6 Surefire Ways to Fail in Construction (and How You Can Beat the Odds)

It's well known that construction companies have one of the highest rates of failure when compared to other new small business ventures. According to Small Business Trends, an award-winning online magazine for small business owners and entrepreneurs, only 36.4% of new construction companies remain open at the 5 year mark.

This means that 63.6% of all new construction companies will close their doors. While a few factors that effect these rates are outside of your control, the majority of the reasons that construction companies fail are things that you can directly control. Here are some of the top factors that contribute to construction business failure (and how you can beat the odds):

Over Budget Projects: Your success depends on accurate cost control, which means inaccurate estimates, missed change orders, and disorganized financial records spell disaster. Oftentimes, this scenario leads to a construction company that is over-extended financially, experiencing low profit margins and stagnant cash flow.

UDA ConstructionSuite reduces the pains of inaccurate estimating and cumbersome financial integration by providing highly-acclaimed construction estimating tools which integrate seamlessly with QuickBooks.

Delayed Bids & Quotes: In an industry as competitive as construction, fast calculations and fast communication are key factors to success. Clients and contractors alike are seeking the best quality at the lowest cost - and the added pressure of market demand can highly increase the urgency of the timeline.

With UDA ConstructionSuite, you can easily enter and track quotes from vendors, apply custom estimate templates to incoming jobs, and update existing estimates when prices changes with UDA's Items Database.

Overdue Projects: Mismanagement of project schedules can be disastrous, creating delays that leave you waiting on materials, rescheduling resources, and dealing with dead time between tasks (not to mention, disappointing your clients). When you're working with inaccurate information, it's easy to lose time, and even the slightest of scheduling mishaps can create a domino effect of failure.

UDA Technologies provides powerful Scheduling Tools which allow you to effectively assess project durations, measure progress and productivity, and ensure goals are met for project completion and profit.

Scheduling Conflicts: Whether you're managing two or two hundred projects at a time, accurate scheduling and allocation of resources is critical to your success. Every project is a race to the finish line, and if you aren't carefully managing tasks, resources, and dependencies, you'll find yourself out of time and out of money.

With Critical Path Management Tools, you can shave weeks off of project durations and skillfully navigate conflicts to reach the finish line on time and under budget. Intuitive predecessor relationships keep your projects on track and in line.

Change Order Issues: Dealing with demanding clients, and properly documenting change orders are key factors in keeping your projects costs on target. Without proper Change Order Management, you're likely to experience costly errors that will quickly cause ultimate financial failure.

UDA Technologies delivers accessible, integrated Change Order Management that allows for you to enter, track, and manage project Change Orders quickly and efficiently. You can even generate professional proposals & contracts for clients & vendors.

Vague Contracts: In an industry where possibilities for misunderstandings and miscommunications thrive, few things are more essential to protecting your business than professionally-authored construction contracts and forms.

ConstructionSuite comes complete with a library of professionally-authored construction contracts and forms that include custom auto-doc fields and branding options. Protect your company with clear documentation to ensure you're covered.

We've identified here some of the leading factors that contribute to the high rate of construction business failures today - a phenomenon with which we are all too familiar. With ConstructionSuite, UDA Technologies has combined powerful Estimating, Job Costing, Scheduling, and CRM Tools in a comprehensive project management system that fully addresses each of these possible pitfalls. Designed for growing construction firms, ConstructionSuite delivers what you need in one total solution, so it's easy to build sales, build efficiency, and build your success.

Interested in learning more about how ConstructionSuite can help your company succeed?
Take a look at:

UDA Technologies Blog