Jacob Austin 00:00:17 Hi all Jacob Austin here from QS.Zone. And welcome to episode 53 of The Subcontractors Blueprint, the show where subcontractors will learn how to ensure profitability, improve cash flow and grow their business. Today's episode, number 53, is about managing construction deadlines and how to work to them when deadlines get tight. And if you're new to the show, please do subscribe for more user friendly advice on all things subcontracting. So in the construction industry, we're all regularly faced with deadlines and it can be all too easy when you are faced with an upcoming deadline, one that's particularly on the tight side to let quality slip. And often this will be on a project that hasn't particularly run very well, and you might not be making as much money as you wanted, and it's usually in the final third. Not that I want to start using a football analogy, but towards the very back end, the last quarter, the last 10% of the work where the eye can be taken off the ball, where the pressure just gets that little bit too much.
Jacob Austin 00:01:21 So corners start to be cut, we start rushing and we start ending up with defects, and we start getting that 5:00 on a Friday syndrome where everybody's mind is focused on getting the hell out the door so they can get down the pub instead of focusing on the work. And it's the biggest shame when that starts to happen, because typically on a project, it's the last 10%, the last 20% of your work, which is the most sort of visible to the end user, and it's the bit that they are going to see and touch and work in. So how do you deal with those last few items is likely what's going to make the lasting impression in your employer and in the client's memory? And it's that last bit that is going to be the reputation of the contractor. And of course, for you as a subcontractor, delivering a quality job within the right time scale is 99% of what it takes to get repeat work. Certainly, having sat in the commercial chair on many a project, the project manager always, always advocates for somebody on his last job who did a good job for him.
Jacob Austin 00:02:27 And I know they're a little bit more expensive, but they're really going to give us a quality job. I know I can work with them, see what you can do to get them in the frame. I know you might be paying a little bit more, but we're going to get what we need from them. So I want you to push for them. And now, had you been the subcontractor whose men it was hard to get hold of, who just didn't get that final 5% of work over the line and sometimes left it to somebody else to pick it up, be that the snagging man or the French polisher. Those are the things that will stand out in the project managers mind when it comes to who they want on their next project. And to that end, it really is true what they say. The old adage you're only as good as your last job. And I would go a little bit further with that and say that you're only as good as how you finished the last job, because all the effort that you put in at the start of the job to get things rolling, to get materials sourced quickly, to get to site, probably at the drop of a hat that will all be forgotten if you finish poorly.
Jacob Austin 00:03:28 And having sat in the main contractor's chair, it can get to a point on a project where it feels like the money is gone from the subcontractors part. They've taken the cream from the work and the overwhelming amount of milk that's left to deal with just doesn't pay very well, and the contractor's interest disappears in line with how much they think they can earn. But it's your job as a subcontractor to make sure that quality is maintained. To make sure that eyes are on the prize, rather than drifting off to that wonderful new project full of cream and full of money that's only a couple of miles from home. And perhaps that's a carrot that you can dangle to your labor force to say, finish me this off, get this over the line, and this next job has got your name on it. So in this episode, I'm going to give 5 or 6 pointers for how you can finish strong and finish with a good reputation, because after all, reputation is what gets you that repeat work and why it's so fundamentally important to all subcontractors.
Jacob Austin 00:04:28 So first off, you need to plan thoroughly. And when I say plan thoroughly, this needs to start right at the start of the job. You need to consider that the last portion of work is often the least economical, unless you can find a system of getting the men who finished a piece of work to come back and put their defects right. You might be talking of bringing in extra finishing labor, who specialise in picking up and tidying up those last few pieces to leave a good quality job behind. And those people always cost money. So what I'm saying to you here is you need to factor that in when you're drawing your budget down. If the start of the job is a little bit slow in cash flow, and the middle of the job is where all of that cream gets earned, then you need to save a bit of the cream to share out. When there's only milk left around. You don't want to go dining out on every penny that you've earned, whilst the earning is good, and find yourself with nothing left in the tin to pay for your remedial works, because there always will be some.
Jacob Austin 00:05:28 And there may well be bits of remedial works that you can charge back to your contractor, but you've got to make sure you deal with your own problems first, and that is why you need to plan when your supervisor is going to be available, because administering the day works. The bits of incidental work that happened towards the end of the job take more administration than your typical booking in of measured work, so part of your planning needs to be around when you're going to have your supervisor available and when they're going to be there to carry out their quality checks, as well as being on hand to work out what is your own defect and what is a defect that you need to charge to somebody else, and planning those resources and holding back the funds to pay for it from the start, is going to ensure that you end up where you need to be. When it gets to the end, you might consider looking at the last 2 or 3 jobs that you've done and looking at how many defects that you picked up and what kind of manpower it took to take them off.
