Category Archives: Business

Go to esteemed institutions to hire operators

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A construction company spends good amount of money for buying heavy equipments and then needs to spend a lot to simply keep the equipments well maintained. Servicing and maintenance of heavy equipments is a necessity that one can just not ignore and if they got to spend some dollars to keep the stuffs in order, it is perfectly a fair deal. In order to lengthen the life of the machines, the owner should also hire able and competent operators who possess in depth knowledge about them and work without causing any unwanted damage to the machine. Experienced and highly skilled operators are rare to find. You will just not find them idle and are usually hired by construction houses at a price which most of the small construction companies will find difficult to pay. Just in case if you get to find someone of this stature looking for a change of company, you got to be sure that you can shell that amount of money to hire him.

Simultaneously, if you have such kind of experienced operators in your company, ensure that you keep them happy and well paid because if they are unhappy about their package there are many other companies ready to pick them up. Quitting of experienced operators is always a threat and you should be ready to counter such threats if you want to stick to the industry. Well, there is one smart move that you can take to minimize this threat if not eliminate it completely. You can hire young operators who may not have much work experience and are ready to work for you at a lower price. In this way, you are not exploiting their talent and can also mitigate the threat of experienced operators moving to some other company.

Hire people from esteemed institutions:-

You need to first make a list of institutions and their rankings. Once you know the names of some good institutions, reach them out to hire operators. You can arrange a campus interviews and hire guys with good scores in their academics, people with real good knowledge of this domain and guys who are looking to make this profession as their career. Out of the many that you will hire, you will definitely get few who will stay long with the company and in this process can eventually prove to be a valuable asset to the company.

Knowledge on machines is vast:-

Going to esteemed institutions gives you the benefit of hiring guys who have good knowledge about the latest breed of machines. Young kids and ideally smarter than their earlier generation. It is just that they are not experienced in dealing with things and once they get some hands-on knowledge, they can really excel in their domain. These kids may need some guidance and will be able to pick things up very quickly.

Once you get them trained in the right fashion, things will start moving smoothly for you and you will diminish the threat of the old chaps leaving the company as you have the newer guys to take care of their businesses.

Placing a lien on the property is one of the best ways to claim your dues

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There may have been few instances where you are not paid for the work done on a project. You have been given some or the other reasons by the construction company that you found to be absolutely vague and got the hint that you will not be paid for your work. Situations like these are nothing but a nightmare for small contractors. Firstly, the small contractors do not have sufficient money to pay the workers and if at all they manage to secure the money from any of their sources, they experience a hard time to meet the other operational expenses of their business. On top of that if they see the construction company to be defaulting on them, they can’t imagine anything worse than that. In such a situation, the only thing that they can do is place a lien on the property that will disallow the company to get any loans or any sort of finance on the property.

You can’t place a lien on any property just because you want to. For that, you have to approach the court and put forth your matter to them. Take help of a competent attorney who will guide you with the legal proceedings and also will fight the case for you. Once the court acknowledges and sees that you owe money on the property that will allow you to place a lien on the place. Now once you get the lien, you also get the legal right to sell the property and claim the due amount.

Now the kind of evidences that you can submit to the court is the invoices of the materials that were bought for the construction of the building in the property. Additionally, you can also show the bills that were incurred for the wages you paid to the workers. These evidences will certainly make your case strong and you can hope that the court will rule in your favor. However, there is a timeframe for placing liens. You need to place the lien within a stipulated period of time or else the court will not entertain your plea.

Once you get the ruling in your favor, you have to inform your debtors about it and send a copy of the notice to them. This will give a strong message to your debtors that you are just not letting them go and placing a lien can bring trouble to them. They might then intend to pay you in full and once you are paid in full, you should drop the lien by informing the court that you have received the money in full.

Though placing a lien can work as a tool in recovering your dues, this should not be misused by you in any manner. In case, you approach to the court stating that you have not received the money whereas you have been already paid, it can backfire hard on you. The court may direct the authorities to put you behind the bars. Hence any such intention should be strictly avoided.

