Everyone needs direction and everyone needs deadlines. We would never conduct business without knowing when parts are going to arrive, when jobs need to be done, how long jobs will take to complete and every other aspect of running a repair business. What’s vital to your business is to understand the amount of work needed (labor hours and parts sold) in order to reach your sales goal, which translates into profit. In other words you establish deadlines and goals on a daily basis. You probably do it so instinctively that you don’t even realize you’re doing it.

Construction is a bit different. Although it’s your project and you have a General Contractor (G.C.), you are at times at the mercy of a particular contractor. I have gotten tough over the past few months and talk frequently to the G.C. about the progress of the construction.

With any construction project, establish goals and deadlines from the start. Meet with the G.C. and the all the contractors and establish a realistic deadline for completion for each contractor. Review those deadlines often and make the contactors accountable. This may be hard. What happens in the construction business is that if they land another contract, they try to do both at the same time, yours and the other job. They don’t want to loose the income so they over extend themselves. I can’t blame them, but your main concern is your project and this needs to be conveyed to the contractor. The General Contractors on my project is extremely good at making sure contractors hold up to their commitments.

My job is to have periodic meetings with the G.C. to review the progress and to make sure we’re still within our budget. Cost overruns and extras can kill you. There will be countless extras that each contractor will want to up sell you. Stick to your game plan. If the extra saves money in the long term, carefully consider it. If it’s a “nice to have”, but not a “need to have”, it might be best to pass on it. There will be enough unexpected expenses for you to worry about.

We are coming down to the wire, with about 2 months to go. Every waking (and sleeping) hour is devoted to this project. Excited? Yes. Scared? A little. Nervous? You bet!

Stay tuned!