Jacob Austin 00:06:28 And by doing that, you can build a picture of how much resource you're going to need for the size of the job that you're now working on. Now, of course, it's worth bearing in mind that standards change from one job to the next, and so the expected finish isn't always equal. But that's not to say that you can't learn lessons from what you've gone before, and try and put measures in place to ensure that you end up with a smooth ride. The other part of having a clear plan is making sure that your project, when you put the wheels in motion, is broken down into all of the necessary parts. And of course, making sure that snagging and quality management is one of those parts. And if you are the kind of contractor that produces a program regularly, then having your milestones for quality sign offs, for inspections and allowing a period for rectification needs to be part of that program. As I say, proper planning prevents piss poor performance and you haven't created a proper plan if you haven't factored in all of your obligations, and hopefully you're getting the picture.
Jacob Austin 00:07:31 Now that the snagging and quality control process is very much a vital one of those obligations. The next thing that programming and proper planning allows you to do is to effectively prioritize within your remaining scope of works. You can identify critical tasks that will then directly impact upon the project's finished quality. You can then give those tasks the right priority, ensuring that they get the attention and the resources that they need to make a success of them. Prioritization. When a job is running at 100 miles an hour can be overlooked, and the mentality of all hands to the pump can easily slip in and often be seen as a great idea. But this can sometimes do the opposite and create the feeling of being busy idiots with tradespeople falling over each other, trying to work in sync, but achieving little more than holding each other up. Prioritizing is about making sure that the right job gets done at the right time, and equally as important as that is making sure that job gets finished. People in a rush will quite happily fly through a section of work, make great progress in all the bits that are really easy to do, and then leave out the small details that bit of plasterboard around the steelwork, or that bit of skirting around a pipe, boxing the little bits that take that little bit more effort.
Jacob Austin 00:08:52 The small areas that take the disproportionate amount of time are the first areas to get skipped over, but when you go back to pick them up at a later time, they take even longer because you've now got all of the setup time to get back working in that area, and with the added bonus of these areas being completed on a different day, is that they're more likely to crack shrink in a different way and become the defect that somebody has to make good later. And so you need to think about these things when you're setting your people to work. It's not just hit the big areas and make it look like we've made progress. It's do the job well first time and avoid creating things that you're going to come back to later. When a program gets tight. Clear communication is an absolute must, and sometimes this can be the last thing you want to do. Sometimes, if you've got a bit of a project job picking up the phone to the project manager who's done nothing but complain about how many men you've got on site and why aren't your labourers tidying up after your workers? That can be the last phone call that you want to take, and it's all too easy to flick that lock button with a quick roll of the eyes and ignore the problem for another day.
Jacob Austin 00:10:02 But those phone calls are the ones that make a difference, and how you react to them can be the difference between you winning the next job or making it onto the contract. Managers do not touch with the barge pole list, and no matter how keen your price is, you feel like you've got to move heaven and earth to get your foot through the door again, but also towards the back end of a tricky job. You need to have that regular liaison with your site supervisor, because this is the time when the resource can almost be on a knife edge and you've got to strike the balance between having too many men and then losing money with too much labor cost, cranking out too little work, or having too few men and continually getting it in the neck from the site manager about you not moving your tasks on quick enough. And that site resource level might need to fluctuate from week to week to keep the balance right. And you also need to be there to understand the other workings going on on site so that you know whether the trade preceding you is going to be finished with their elements of work, so that you can take on that area so that you're not bringing in fellas too early to have them working productively, or of course, too late and causing delay to the wider scheme.
Jacob Austin 00:11:13 And when you're getting to the final knockings of a job and there's little work to sustain your gang for the longer term, those Those conversations are all the more important because you need to have confidence of when you're gearing up and what you're expecting to find when you get there. Good communication is also with your own team, and consider the strategic use of toolbox talks to emphasis on finishing a job first time and the importance of quality control so that you're not sending the same people back months later to put right a job that could have been done properly at the first time of asking, ten minutes spent emphasizing the quality that is needed can go a long way to saving you. From revisits and all of the unproductive time that spent in mobilizing back to a site that you thought you'd already finished. And so a toolbox talk that emphasizes why the quality of the finish is so important, and the long term benefits that you're going to get from that in being able to provide steady repeat work from good clients, could really help everybody get on the same page and help you deliver the job that you need.
