Category Archives: Construction

Take over a sick construction company

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We have often come across companies that perform well, make a brand and then sell it to another big company. This is indeed a good way to earn handsome money in a short period of time. However, there are also instances where a big company has taken over a not so famous, sick and dilapidated company. It does that just to acquire its resources and give the owner of the company its share for selling the unit to him. There involves a lot of risk when you buy a sick unit. Firstly, you have to put in a lot of effort to get the company back on its toes and in order to do that you have to have a strong foolproof strategy in place. Therefore, experts in the respective industries often term this kind of takeover to be a dangerous one. But people have their own reasons to buy a non-performing asset. The reason is the non-performing asset is still an asset and before it turns into a liability it should be utilized for good.

The risk is perhaps a little less when it comes to construction segment. It is because the company who buys the unit gets all its resources too and do not have to spend a fortune if it directly buys the same resources from the market. Moreover the transaction that happens is quite cheap. The company that is taking over the sick unit buys all its resources at a very cheaper price. It also gets experienced employees at the same rate. If it had to hire from out, the company definitely had to spend good amount of money in employing human resources which is saved in this case.

Legal work should be accurate:-

When you decide to buy a non-performing construction company and enjoy its assets you also have to make sure that you take care of the legal part very minutely. There are a lot of legal papers that needs to be cleared before you can actually buy the company. You also need some sanctions from the government of the state or county before you end up buying the unit. In order to make sure that the acquisition is done in the most proper way you should hire a attorney who knows about the laws of the land and can guide you accordingly. When you buy a construction company of some other state you are absolutely not sure about how things work there. This is where the attorney comes into play and will guide you through the entire acquisition process.

Construction company of different genre can be a problem:-

If you buy a company that deal with construction in forest lands and you have no intention to get into that it will make no sense to buy a unit related to that genre. If you construct houses then you should also buy a non-performing company that was into building houses. The men employed with the other company will know the kind of work and need not be re-trained completely.

Keep your conduct good to grow in the construction industry

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Right from our childhood we are taught to work hard and were made to understand that hard work pays you off in time. There is absolutely no second thought on the fact that there is no substitute for hard work but there is something more than one need to do to climb up the ladder and it is to keep his conduct good. You will be loved by your co-workers if you are good to them. It is as simple as this. You be good to others and expect the same from them. Other than having a good rapport with your team mates and colleagues you should also ensure that you give your best in terms of performance so that your supervisors should think about you whenever they have to assign a challenging task to someone. You should make such an image in front of your superiors. It is also important that all the higher level management must know you for your work. Growing in an industry is a tough task but it can be achieved if you are a person who knows to respect others and also respect your work.

Good conduct is one of the most essential criterions in the construction industry that will decide how quickly you will be able to climb up the ladder. Knowing your work is equally important but it will not help you for long if you are not good in conduct. You should work on your mannerisms if you are not so good in it. Wishing everybody in the morning with a smiling face can work wonders for you. Your colleagues will appreciate your wishes and will know you as a well-mannered person. This will go really well with your bosses who play a key role in promoting you.

Interact with people and try to remember people by their names:-

Interaction is an essential part of the construction business. Every now and then you are required to speak to somebody from a different department. So if you have a good rapport with guys from other departments you can get your work done quickly and this is possible only if you interact with them on a regular basis. To have a little chat with the guy working in the next department you need not go to him with some work. You can simply say a “Hi’ to him and spend a couple of minutes talking to him about his well-being. He will certainly appreciate it. Also try to remember names of people. It is certainly not an easy task to remember names of every person whom you meet but if you can manage to do so it will yield rich dividends.

Be helpful to people:-

In the construction business, a person can be of immense help even though he does not know how to get things right. It is all about connections that will let him help the guy who comes to him seeking help. If you know a lot of people in the organization and if someone comes to you seeking help, you can direct the person to the right guy. If you are helpful to others you get noticed and this eventually helps you to get promoted.

