this way, you can ensure that your machine is in order and when you get it back, it will be working fine.

Rental contract should be in order and should protect your rights:-

When you make the rental contract with the taker, you should make sure that you pen down all the important points that will protect your rights as the giver. Please remember that you are not selling the machine that you will have no liability on it later on. You are just renting it and it should not happen that once the period is over, you get back a completely worn out machine. Also state the date by when you should get the rental money in your bank account. In case you want, you can give them some breathing space just in case they need some extension to pay the money, but that should not happen regularly. If they ask for an extension once in a blue moon, you can consider it, but if they take you for granted, it is definitely not a good sign.

 

Dependability on training videos has increased over the years

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When it comes to heavy equipment, it is mostly about how well you know about the different kinds of machines that are used in the construction site. If you aspire to become a technician, it means that you got to know almost everything about the machine so that if you ever happen to work on one you should know how to open the stuff, fix it and put it back in place. It certainly requires good deal of training and loads of practice but apart from that it also require you to learn about machines right from the initial phase of your student life (from the day you join the technical institution). If you have your basics strong, it will certainly lead you to a good career. There are few things that you can do to strengthen your basics. First would be to read as many books as you can on machines and apart from that you can view lot of training videos that is available to you on the internet.

It has been witnessed that people find training videos to be far more helpful and informative. Some though find books to have answers for all the questions. As a matter of fact, it is perhaps the mixture of both that can help you achieve the knowledge on machines more than that relying on just one particular thing. Having said that, the dependability on training videos has increased manifolds over the last few years. This is the age of internet and therefore the reading books have taken a beating. People prefer to watch the training videos more than reading books. All they have to do is download the videos in a drive and play it on their computer. It actually allows them to see how to operate a machine. The visuals then remain ingrained in their minds and this is what helps them to learn.

Also for people who have poor memory and could not recollect things so easily, they can keep playing the video as many times as they want and memorize the stuff. Other than that, men who need some sort of help in one particular aspect can search for that video on the internet and check how that is dealt with. So you do not have to go through the entire book to find just one piece of information. Entering the keyword will do the rest for you.

Most of the training videos are absolutely free. This means that you do not have to pay a dime to watch them and learn. Knowing the complexities involved with heavy equipment, getting training videos for free is not less than a bounty. Ideally, people who write books also share their videos on internet and at the end of the video they try to promote their book so that others can know about his book and if they find the video fruitful they might even go for the book. Overall, online training videos has been a huge success making life simpler for millions of users all over the globe.

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Clearing debris using heavy equipment

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The entire construction industry is largely dependent on the use of different kinds of heavy equipment. It can be used for many purposes like road construction, digging deep inside the ground, rolling down an existing structure or simply removing debris out of the site. Well, removing the debris can be a painful task for the workers if they exclude the involvement of heavy machineries. It may take weeks if not months for the workers to just remove the debris out of the site if they had to do this manually and without the participation of heavy equipment. In a nutshell, it is just not possible. You can’t take a hit on your finance and delay your project just because your employees are busy clearing the debris. That sounds completely insane from the perspective of a construction business owner.

So in a situation where you got to take care of the debris, it is advisable that you have your heavy equipment in place that are especially used for such work and get the work done in few days. The entire purpose of using heavy equipment to get the work done is to save your time as well as the time and energy of your workers and also to speed up the work a bit. The heavy equipment that are ideally used to clear debris are excavators, backhoe loaders, front loaders and any machine that can have an attachment either in the front or at the rear and can attach a bucket out there are fit to do this work.

Many construction companies or for that matter demolition companies use a dozer to demolish structures and then use the same machine with a different attachment and clear the debris. All they do is fit in a bucket in the front and the operator makes sure he gets the job done in a day’s time. So a bulldozer is a favorite for many demolition companies. Though there are some who prefer a backhoe loader for the same job but many find dozers to be more compatible than any other form of heavy equipment.

Excavators can also be used to remove debris. The claws of the excavator can be used to draw the debris in it and then it moves at the back of the machine and dumps the stuff inside the bucket which is then moved and eventually dumped in the truck. Excavators are the ideal heavy machines for the ones who got to dig deep inside the ground and then carry the dirt and dump it in the truck. So the construction and mining companies who are into building huge apartments or who goes deep inside the ground in search of minerals find an excavator as a perfect machine for their job.