Jacob Austin 00:12:19 And I've seen at times firsthand where these things get dealt as sort of a bit of a box ticking exercise. It can turn into real wasted effort. Ticking a tick list to say that you've finished and poking under the site managers manager's nose when he's really busy. To say sign here to say I've done everything can really undermine the hard work that you put in to generating a good reputation and helping your team to understand the why behind what they otherwise might see as some unnecessary piece of paperwork, can transform that from just a box ticking exercise to something meaningful, which they can stand by and use to demonstrate that they've done the right job and to the right quality. And this is all about reducing the risk of errors and therefore reducing the risk of defects. And that reduces the chances of them going back to that side to put something right, which might mean missing out on a four day shift at their next job. Monitoring progress. This is something that we all get used to doing whilst the job is in full swing, but when it gets towards those last few items of work on a busy site, it can sort of turn into a task that you might not think is worthwhile.
Jacob Austin 00:13:28 But this is the time when you need those all important quality control visits and visits to make sure everything's on programme. Ideally, you've been visiting regularly enough to pick up progress in quality issues and address them when the time is right, but you need to continue those progress monitoring visits until you've achieved your practical completion. And it's these visits and that all important communication with your site supervisor that catch those last few requirements before they turn into burning hot issues that the contractor wants to beat you up for. And the turning point for this is often when your site based supervisor hasn't got enough men to manage on site, and so you move him on to the next job and then you leave behind perhaps somebody that you think is the next trustworthy man in charge, the second in command, but he has his eye firmly on making a good day's living out of the job, rather than picking up the supervisory liaison with the site manager, and perhaps with you as the subcontractor to make sure that everything gets finished on time. And that transition is really important because this is the time when the ball can drop and those last few corners can get cut, and all of the hard work that you've put into getting the job right throughout the course of the job can be ruined by a handful of light defects that will stick out in the contractor's mind.
Jacob Austin 00:14:48 So this transition has got to be a careful one, and it might involve some visits from your regular site supervisor back to the site to check in on progress once he's transitioned away from the job to his next scheme. Or it might involve more contracts managers, time to make that job a bit more of a regular pit stop so that you can keep your eye on the progress and keep your eye on the quality that you need to deliver. But that said, this is also a good time to empower your team to take ownership of the work that they're completing. So as long as they've got the necessary training and tools, and as long as they've got the right amount of support to know that they're on the right tracks and they're doing the right thing, then these type moments in a project could offer the space for them to develop, to prove their own skills at liaising with the site manager, at programming bits of work to make sure that they get done first time and through to completion. And a lot of studies have shown that an empowered team that is able to work under their own steam, and where there's a good culture of open feedback, people that work in that kind of environment are more likely to take ownership of their own work and strive for good quality results.
Jacob Austin 00:15:56 But this might also be the bridge to finding your site managers and contracts manager of the future. This is also a time when your resource management is the most important. When a building is nearing completion, space on site becomes at a premium. You no longer have the luxury of large material storage zones. As rooms are being finished, tidied and cleaned and left in a condition ready for the end user to move in. And these are the times when your deliveries need to be coordinated and planned all the more efficiently. To make sure you're striking the balance between having enough stuff on site or running out of gear. But it's also the time where you need your most trustworthy people that you can trust to execute, perhaps unsupervised, to get that job over the line. And within all places of work. There are always those people that need that regular poke and prod to make sure they're doing what they need to be doing, versus those people that you can leave in a cupboard, under the stairs, and with the right equipment, you still know they'll deliver.
Jacob Austin 00:16:55 And at the tight end of a scheme, knowing who you can trust to do that is going to make all of the difference in getting that job over the line. Hopefully that gives you some food for thought. My mission with this podcast is to help the million SME subcontractors working out there in our industry. If you've taken some value away from today's episode, I'd love it if you'd share the show and pass on that value to somebody else who'd benefit from hearing it. And of course, subscribe yourself if you haven't already. And thanks for tuning in. If you like what you've heard and you want to learn more, please do find us at Weeks Zone where you can subscribe to our training and support system for like minded subcontractors. In there there will be templates, how to videos, interviews and more. It's less than the price of a cup of coffee per day and you can cancel any time. We're also on all your favourite socials at SHS. Feel free to find me on Instagram, LinkedIn and so on and give me your feedback on this week's episode.
Jacob Austin 00:17:54 Thanks again! I've been Jacob Austin and you've been awesome.