Look for promotions in the construction business

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We never want to work in the same position as it gets a little monotonous doing the same work every day and over and over again. We do not work only to get money at the end of the week but we also work to get a sense of satisfaction from what we do and this is what drives us ahead in life. Moreover one should never make a comfort zone and live in it. That can be dangerous especially when it comes to forming a great career. Great careers are never achieved by living in the comfort zone. One needs to get out of it and strive hard to achieve something in life. Promotions are given to only those who want to do things differently and have the ability to work in an environment which is not so friendly. This is what most entrepreneurs look for in an employee. They want people who can take up challenges in life and can convert every calamity into an opportunity.

Promotion can bring a rise in your salary:-

There are 2 ways to bring a rise in your salary. The first is not an advisable one but still worthy in few scenarios and it is to leave your current company and move to the next one in search of better package. The second one sounds to be more logical which is to work hard and take a raise in your levels. Whenever you get a promotion, your package is increased. Other than the annual appraisal that happens in most of the construction companies, any hike due to a rise in the position is phenomenal. This is what your aim should be when you join a company. Try to know the different levels of promotion and how hard you have to work to get to the place you want to see yourself.

You are known and respected because of your work:-

If you perform and deliver high end results, you will be known amongst the various levels of management. Once that is done they can pitch in for you when asked about your performance and will give positive feedback. Many companies follow the tradition of checking with various departments about the performance of an individual before promoting him to the next level. Only if they get positive responses from basically all the levels of management, they go ahead with the promotion. Once you are known and you continue to carry the good work, you will be also respected for it. As and when you attain seniority in the company, the respect that you have amongst the masses will only grow.

Generating a good rapport with almost everybody in the company:-

Promotions are also given to a person who is a team’s man. If you are a person who can gel up well with your team members and with members of other teams, you are gaining popularity. Good rapport always comes handy during good and bad phases on life. So always maintain a good rapport with almost everybody and ensure that people know you for good reasons. This will help you to climb the ladder quickly than ever.

How to evaluate the performance of your employees

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It has been always difficult to evaluate the performance of an individual who is working in your company or organization. You may have certain expectation from him and if at all you find the person to be anywhere short in fulfilling those expectations then you presumably mark him down in that parameter. However, he may have been exceptional in all other activities and therefore perhaps do not deserve the score. Therefore while you evaluate a person you should take into consideration his overall performance and not single out instances where he was not able to fare well. it actually does not go well with anybody who have been working from the core of his heart and then in the end gets to know that he is marked down on one such instance which was in no way crucial or have caused any harm to the prospects of the organization.

In the construction business where you have a lot of men working for you, it becomes tougher to evaluate the performance of every individual. It is just impossible to keep a track of the performance of all the employees and then rate them. This is why you got to create a system where you can easily track the performance of your employees and can justify the scores that you give to them. Supervisors should stringently monitor the performance of the employees in their respective teams and present the report to their managers. The managers in turn will approve the ratings and will decide the rise in pay of the employee.

Punctuality should be a crucial check:-

All the employees in the company should adhere to their respective shift timings and late comers should be tolerated. The message should go loud and clear to all the employees in the company. Construction workers who arrive late at the site can eventually become the reason for delaying the work. Any delay will then have to compensate by overtime which means the company then needs to pay its employees more for allowing them to work for extra hours for the fault of few guys who had arrived late at the site. The company should take this very seriously and must mark down the latecomers during their evaluation.

Their overall behavior and willingness to work:-

Employees who have worked hard for the success of the company should be rewarded and it is the onus of the supervisors to pluck out people who have made commendable contribution. The supervisors should keep a close watch on the employees and check who is willing to work harder. Guys who have the quest to learn more about the business are the ones who should be given more opportunities and also should be given good ratings during evaluation. The behavior of the employee also plays a crucial role while assessing his performance. One should check how good the person is in bonding with his team and the kind of rapport he shares with other teammates. Employees possessing these qualities should be rated more than others.

