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For some reason, every year when I sit down to write the spring installment of my Editor’s Comments I am overcome with a desire to dust off, review, and reaffirm the cornerstones of Grading & Excavation Contractor, just to make sure that nothing has been lost in the preceding 12 months. So here I go once again.
The price you have to pay for success in this business goes well beyond what all but a few people in your life will ever realize. Not only is the dollar figure frighteningly high just with the obvious line items that allow you to hang out your shingle—equipment, salaries, licenses, insurance, bonds, office space, fixtures, and supplies to name a few—but then you have those intangibles: your knowledge, skills, and willingness to put your wealth and reputation on the line in what is a risky business that moved you to accept the challenge in the first place.
Even when you’ve seemingly got all the basics covered, you’re still subject to a never-ending succession of unforeseen threats that must be met effectively just to stay in business. While it’s true that you cannot prepare for every contingency, there are several areas that we see as critical factors in your success.
Cornerstones
Workforce. The first and foremost has to be the people you count on to bring your dreams and plans into reality … your employees. Their commitment to you and your goals is the single most important asset you have going for you, and when you think about it, it is a reflection of what you bring to them. When you look at them, if you like what you see, you’re on the right track. If you don’t then maybe you should reexamine your own practices as the first step to change.
Safety. It’s hard not to look at safety in terms of accidents, and from an accounting standpoint it makes sense because accidents are the part of your safety efforts that can be measured. An immediately apparent return on your investment in a superior safety program is its impact on your workers’ comp costs … something you can post to the bottom line of your balance sheet. But I’d like to suggest that even more important are the intangible results your efforts have on the relationship between you and your workers. It’s not just the rules you lay down but also the atmosphere underlying them that is the real bottom line.
Regulations. As with safety, there are the direct measures of costs such as in fines and make-goods, but the real measure lies in doing things the right way rather than just meeting the prescribed requirements. While it may be tempting to say to yourself that “good enough” might be sufficient, you know that anything short of excellence—even in areas peripheral to the job at hand—will come home to roost somewhere down the line.
Technology. Construction has seen more change in the past decade than in all the years following World War II, a fact that is most apparent in the equipment that is being delivered today. Features such as machine control, automated diagnostics, and even partial robotics are emerging. You may not like all the changes that you see—consider many of them more Buck Rogers than necessary to your work—but because of their potential impacts on productivity and life cycle costs, you cannot afford to ignore them.
The Rest of the Story
Your ability to access, digest, and apply pertinent information is the remainder of the equation. In the military sense, this is Intelligence, involving exposure to the knowledge and vision of others, beginning with the experience of your professional advisors, peers, and those whose job it is to look into what the future is likely to hold. It is here that Grading & Excavation Contractor fits in as what I hope you will find as a good servant in your quest for success.
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- May/June 2006 |