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Construction business needs good leaders

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We all have the fear of failure that often pulls us down and stops us from thinking big or doing something big in life. However, there are few who believe themselves more than anything else and their belief tells them that there is nothing that can stop them. No failure can be big enough to stop him from pursuing his dreams. These kinds of men eventually become leaders in their profession. Leaders are often men with a vision in their lives. They can foresee what others can’t and often has the capability to identify the hidden potential in a human. This capability of theirs can take them to greater heights as they can have all the capable men working for him and in this process he can be prove to be an exceptional business owner or an individual. The construction business like any other business is short of leaders. It needs people who not only possess self-belief but can also motivate others and help them identify their potential.

Leaders should command respect:-

Men who can command respect can eventually turn out into strong leaders. For a leader, his men mean a lot and for the men the leader should mean a lot. The relevance a strong leader can have in the construction business is he/she can ask people to work extra when they are working on strict deadlines. Construction workers normally do not work like to work extra as they normally do not have any energy left after a long days’ work. But if a person whom they look upon asks them to work for a couple of hours more they may not want to say no to him/her. This is what respect is all about. The workers will agree to work merely out of respect and nothing else can bind them to continue working after their working hours.

Have complete faith on your employee’s potential:-

A good leader is the one who has complete potential on his men. In the construction sector, you will come across many men who will be allotted for different work. It is up to the leader to bring the best out of them. He/she needs to understand and detect their hidden potential and give the guys the courage to do something phenomenal. We normally live in a shell and as long as someone realizes us about our strengths we make our own comfort zone in the shell and continue to live in it. This is where the role of a leader comes into play. He/she has to make his/her men or women realize their hidden potential and what they can do in their lives. This will mean a lot to them and they will strive harder to accomplish their goals.

Be a good listener:-

A good leader is the one who is a good listener and not just a good speaker. You can speak on an issue when you know what the problem is and for that you need to listen to people. Always be open to listen to others so that they can talk their heart out to you and you in turn can bring some kind of solution to them.

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Knowledge transfer is a must in the construction domain

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Keeping your experience with you and not sharing it with anybody does not make sense in any form of industry. When you learn something new, you should let others know about it and this is how others will get to know about your experience and derive a conclusion from it. Your experience must be a good one or a bad one but it always has a message for the people who hear it. This is one of the way by which you transfer your knowledge to the people around you and help them learn through your experience. You be a part of whatever industry, you learn most of the things from the experiences of others. Our lives are too short to experience everything and therefore we hear out stories of others and take lessons from it. This phenomenon is known as transfer of knowledge.

Knowledge transfer is a must in every industry and especially when it comes to the construction sector, it becomes all the more important. The reason why we consider knowledge transfer to be so important in the construction domain is because this industry is quite vast and it is virtually not possible for anybody to work in all the spheres and learn everything from it. You need men who specialize in one particular stream to inform you about how things function in his line of business.

For instance, a welder can at times know more about a machine than an operator who has been constantly working on it. It is because the welder or the mechanic for that matter fixes the machine whenever it breaks down and thus can inform the operator of some specific issues with the machine and ask him to be cautious while operating it. This is also one form of knowledge transfer where the mechanic is transferring the knowledge about the machine to the next person so that the equipment will be dealt in the right manner.

In a nutshell, the entire construction site primarily works on knowledge transfer. Here the site engineer needs to pass on the information to the next guy who will arrange for the things the engineer has asked for and once it is there in place, it will move to the next person with the specific instruction on what he needs to do. When we have new recruits joining the company, the importance of knowledge transfer is felt the most. The new guys do not know anything about how things work in the company and they need to be informed about every minute activity. So the message passes from the veterans to the newbie.

Another form of knowledge transfer is through articles and blogs. In this scenario, the writer who is pretty experienced and an expert on the subject writes about heavy equipment and gives an insight to the people at large. It indeed helps people to take informed decisions about their heavy equipment. Internet is a powerful tool and its use to transfer knowledge across various domains in widely appreciated by everybody.