Rejections should not demoralize the owner of Construction Company

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We do not always get what we have wanted. There are many times when we have to hear No from people. Guys especially from sales have to deal with this word quite often. But they deal with it and do not get dejected. The moment you get dejected after rejections you tend to move out of the league and that is probably the end of your journey in that industry. Rejections are part of life. You will come across numerous instances where your idea or your effort will be rejected just because the other person did not find it worthy. However, this certainly does not mean that it was not a good idea or you have not done a good work. It is just that the idea or the work you have done did not go well with the situation at that point in time and has every chance that it will go well if you try it again. It should not let you down and force you to think negatively. That may go completely against you and you should avoid such thoughts coming to your mind.

The construction industry has its share of good and bad phases. When the industry is doing well you will not see people rejecting you but the moment the bad patch makes its way in the industry is when you will come across a lot of rejections down your way. You will not get enough work and people for whom you have worked with delay your payments or will pay you less. Moreover, big construction companies also fail to enroll you on a big project. They may simply not have much work in their hands which is why they can’t give a share to you. These factors are certainly annoying for a small construction company who depends on these big guys for work and also when you do not have small projects coming your way it can be really frustrating.

You should not let rejections become a factor to demoralize you. When things are not going well in the industry it will affect all and not particularly to you. You are bounds to hear rejections as well as say No to others as well. However, that is the time when you do some research on the industry. Spend more time in developing your website. Check the company’s performance in the last few months or years. Take into consideration all the factors that led to high profits in the business and also what went wrong when the profits were down. You need to dig in deep to get the real reasons out. This will help you in a big way to avoid repeating any mistakes that you have committed in the past. When you are busy with work you do not realize mistakes made in business. You just move over it committing it again.

When the business is slow you get the time to ponder on these things and ensure that you avoid doing them and continue your endeavor to get more work.

Do not jeopardize the project by not paying your laborers

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A businessman always wants to save money and at times he gets so much under the skin of saving money that he ends up not paying his employees their rightful dues. We call this as exploitation and exploiting your workers will lead you to no good. They will not say anything for a month or so but will definitely not take it forever. They will display their displeasure by not working up to their mark and gradually will leave for better. In this process you also end up losing some fine men and in today’s time it is very hard to earn loyalty of others. We work in a professional environment and we expect the workmen to be professional with their approach towards work. Similarly, they also set the same expectation when it comes to their package. Not paying them what they truly deserve will ultimately hit your work hard when you see their moving to some other company that pays them more than you do.

In the construction business, you just can’t afford to exploit the laborers because if you try and do that it will backfire like anything. They leaving your project in the mid can have a drastic impact on your work and can completely leave it jeopardized. Do not play with your project by trying to save few dollars. It will cost you more than what you will be able to save.

Payment should be on time:-

The construction laborers have a family to run like you do. They also need to take care of their secured and unsecured loans and if you do not pay them on time then they will be unable to pay others on time. This will have a larger impact on their credit report and many other things that will be difficult for us to contemplate. In a nutshell, they should get their pay on time to meet their weekly expenses. Ideally, the construction laborers are paid on a weekly basis and therefore the company should have strong HR mechanism to ensure that the payments of all the laborers are accurate and done on time. Try not to delay their pay and in case if you foresee any delay in paying them, inform them well in advance so that they can make necessary arrangements. You also need to make sure that you pay all the other employees like the operators, site engineers, administrative guys and everyone who works for you.

Losing men with skill and talent will be a big loss:-

Paying your employees on time in just one side of the coin. The other side is to pay them as per the industry standards. You may be a small company but you can still afford to pay your employees what other small companies are paying. Your workers will understand your inability to pay them what a mammoth company can but will not be willing to take it if you pay them less than a small size construction company pays to its employees. They will not take long to leave you and move to the next best available option and construction sector will accept any person who is skilled and know his part of job well.

Things one should avoid in the construction business

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Every business has certain norms and the guys who are conducting the business need to follow those norms religiously. People have to follow those norms as it is and things that are not allowed just can’t be practiced in reality. Apart from that, there are certain things that are advised to do and few things that one should just avoid doing. In the construction industry there are many things that one should simply avoid because if they try to do that it can lead to serious complications.

