Home Improvement

The business of construction has its highs and lows, as there are investments of equipment and tools as well as payroll for labor in today’s economy. For smaller contractors the question of worth in purchasing construction estimating software comes to the drawing table.

A small contracting business is one not determined by the amount of take home pay, or the number of projects one has fulfilled, rather it entails the various jobs the must be taken care of by the contractor. Smaller contractors have other areas of interest to stay on top of, such as duties of human resource, business accounting as well as estimations and other area of business. On the other hand, a large contractor generally has a title of General Contractor. Therefore, there are others hired to perform other necessary duties, since a larger business is based on a larger scale.

The large and medium size construction companies will find the use of construction estimating software vital to a properly run business. But, a smaller construction company may be a bit more reluctant of purchasing such software, if the general contractor has no experience with computers.

Contractors and a newly hired contractor who are familiar with using computers should feel at ease and encouraged with the use of construction estimating software as a fantastic work tool for needs of estimating any construction job as well as many other tasks related to the construction field.

Many construction estimating software programs correspond nicely with business bookkeeping software that is helpful in making estimates for business clients more accurate. Construction estimating software also improves the businesses financial order as

well as time management and the long-term probabilities of profits. Construction estimating software is easy to use and offers many benefits to a construction company and anyone who is comfortable with computer use would honest well to buy construction estimating software for their business.

Contractors who are inexperienced with the use of computers may be hesitant of purchasing construction estimating software, but with a bit of time and patience it is easy to learn and to use. Construction estimating software is a worthwhile buy for any construction business; it will pay for itself many times over, while helping you gain better profits for the work that is efficiently done with the use of such software. The small amount of time learning the program will in return give you more time to do things you want to do while not being at work, without the headaches of worry for duties while you are on time off.

Some of the benefits of using construction estimating software besides enabling your to make the best estimates and bids for jobs, it will also keep track projects and present documents, bookkeeping and write up the contracts. Construction estimating software enables the small contractor to reach the professional practices to match those of larger contractors. The more use of construction estimating software the more time saved and money made.

Construction estimating software is beneficial to any construction company, more than likely your competition already has their own software in place. Take the time to learn the new construction estimating software so you can stay on the edge of your job duties. Some construction estimating software is relatively affordable and well worth the buy in long range terms of success.

The Terrors of the Time and Material Contract in Home Construction

There is a form of contracting prevalent in the home construction world that is very perilous to the American homeowner. It is called the time and material contract. In construction slang it is known as “T & M.” This contract is the cause of run away costs on seemingly inexpensive home construction projects. The wise homeowner will be very, very wary of signing a time and material contract with any home construction contractor.

The basics of the time and material contract are quite simple. The contractor charges the homeowner for the actual time that all workers spend on the homeowner’s project plus all the costs of materials. The contractor’s profit is built into the hourly rate charged to the homeowner by the contractor for all of his workers. Sometimes a wily contractor will have the audacity to add a percentage as their fee or extra profit to the contract.

The T & M contract is nearly always suggested by a contractor to an inexperienced homeowner. They will say that the homeowner’s job is just too complicated for a fixed price bid and the best way to do this project is by time and material. It always sounds so reasonable that the homeowner has no reason to believe that things will not go well on their project.

The time and material contract has been around for decades. It became very well loved in the late 1970’s and 1980’s on industrial construction projects around the globe. The time and material contract was used on large scale industrial projects where it was thought that the teaming of the owners and the owner’s contractor would result in a win-win situation for both the contractor and the owner. The contractor would have limited risk and the owner would have a project built for about the estimated price.

The time and material contract on these industrial projects took the form of the cost plus fixed fee contract. The contractor was paid for all the hours of all their workers plus the cost of all the materials. The two were added up to give the total construction cost. Then the fixed fee percentage was multiplied times the total construction cost and then added to the whole. The typical fixed fee was in the 2% to 10% range.

Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? It wasn’t though. The catch was whether or not the owner had hired a contractor willing to take a reasonable profit on a project rather than a huge profit at the owner’s expense. It turned out that there were not too many industrial contractors that could resist the lure of easy money at the expense of the owner.

What really happened is that the contractors used every means at their disposal to drive the hours of labor and material up as high as they possibly could so that the fee would also be higher. As it turned out the construction costs grew much higher. So high that owner’s around the world were nearly bankrupted by this form of the T & M contract.

The time and material contract ruined the work ethic in hard working construction workers by rewarding slowness and laziness. This behavior was condoned and even encouraged by the managers of the construction companies. The reason for this was because the contractor made more money the longer the project took to complete.