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Set up business models that can be achieved

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Construction business may seem to be a rewarding one but in order to set your foot strong in this business; one has to go through enormous planning and determination to execute them with precision. Firstly it is very important for them to establish a sound business plan and once that is in place follow the plan stringently so that you can achieve things in a phased manner. Now having a construction company, you have entered a dynamic industry which has no set rules of its own. Things that are found to be merrier now may turn into something drastic and therefore just having one set of plan with no flexibility can only harm your growth prospect. Therefore it is crucial that you analyze things, try to foresee them and be ready to revamp your strategy when the need arises or else you may find yourself in an unwanted and complicated zone.

Take baby steps in the beginning:-

If you have just started your construction company, avoid taking big leaps as there are chances that you may hurt yourself in this process. Dreaming big is not a problem but giving not much time to fulfill those dreams could be harmful and dangerous for the prospect of your company. So during the initial phase, you take small steps towards achieving your goals and once you start seeing things working out for you, you may then speed it up a bit. However, do not be in a hurry. Have patience and give some time for your business to grow. It takes a lot of time to form a concrete construction company. During this while you should enjoy your work and learn from it.

Your strategies should be realistic:-

When you are setting up strategies for your company, make sure that they are realistic and achievable. Strategies should always be formed keeping into consideration your business goals and the time by which you want them to be fulfilled. Keeping unrealistic goals can have drastic impact on the financial health of the company as well as on the morale of the employees. It is prudent that you consider all the facts well before you frame business plans.

Review your plans at regular intervals:-

Plans once framed should be reviewed at regular intervals. You should give a gap of 3 or 6 months and then review the ground figure. Take into account all the people from the senior management and review your plans with them. Give clear instructions on how you want the review to be. Reviews that are simple can be better understood by everyone. If you find one particular department not being able to perform up to its merit, you go to handle the situation delicately rather than exerting pressure on the team. First and foremost, try to evaluate the reason of underperformance and once you have earthed that check if they need any help from you to get it fixed. You should be ready to provide any assistance to improve your team’s performance. Once these things are taken care of, rest all will fall in place.

Keep yourself open to suggestions, it will help you grow

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While starting any new project, the company or any organization generally holds discussion to obtain views of its professionals and managers before it is executed. The senior management give suggestions to modify or improve the project in order to make it successful. Suggestions are always important so that the projects/tasks get executed in a planned manner and yield benefits. It is type of ‘caution’ taken before taking a major decision..

 

While embarking on any major task/project a person has to think analytically and plan well to execute it properly. A person can do it all on his own and many times suffer from failures. This is due to the ego and rigidity of one’s ideas leads to short-sightedness which fail to see the shortcomings in a project leading to failures. In case of failures of large projects, it causes permanent destruction of that organization.

 

In order to avoid this difficult situation, it is good if a person (or a company) takes suggestions for a project or task from trusted colleagues, mentors, seniors or hire a consultant. They may guide in proceeding of the project by giving their suggestions:

  1. Check if the aim and objectives of a project are clear. If they are not clear then will suggest how modify the aims so that the objectives are achieved
  2. Check for the loopholes/shortcomings of a project and suggest how to overcome them.
  3. May indicate whether the project is feasible or not. If not feasible then suggest to not go ahead
  4. May indicate about the investment to be done and if it is possible. If it is a huge investment and difficult to manage then suggest for decreasing the size of project.
  5. May show the underlying problems of a project and suggest desirable changes to be made to face or overcome those problems.
  6. May indicate the chances of success and failures of a project. To avoid failures some alternatives may be suggested.
  7. They may give strategies for proper planning and execution of projects/tasks

 

Many a time suggestions are not taken seriously due to ego problems. The person may not be confident that the suggestions will help and may yield any benefits. Although this being a case in 90% cases taking suggestions from experienced people has proved beneficial for the project work and made it successful. This ultimately has boosted one’s self confidence to perform better for the next projects. Further it leads to personal and professional growth of an individual.