Backhoe loader is such heavy equipment which is primarily used to remove debris. It has a bucket at the rear of the machine and the dirt is filled inside the bucket with the help of the boom that’s attached on its front. It is also used for excavating work; therefore has similar features of an excavator.

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Construction Heavy Equipment

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Construction in this era is a booming sector and so are the sectors that are closely associated with it. For instance, the cement industry, steel industry and more importantly the heavy equipment industry also see themselves growing. Due to their close association with the construction industry, they have all been able to set their foot tight on the ground and are now making good money. The heavy equipment manufacturing industry is perhaps one of the most profitable industries as it is much believed that the entire construction sector depends largely on the heavy equipment industry and vice versa.

We will be talking about some crucial heavy equipment without which it is almost unimaginable for the construction sector to sustain.

Crawler Dozers:-

When we talk about moving loads of dirt, we can’t think of any machine other than a Crawler Dozer. They are big powerful machines that are meant for the purpose of carrying huge loads of dirt in the bucket that is positioned on the front of the equipment. The operator drags the bucket on the ground and the dirt gets absorbed in the bucket. It thus carries all the dirt and dumps it on a dump truck. These machines are used predominantly in a mining site or in a road construction site.

We can also see these machines in a jobsite that is working on a very big project where it has to cover a lot of ground and get the dirt out. The smaller version of this machine is also used as grading tractors. Al most every heavy equipment manufacturing company produced crawler dozers. So one has to check the specification and match it with his requirements to come to a decision on the brand he should be going for.

 Excavators:-

This is very common heavy equipment that one will come across on any construction of mining jobsite. Every construction project needs to dig the earth and for this they need machines no less than an excavator to do the job for them. There are various types of excavators available and each one with some superior features in it comes at a high cost. The new construction companies or small contractors often do not go for expensive excavators. They limit themselves with lower genre of machines or basically buy small version. It may not be as effective as the larger ones but is still doable.

Road rollers:-

No road work can be done without the use of road rollers. They are quite instrumental in giving a shape to the surface of the road. It easily presses the asphalt and other ingredients sprayed on the surface and give a good outcome. Road rollers have a huge drum located at the front of the machine and the operator simply rolls it on the surface thus making it smooth. Some rollers have a drum in the front and 2 heavy rollers at that rear of the machine thus giving good impact on the road. Overall, when it comes to road construction rollers are a must.

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Invest your money in construction projects globally

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When we think about investments, we come across all sorts of investment avenues that are liquid as well as non-liquid. However, not many consider investing in construction projects globally as a good investment option. There are strong reasons attached to it which is why people are usually deterred to invest in investment projects in a foreign land. One of the strongest reasons is that you do not have a direct control on the project and it may become difficult to monitor the progress of the work by being away from the jobsite.

Other than having a direct control, other reasons also include political turbulence, company getting dissolved. However, these reasons can’t be considered to be too big for one to deter investing globally and can always be worked out before you end up investing in one such project. There are of course few Do’s and Don’ts that needs to checked first before taking a decision of any major investment in foreign land.

Check the viability of the project:-

You can definitely invest in projects that sound to be viable. Alternatively, if the project has all proper sanctions from the different authorities of that country, there is probably no other reason why it may get blocked. Investing in such projects being in a distant place can still be a good option. However, you also have to check your benefit in it. You need to first measure your risk and the returns that you can expect from the work at its completion. It will be worthy to take such risks where you know that it will fetch good returns. There are many American investors that have invested chunks of money into various foreign projects. In this case they do not have to deploy their men for the work and if there is any hurdle that shows up during the tenure of the project that will be managed by the construction company who has undertaken the work.

Reputation of the builder matters a lot:-

When an investor has to invest his money in construction projects, he definitely checks the credentials of the construction company who has taken up the work. In the same way, while investing in a construction project outside US, you have to check the credentials first. Meet the representatives of their company, do some research on their previous projects. By that you will get to know how big the construction company is and if it is prudent to invest in projects constructed by them. The reputation of the construction company should speak louder than anything else and that should be the signal for you to go ahead with them.

Stay away from countries that are politically unstable:-

You investments in a foreign land will bear fruit only if you put your money in a country that is politically stable and there is no fear of the government getting overthrown by rival political powers or the army of that land. Investment of any kind in a politically unstable country is too risky and not even worthy to take the risk.