The T & M contract also encouraged the use of unnecessarily expensive materials in an effort to drive up the cost. When two equally qualified materials could be used for the construction the most expensive alternative would always be selected because it drove up the construction cost and thereby increased the contractor’s fee (profit).

The time and material contract has largely disappeared from the Industrial Construction world because of its terribly abusive practices and its inherent ability to ruin any construction budget. But, I am miserable to report that it is alive and well in the home remodel and new home construction world in America today!

The American homeowner needs to stay far away from the T & M contract even if a contractor says it is the best way to work their project. In actuality it is only rarely beneficial to the homeowner but nearly always extremely financially rewarding to the contractor. The time and material contract is a recipe for disaster for the typical homeowner inexperienced in home construction management.

How does this relate to the homeowner’s small remodel or new construction project? It relates very well because many contractors convince the inexperienced homeowner (in regards to construction) that it would be really hard or near impossible to give them a fixed price for their project. They market the following kind of statement, “Your project is too complicated to give you a fixed price. But, I can promise you that if we do your project on a time and material basis your costs will be much lower.” It sounds excellent but the truth is really the opposite.

This is because the underlying negative aspects of the T & M contract remain the same for the homeowner as they were on the industrial construction projects. They drive labor and material costs up as high as possible. An unfortunate student of mine found this out the hard way.

I received a phone call in early 2007 from one of my former students (from my class on how to be your own general contractor) whose project was in distress. He had taken my class earlier when the Pat Fay Method book was not yet completed. Unfortunately his project was in distress and he needed some help.

He wouldn’t give me any details over the phone but questioned if I would come visit him at his house that was presently being remodeled. I arrived at 10 o’clock in the morning and the first thing I saw upon arriving was two framing carpenters taking a smoke break up on the scaffolding.

They were having a fantastic time catching up with each other, laughing and carrying on. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself because it was obvious that these men were working on a time and material contract. The reason I knew this is because carpenters on a fixed price contract would have been working with a cigarette stuck in their teeth pounding away with their hammers or nail guns.

After we sat down in the owner’s kitchen I questioned why he had signed a T&M contract when I had stressed in the class that it is the worst form of home construction contracting. At first he didn’t answer this question but immediately complained to me about how often they took breaks to smoke, to eat, to talk on their cell phones, and to discuss what they were doing. Some days there would be two workers and other days there would be three to four. He stated that the workers hardly spent any time working at all and that the project just barely progressed. He was so frustrated he was ready to explode.

I let him vent for awhile and when he had gotten it off his chest I repeated the question: why did you sign a T&M contract? His answer was classic. “I signed a T&M contract because the contractor told me my job was too complicated for a fixed price contract. He said that it was the best way to proceed on my project.”

It really was sad for two reasons. One, his project was a simple 960 SF addition to his two tale house. One side was being pushed out 8’x 30’ and the front by 12’ x 20’. The scope of work was to add a new foundation, frame the walls, demo the existing, extend the floors, change the roof and add gutters. It also included new windows, new interior doors & walls with the standard electrical, lighting and flooring in the 960 SF remodel. That was it! There wasn’t even any plumbing as no bathroom was added and the kitchen was on the end of the house that was not being remodeled.

The second reason it was sad was because the contractor had two to four men working on the foundation and framing for SEVEN MONTHS! The foundation and framing should have taken no more than 6 weeks. To add insult to injury the framing wasn’t even complete! The contractor was completely milking the project at the homeowner’s expense.

After I read the owner’s drawings of his project, did some calculations, I estimated that this project should cost about per square foot. This is less than the 0/SF that I normally tell homeowners because on this project there was no plumbing work. /SF x 960 SF is equal to ,800. Add a few thousand for contingency and the project budget is ,000.

This homeowner had already paid the contractor 5,000. He also had given the contractor a ,000 down payment at the time the contract was signed that was not part of the 5,000. The total amount of money spent by this homeowner was 5,000! Besides the incomplete framing, the homeowner still had to pay for the installation of the roofing, windows, and all interior work. This unfortunate homeowner had already paid out twice what the project should have cost and the framing phase wasn’t even complete. The way it was going he was going to be lucky to end up for a total cost of 0,000. That would be 0,000 more than the entire project should have cost.

Also, the amount of stress this poor homeowner was experiencing was terrible. He told me he would lay awake all night, he couldn’t eat, and he was irritable to his wife. All because he believed the following what the contractor said was the right thing to do. In the Pat Fay Method we call that unwise. Unfortunately this scenario plays itself out all across America in every state in the country. This doesn’t just happen to a few people; this happens to hundreds of thousands of people every year throughout America!