 

 

Looking out for funds – Hunt for big investors

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If you venture out to do something big you also have to be ready with enough capital to fulfill the monetary needs of the project and in case you do not have enough money with you then the next thing will be to look out for investors who can help you get the money till you are done with the project. Any type of industry requires funding for the inception as well as the completion of the project and it has been generally observed that people who have the idea and the dedication to complete an unique task does not have sufficient money to fund the technological requirements and hence they have to depend upon people who are ready to fund them money and in return they share huge profits or have a bigger stake in the project. So there are investors for everything that you can think of and also for things that you are beyond your imagination but can be brought into existence by some intelligent brains.

Construction companies per say are always in hunt of investors. Be it constructing a hotel or building a bridge or a residential apartment they need investors who are ready to fund their project. In some countries, construction companies do not enter into a project without the consent of their investors. They do not bother to think about how beneficial it will be for the growth of the company but are more concerned about how much profit will the project be able to generate for the investors and accordingly they give their nod once they get a kind of acceptance from their investors. They may not be a normal practice but is increasingly followed by many construction companies.

The big question is how to hunt down a big investor and why will he invest his money into your project. Well the answer is simple. They only invest their money where they see scope of getting high returns in a comparatively shorter time span. So when you get hold of someone whom you know to be an investor and has been funding projects, you got to be pretty sure about your project and what return it will generate for him. Not all investor wants only money out of a project. There are few who are really interested in the type of project that they will be investing their money. So if it is something that goes in sync with conservation of nature and will generate money few years down the line, getting investors for such project is not like having a dream come true. However, finding such men is a bit difficult.

But if you are there to construct a hotel or a bar and you need investments, you will find men willing to fund you. The only clause is the project should be a big one and they should see substantial amount of profit in it. Giving an ad on a website that helps construction companies to find investors will be the right thing to do. You can also check with guys in your business circle and may come up with someone who will be ready to fund your work.

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Starting a construction company in another country

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Starting a business in your home country may not be a bigger problem as compared to doing it in an alien country. You know the rules and regulations that is required to follow if you want to start a business in your country but the rules changes when you move out of your country to some foreign location and think about starting your business there. Though it may sound difficult but there are many companies who have managed to successfully set their base in a foreign land and are doing really well out there. Starting a construction company may sound to be a difficult job but as a matter of fact many countries want foreign enterprises to come to their nation and be a part of their success journey. In return you can get to use their resources and also make good money out of the deal.

Before you think of setting up your venture in some foreign land, there are few things that you should know and implement it in your strategy.

Importance given to the construction domain:-

It is important to know the government’s determination and thoughts about the construction industry as a whole. Governments in some countries may focus on agriculture more than anything else. So it will be futile to set up a construction business out there. So try to know the government’s agenda for the nation before you try to set up anything out there. Some countries are rich in minerals so setting up a mining company makes lot of sense. For that you need to have a bit of experience in the mining industry or you know someone on whom you can vouch and can make inroads in that country. Many African countries are rich in minerals and they can prove to be a great destination for mining companies. They can see a lot of potential out there. As far as construction is concerned, there are many Gulf nations where you can set your business and can expect you go a long way.

Employment opportunities to their people:-

Getting permission may not be difficult if you can manage to convince the government that by allowing you to establish the construction business on their land, it will create lot of job opportunities to its people. It will also lead to the usher of other sectors. For instance, you can construct a pharmaceutical company or a commercial complex which will further employ more people. It is a kind of win-win situation for both of you. The government will for sure take this point and you will get the sanction to start up your company out there. You should also consider the taxation laws of the country and check if you can get any sort of concessions on it.

Legal advice is important:-

Every country has its own legal hassles when it comes to setting up a business. So you need to hunt down a competent attorney who can guide you through the different laws and advice you on how to avoid hiccups that may come your way.

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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

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.