Breaching the law of the land:-

In the construction business, you will come along people who in order to simply things from themselves do not abide by the law. They take their chance but in the end they also pay a price for it. To go against the law of the land is something that you should always avoid doing. If there are certain rules laid to conduct business, it becomes the moral duty of others to follow those rules. Right from taking sanction to building houses as per the limit laid by the law, one should follow every minute thing. Remember you are always being watched and if you play foul you will get caught someday or the other and once you get caught you may have to end up losing your business license. It is recommended that you do not enter that zone.

Securing your jobsite:-

One should have enough security measures to secure the jobsite from mischievous elements. Your heavy equipment are rested at night and there are chances that someone can break-in to your jobsite in the death of night and can steal the machines. Heavy equipment are expensive stuffs and they have good value in the grey market. You should avoid taking such chances. Hire good security personnel who can guard the jobsite once everybody has left the site. Install cameras in key locations. It is not feasible for the security personnel to keep a watch at every corner of the site. With the help of the cameras, the guys can do a marvelous job and can keep a watch on all the items. Moreover, you can number all the equipment present at the site. That will help the guys to take a count at the beginning of the day and also at the end of the shift. So security is something that you should never think to avoid.

Take important decision without consulting others:-

Important business decisions should be taken keeping the management in loop. Moreover, their feedback also matters a lot. Taking important decisions without letting the management know about it can have severe communication issues within the organization and can become really nasty. You should avoid making this mistake.

Financial irregularities:-

Any kind of financial irregularities should be avoided at any cost. To avoid this, one should keep a track of the accounts on a monthly basis and question if he finds something suspicious or questionable. Financial irregularities have the ability to eat up a might business enterprise in no days. So better take care of it at the bottom level.

 

Construction of tunnels

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Construction work at many times can be quite challenging and it can be not everybody’s cup of tea. This means that the construction companies that are into building high rises may not find themselves comfortable with building dams or tunnels. They may have their expertise in one genre of the business and it definitely does not mean that they can’t try something else in the same industry but for projects that require experts to work, it is recommended that companies should stick to their genre of business and not move into the other genre. However, if they still want to try then they need to first gather enough details about the kind of work and also possess the required equipment to execute the project. Construction of tunnels is one such job that requires an expert to deal with. Companies dealing with construction work other than building tunnels may not understand how to begin and where to end the work. Therefore it makes sense for construction companies that have been dealing with construction of tunnels to dig their heads into it and execute the work with finesse.

Investigating the land is important:-

Investigating the ground condition is quite crucial to start with a major tunnel project. The company should first collect samples from boreholes by adopting geophysical techniques. Once that is done and everything seems to be ok, you can start with the excavation work. Now the investigation part is crucial because it will help the experts to foresee any possible dangers that might erupt once the construction work begins.

Availability of heavy equipment:-

Heavy equipment play a significant role during the entire process of construction of a tunnel. The company needs to have the best machine in place and also the best operator to control the machines. Now when we talk about heavy equipment, the most crucial is excavator. When you go about to construct a tunnel, you need to excavate the ground and rock to pave way. This work can be really dangerous if not done correctly and the operator needs to be very cautious when he is working on such a complex project. An experienced operator should be given the task to excavate the rock. Try not to involve a newbie in it. Once a way is paved the latter part of the excavation can be given to less experienced operators. Heavy equipment that are used in the project should meet international standards. Anything less than that can pose a risk to the lives of many involved in the project.

Groundwater control should be maintained:-

It is very crucial to maintain groundwater control. Any sort of water leaking or vertical shaft can largely reduce the stand-up time. This can lead to a risk of collapse if not checked in time. One can avoid the risk by installing dewatering pipes and pump the water out. Another technology that can be used is ground freezing. Ground freezing is an expensive option but quite effective. It freezes the ground and the soil surrounding the excavation until a permanent structure is built.

