Know Early the Job Won't Happen as Scheduled
To manage jobs properly, a concrete contractor needs to be a scheduling expert. The key to scheduling expertise is to know things early. Here is an example of how you can find things out early that will affect your scheduling and potentially save you money:
Two weeks before your job is going to start (the customer's superintendent has already called in and scheduled the job 3 weeks or a month prior to that), make a call to the superintendent: "Hey how is it going over there? Are you going to be ready to start? I need to pick up a precise grading plan for the job, when do you think you might have it?" Make notes based on what the superintendent says. Oftentimes a surprising thing will happen. The superintendent will often say: "You know what, we've got a snafu with the bank and we can't get financing to get started over here, I'll call you back," or, "Move me forward three weeks in the schedule. We are not going to have building permits". Then reschedule the customer's project to the appropriate place on the calendar.
One indelible fact about your construction business is…only you are responsible for yourself and your schedule.
This information is simple but powerful. Sometimes you'll see other schedulers pulling their hair out saying to themselves: "Oh my gosh, how am I going to get to all of these jobs on Monday? " And it might be Thursday of the week before. Had they simply picked up the phone a week ago and called the customer, they would have known that two of the jobs they had scheduled on the board weren't even going to happen as scheduled. They were pulling their hair out for nothing.
A case could be made that the builder should have called and let you know the project wasn't going to happen. But here is the one indelible fact about your construction business; you are responsible for yourself and your schedule. You can use all the excuses to blame the owner or the superintendent, but it is you who is going to suffer through scheduling mishaps. In many cases the start date given to you is nothing more than a wild guess. Some customers, in fact, give dates to you that they have no idea if they will hit the date but they want to be on your schedule so later they can tell you "You've known about this project for 3 months- we really need to get moving." They say this even though they've backed you off for four consecutive months and nothing they ever say regarding the schedule comes true.
Had they simply picked up the phone a week ago and called, they would have known that two of the jobs weren't even going to happen as scheduled.
You need to worry about yourself and your schedule and not depend on the project superintendent for a variety of reasons:
• Superintendents get busy and forget to call subcontractors with important information
• Many superintendents are very inexperienced and don't know they should call you
• Some superintendents just don't care what grief they cause you
• Some superintendents are just telling you what their office tells them to tell you
Another bad result of not finding out about schedule changes as far ahead as possible is if you had a packed schedule, and there was a job on that scheduling board for two weeks out that was never going to happen. Well, there could be other customers calling in wanting that start date and you're blindly telling them you can't do that job at that time because you're too busy and it's going to be another week out. I could be turning away
other work or pushing another customer farther out on the schedule based on jobs that are not even going to happen at that time You are going to have to fool with scheduling. There are going to be scheduling conflicts,
but planning and doing as much as humanly possible ahead of time will eliminate many of your scheduling problems.
A Bonus When You Find Out About Scheduling Changes Early
As a contractor, you only have so many good work days per year. For contractors in cold weather climates, particularly, you only have 5, 6, or 7 good months of work time per year. When you find out at the last minute that the job won't be ready and you lose that day; you just lost a certain percent of your capacity. With things like your phone bill, your rent and many of your expenses fixed, that's a day now that you weren't able to make a contribution towards paying any of that overhead, which is basically a day of total loss of profit for yourself. When you know a week or two early (you made a phone call and found out that the job had not even a semblance of being ready) it allows you to put other jobs in its place. Now you just got some of that lost capacity back. You can slip another job up in the schedule because you found out about the change to the schedule ahead of time.
All of a sudden you're making things happen- not just watching bad things unfold. You can only make things happen when you find out about changes as soon as possible.
Take advantage of the changes in your schedule and call another project superintendent and say: "Would you mind if we came out there and got going Wednesday instead of Monday?" and most of the time they would be delighted. Or they might say: "Let me call the surveyors and see if I can get them out here so you can get started early." All of a sudden you're making things happen- not just watching bad things unfold. You can only make things happen when you find out about changes as soon as possible.
This document reached the summit (was created) on January 13, 2005 and is based on the best information available to the Sherpa at that time. To check for updates please click here http://www.ConcreteSherpa.com/gettingjobsdone.
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