I offered to walk outside with the homeowner and fire the contractor right then and there. I promised to stay with him until the workers had cleared their tools and themselves from the site. The homeowner declined my offer because “I can’t fire them because they still have my ,000 down payment”.

I had taught this homeowner in my class not to pay a large down payment at the time the contract is signed. I had also stressed that no matter what to never sign a T & M contract. (The only exception to this rule is for limited demolition work but the homeowner protects themselves by building in a not to exceed maximum cost to the contract.)

Why had this homeowner gone against what he had learned in the Pat Fay Method class? This homeowner was inexperienced and unsophisticated when it came to home construction. I have learned from working with homeowner’s on their home construction projects that they have a need to have a contractor hold their hand and take care of them.

The huge problem with this though is that there are not many contractors in America that want to hold the hand of the homeowner. Like all businessmen, what they want is to make as much profit as they possibly can. Chapter 16 (Lessons Learned from Homeowners) in the Pat Fay Method book discusses this subject in greater detail.

The best contract form the American homeowner can use is the fixed price contract. This is where the homeowner agrees to pay a fixed price for the contractor performing a fixed scope of work completed in a certain period of time. The Pat Fay Method book has an entire chapter (Chapter 9) dedicated to contract documents. Most homeowners don’t realize that they have a right to modify the contract to be sure their requirements are included. After all, the contract is a document for two parties. The contractor brings expertise in some construction skill and the homeowner provides money.

The Pat Fay Method is a professional construction management book written for the homeowner. If you are a homeowner that does not want the above scenario to befall you then invest and read the Pat Fay Method. After all the homeowner is either going to follow the Pat Fay Method or the contractor method. Available at www.patfay.com or email patfayinc@aol.com.

Construction Management Job Listings are like headhunters in other industries – it is the responsibility of the Construction Management Job Listings staff to screen potential employers who say they have Construction Management jobs that need to be filled. The Construction Management Job Listings staff then have to look through the database of resumes submitted to the Construction Management Job Listings website to find suitable candidates to make a small list of names. Headhunters always look for the best and the brightest (as is the case in every industry.) But why is it particularly vital in the Construction Management industry to get the best and the brightest?

The field of Construction Management is not an easy technical field to master. Let us take the example in the case of a life of an employed Construction Manager. The ideal Construction Manager would be one who is willing to be on-call all the time, maybe even 24 hours at a stretch sometimes, if problems should crop up at the jobsite. It is not your usual nine-to-five job where you punch in your card in the morning, do your load, then punch out at the bundy clock on your way to the bus stop or parking garage for the commute home to dinner, TV and bed. If it starts to rain just when the Construction Project was scheduled to lay in a cement slab, the Construction Manager has to act, and act quick. If supplies for the Project get delayed for some reason (like when a post-dated check to pay for more bags of cement was left uncashed or even bounced; or maybe if manufacturers stopped producing cement for the interim due to soaring prices of raw materials), all eyes turn to the Construction Manager for answers.

Responsible Construction Management Job Listings websites and companies should be up-front about such potential problematic situations when they offer the Construction Management Job ad up at the Construction Management Job Listings website for all eligible candidates to see. It must be made clear from that point onwards what the potential employer expects from the candidate, to avoid problems later on due to allegations of unfair work conditions from the hiree. Construction Management Job Listings have a part to play in assuring no problems will occur by being truthful about the Construction Management jobs they host.

But problems do arise anyway in this field of Construction Management, due partly to the actions (or maybe inaction) of Construction Management Job Listings. Construction Management Job Listings are a business too, so some may not be so upfront in the job listings they do post. Maybe they are just after getting as many client companies on their roster as possible, to stack the odds of profits in their favor. Maybe they are looking to get as many people as possible to submit resumes to just any employer on the roster, so they can sweep the table clean of that contract (having earned their compensation anyway)and then go on to the next client company to market their Construction Management Job Listings service to. And perhaps the Construction Management Job Listings business itself is not a legitimate company either. It might not be paying its proper taxes, or is a front for some other not-so-legitimate operation conducting money-laundering activities.

This is why industries form trade groups – they want to police their ranks to weed out both the incompetent and the illegitimate industry members, in favor of retaining the best of their peers. If you should need a Construction Management Job Listings service soon, look to the trade groups for best results.

To fill any one of the many Construction Management jobs around, you need to have the right background for it. This means having the right academic credentials for those types of Construction Management jobs, enough years of practical hands-on experience in at least specialty among Construction Management jobs, and even a record for pursuing continual learning opportunities when possible (maybe for an additional special area in Construction Management jobs.) Let us focus first on Construction Managers for our analysis of training for Construction Management jobs.