Over aggressiveness can cost you the business

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It is believed that the one who is aggressive in the construction industry can only make it to the pinnacle. Others just form a part of it. Being aggressive is a want in this form of a business. There are other qualities that are also required to become successful in the construction business but out of all the other qualities, being aggressive is required the most. Now the word aggressive can give you many meanings and when we talk about the industry demands aggressive guys, it does not mean it is asking for hot headed people who can’t keep their cool and in this process take decisions that turn out to be utter failure. Aggressiveness here means not letting out the spirit in you die in any circumstances. You will get to see a lot of ups and downs, failures and hiccups coming down your way, but you fail the day you lose your spirit to get up and get going.

The moment you are crushed down, you should be determined to get back with a much greater force and this is what aggressiveness is all what. However, being over aggressive can pose lot of threat to your business. There are numerous examples where people have incurred huge losses as they went overtly aggressive and some even had to pay the cost by completely winding up their construction business. Over aggressiveness is displayed at many places. For instance, you feel like having too many heavy equipment as you foresee a lot of projects coming up. But you may go absolutely wrong on your calculation and rest will be quite traumatic. So you got to be patient enough before being aggressive. You can get everything in just one single day. Projects also take time to come and if you expect a lot to come, you got to strategize and plan with your people if they are ready to manage more projects.

Planning forms an integral part of your business. You need to get everybody into confidence before you take up any decisions. Also understand the challenges posed in front of different departments before you take any important decision. These things are quite critical in nature and overlooking them in any way can cause huge damage to the business.

When you are over aggressive, you tend to leave the people who are a bit slow and can’t match up with your pace. Well, that is not how it should be. We all have our own way and speed of doing things. You feel that it is better that you move ahead by leaving them behind or else they will hold you back. However, look at it the other way round. A leader is the one who takes everybody along with him. A person who is aggressive with his business will always ensure that his employees are on the same page and if anybody is having issues with catching up the pace, helps is given to them.

Never stop yourself from implementing new ideas

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Businesses often run on new and innovative ideas. We always keep hunting for something new that can help us to flourish our business. This is indeed a good practice and one must always keep up to it. Thinking out of the box will lead to a new product which may gain popularity. However, there is something more important than thinking out of the box and it is how effectively you can implement the idea that you have thought of. You may come up with an innovative way to deal with a particular thing but the real challenge is with the implementation part. When it comes to implement the idea on the ground, things may take a different course altogether and the outcome can be something different than what you have thought about. So the question is will you stop yourself from implementing new ideas just because there is always a chance for it to backfire or will you take the challenge and go ahead to make your idea a reality.

In the construction sector, innovation is the key. You have to bring on some or the other innovative ideas in the way your work and the final product that you produce. You can’t build the same type of building with the same amenities for years. You have to change things with time. People’s taste changes with time and therefore you also have to keep up with the changing tastes of people. This sector is all about guys who can accept the ever changing activities that happen round the clock. People who are against implementation of new ideas will soon find themselves out of the league. There is no one way of doing a particular thing. There are multiple ways to perform the same task. It all depends on how creative a person is and how easily he can complete the work using his creativity.

You can make impossible seem possible:-

Industry experts are also mooting on the idea of constructing a building in Dubai that will move 360 degrees. Now this idea can completely change the way we look at the construction industry. Imagine the apartments of the building moving 360degree. This means that a person can see sunrise and sunset both from the bedroom of his apartment. He can also have different views from his building. Now this is almost next to impossible. But few people must have come up with this idea and they are thinking if it is at all practical. Well, the architect does not see this as impractical. He on the contrary feel that they can certainly construct a building that can rotate and it will cost the buyer around 5 million dollars for an apartment.

Give way to new technology:-

Technology plays a vital role in the growth of the construction sector. So when you are thinking out of the box and you intend to bring it to existence, you have to take help of technology. You can’t think of bringing your ideas into existence without having proper co-ordination with techno savvy gadgets.