Category Archives: Plan

Foresightedness is a pre-requisite in the construction business

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For any business to thrive, the managers of the business should possess the quality to foresee things. They should be in a position to anticipate what may happen next. An important decision taken by them can have certain ramifications. This should be construed well in advance by the people who are responsible for the growth of the company. Businesses that are volatile in nature are more prone to risks and if the business owner is not careful about his decisions, he may have to pay a heavy price for it. We normally take decisions taking into account in current situation. We do not know the future and therefore it is quite difficult to assume things in advance. We can however assume few things if not all. People who have been running the business for long, they kind of get a hang of different situations and are somehow in a position to predict things. It is perhaps they have witnessed similar things in the past.

The current situation may be a little different from what the person must have witnessed years ago but he can still assume the result and can plan his stuff accordingly. To run a construction business, one requires great deal of experience in hand and apart from that, the capability to foresee things. There is significant amount of volatility in this business. During turbulent times, small construction business owners do not have to face the music as much as the big companies have to. They really see a sharp decline in the graph of the company which is only because they were not able to foresee those turbulent time in advance. You get hints before a major catastrophe hits your business. You need to understand those hints and frame your strategy accordingly. Failing to act at the right time can even cost you your business.

Rise in the price of raw materials and fuel:-

Though both raw materials and fuel prices do not rise at the same time; however, if either of this happens and you have not stocked them, it can cost you heavily. Now, no one can assume when the price of either of them will increase. This is just not possible. However, one can predict the rise through means of what is happening in the market, keeping an update of the government policies and other factors. The crux here is how knowledgeable you are with the current affairs. If you possess sharp knowledge and the information that you get is correct, then your assumption can never go wrong. There may be a slight miscalculation where you have predicted an “X” amount of increase but it only rose to “Y” amount. That is understandable.

Prepare statistics to understand the position:-

You have plenty of softwares which you can use to prepare statistics based on the information that you get from your sources as well as from business magazines. These statistics will help you to come to a conclusion on where the construction sector is moving and will eventually lead you to foresee or predict a thing.

 

Keep a Plan “B” handy when things do not go your way

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Businesses in any industry functions on lot of planning and strategies. The strategies are usually laid to keep things moving and to pursue the overall motto of the company and that is the growth of the company. But there are times when the plans that you have set up do not go in sync with the current situation and this is when there is a likeliness of things going out of control. This is when a Plan “B” comes into picture. By Plan “B”, we refer to a secondary plan which is in place to defend the company from any backlash that comes as a result of the failure of Plan “A”. So when you see that you are preparing a plan which you feel that has half a percentage chance to succeed, you should also think about preparing a correspondent plan that will take over the initial plan if that fails to work out.

Preparing a Plan “B” is easy but following it is difficult. You need to do some brainstorming and discuss things with people from all the departments on things that you should do if the initial plan does not work out. You may even get suggestions that you will find wise enough to be followed but the real challenge is to implement the secondary plan. You have to change the complete course of action from the first plan to the second. This is undoubtedly the most difficult part because it means that there has to be some sort of changes in every department and not everybody can easily accept changes nor it is simple to bring changes throughout the company if yours is a mighty big one. Therefore before you think about jumping for a Plan “B” it is imperative that you understand the pros and cons and also the shape it will give to your company.

If it is a plan that will not have a major impact on the functioning as well as the finances of the company, then perhaps there is no need to have a secondary plan. Yu can always term the first plan as obsolete and move on with something else. But the problem will be when you are thinking of acquiring another construction company where you will have the maximum stake. In situations like these, you not only put the future of the company at stake but also the interest of the shareholders who have invested their money by trusting your thought process. This means that you can’t afford to go wrong and in case if you do then there should be a plan to back the backlash of your initial plan.

Do not forecast a lot and work more on ground realities. When you forecast a lot, you keep a lot at stake and if your forecasts keeping going wrong, it adversely impacts you as well as the company. Being foresighted is good but if you forecast just on the basis that it will all go your way, then that may prove to be a bad move.

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