Construction Management jobs like that of a Construction Manager are two-fold in scope: you must possess the technical knowledge and skills for the job; and you must know how to manage people too. That is where the difficulty in Construction Management jobs comes in –people are flawed and lacking in some departments while exhibiting strength in others. This means the best candidate for the job may be one of the nastiest overseers you have ever met, but man, does he know construction! On the other hand, you might wind up with a candidate who is an all-around excellent guy (the type of colleague you would readily invite over to your house to meet your family) but who is completely inept and incompetent in technical issues. In a case like this, the better person for the job would be the nasty candidate (though you can always keep in touch with the nicer candidate for leisure pursuits, like joining a weekend bowling club together maybe.)

The technical training you need to be a competent Construction Manager would involve being a college or university graduate of either civil engineering, construction management, or construction science. Here is where some problems at work also start – there are some employees who literally worked their way up from the grungiest lowliest Construction Management jobs in the construction firm and toiled for years just to get to that post. Then, all of a sudden, the top brass go and hire some young yet very smart college graduate and place that new hiree in a higher position than that held by the older employees. Don’t laugh –this is an all-too-common situation in many companies. The older employees who started at rock bottom in the company may resent their new Construction Manager for being a) young, b) smart, c) very competent, and d) now has become their new boss. Filing in vacancies for Construction Management Jobs with employees who are younger than their subordinates has been proven to be a reason to expect problems in the future. It is more of a psychological and social problem though than a technical construction problem.

To resolve this problem, there are employers offering Construction Management jobs who specify a range of the desired age of any candidates, as well as minimum number of years of experience in the same line of work. This helps give the new hiree a leg up when it comes to integrity and perceived competence for the position. (And it also passes the buck for training a new college graduate to a different firm which is wiling to absorb the risks that come with hiring inexperienced college graduates for Construction Management Jobs.)

Is experience the best teacher for Construction Management Jobs then? Not necessarily – there are things about Construction Management Jobs you can learn by theory that you will never learn through experience. The best learning process though is one that can harness both formal education and experience together to give the organization the best possible Construction Manager they can get at that time.

We all have experienced it, the constant drilling pounding and sawing of materials that seem to go on at all hours. In Philadelphia, this is the constant variable in our experiment. When we change the conditions lets say, safety standards, shoddy equipment, and poor training programs will significantly alter the product. Construction in Philadelphia is inevitable, for their will always be a need for an upgrade, facelift, or renovation. Whatever you call it, construction is a business that will always be in of need. Whether is it optional or not, for example devastating occurrences such as hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes makes it a necessary for reconstruction to occur. There have been some controversial issues as to whether the construction industry has aided in the plummeting real estate market. Whether right or not, we must take it in strides and determine how to get the most bang for our buck. Philadelphia construction accident lawyers are determined to make sure that all standards are followed. If you have been wronged by a construction company contact a Philadelphia construction accident lawyer.

Construction work in Philadelphia is obviously going to be very expensive due to the time limitations, massive amounts of people, and small workspace. Therefore everything is pushed to get done as quick as possible. When this occurs safety standards are most likely over looked, equipment may be unsuitable, and training is limited. This combination of factors makes an accidents at a construction site much more likely. Whether another construction worker or innocent bystander gets injured, they may be eligible to file a claim to gain compensation. On another note if a construction worker injuries another construction worker on site, then they injured party may be able to file for workers compensation. Whatever the case may be, construction accidents are common in our society in which we must take the proper steps to protect ourselves and those around us. Contact a Philadelphia construction accident lawyer to start the path of justice.

Another instance is if a construction worker causes injury to another worker or innocent bystander that is under the influence of a controlled substance. For example if a construction worker who has been drinking alcohol causes harm to another, this would constitute for a lack of duty of care. Negligence would also be an issue for the construction worker who was drinking probably had to sign an waver at the beginning of his service indicating if such an event would happen, then they would be solely liable for hurts. If a construction worker knowingly used a controlled substance that would alter their ability to work responsibly and did it anyways, then they would be completely liable.

Construction accidents can occur anywhere at anytime to anyone; therefore it is imperative that we take the proper precautions to stop this from happening. But, construction accidents do happen all the time and we must protect our rights. If you or a loved one has been injured in a construction accident, contact a Philadelphia construction accident lawyer for they have the experience and knowledge necessary to bring your case to action. A Philadelphia construction accident lawyer to discuss your options and the ability to gain the compensation and justice that you deserve, not what is offered.