New Construction Technology for Fast Buyouts and Easy Scheduling
Construction professionals are always looking for ways to improve their workflow. This exciting new technology shortens buyout times and creates an easier construction scheduling workflow during the pre-construction phase. Let’s take a look.
Imagine it’s Thursday afternoon, 3:45 pm, and the clock is ticking.
Your firm just landed the ‘Big One:’ A 674,000 square foot manufacturing facility for a popular consumer brand. The CEO of this young company needs the new facility up and running ASAP to meet her stockholders’ expectations.
This is an important, high-exposure project for your firm. Not only is it the largest such facility they’ve ever built, but it’s also an enormous opportunity to work with an enterprise who has big plans–and big budgets–for future expansion.
This high-stakes project is a huge stepping stone for your career, too. Because your operations manager just handed it off to you.
Table of contents
- Buyouts, Collaborative Team Building, and Your Construction Schedule
- Buyout savings can front-load the project to your advantage
- Now Can We Set The Master Construction Schedule?
- A Collaborative Construction Solution for Faster Buyout and Smoother, More Accurate Construction Scheduling
- Your Collaborative Project Management Superpower
Buyouts, Collaborative Team Building, and Your Construction Schedule
After a brief celebration, (followed by a mild panic attack), you get right to work.
Your first task is to run through the list of subcontractors who bid the separate work packages. You’re comparing their scope of work with the contract requirements, looking for any scope gaps or exclusions you need to cover.
- You’re determining how much work your firm will self-perform.
- What portions of the contract will you sub out?
- What trade functions are missing?
- Which contractors will pick up the slack?
This is all on you now. The ball is in your court.
While you sift through documents to get your scope coverage sorted out, you also have your eye trained on the budget. The subcontractors you choose here will be your team members on this build, so of course you want to work with the best.
But you also need to keep costs down as much as possible to generate buyout savings.
Buyout savings are the difference between the guaranteed maximum price (GMP) in your project contract and the terms you negotiate with your subs and specialty contractors as you add them to your team.
Depending on the contract you have with the owner, your buyout savings may contribute to your profit margins if all goes well. Otherwise, the buyout savings become a line item on the project’s schedule of values for the owner to redeem at the end of the project.
Either way, buyout savings are good for you and the owner because they create a financial cushion to either absorb unforeseen costs or save the owner some money.
And just think what THAT would do for your company, its reputation, and its relationship with the owner.
Buyout savings can front-load the project to your advantage
But you need to move fast.
Don’t get too hung up in your negotiations, though. Everyone is tracking the duration of your buyout process: the owner, your operations manager, and your subcontractors. A long buyout cycle is a warning sign that you’re unprepared, don’t have all your bases covered and you’re not in control.
Like we said, the clock in your schedule is already ticking. And you’re running out of time–even before the project begins, so you’ve got to keep things moving.
As you negotiate with your subs, you gather their submittals and press them for schedule commitments. You’re determined to build an aggressive timeline in the pre-construction phase.
Now Can We Set The Master Construction Schedule?
As you hustle through the buyout process, you’re also creating your master schedule.
You secure primary trades first, then you follow the order of operations, from start to finish, watching for conflicts and filling in the gaps with your secondary and specialty contractors.
But this is where your progress REALLY slows down.
There are over 40 subcontractors and specialty contractors contributing to this project, each with their own submittals and RFI’s slowly trailing in. Some by email, some by courier.
It’s a document management nightmare.
Contributing to the madness, most contractors are short on skilled labor and long on lead times because of disruptions in the supply chain. And as much as they want to work with you, they all have their own schedules to keep.
There are so many variables. So much is at stake. And, if you’re still organizing all of this by email, text and phone calls, the back and forth can be endless.
There’s a much better way forward.
A Collaborative Construction Solution for Faster Buyout and Smoother, More Accurate Construction Scheduling
Leaders in the construction industry are digitally transforming their operations to meet 21st century demands.
New technology developed specifically for the construction industry enables teams to collaborate on secure, cloud-based platforms in real time. These collaborative platforms remove friction in every aspect of the construction process, from design and planning, through project completion and beyond.
These new integrated, collaborative construction platforms
- Quicken communication,
- Remove friction, and
- Streamline every process in the project management cycle.
So instead of waiting for submittals, documents and RFI’s to trail in via multiple streams, you’re directly connected with all your stakeholders on one simple platform. You can see who owes you what documents and where those documents are.
You can also build your construction schedule collaboratively, as a team, with all your stakeholders working together with one fully integrated project management software platform.
No more endless rounds of back-and-forth with your contractors as you build your schedule.
You create the master schedule on your timeline as your subcontractors and specialty contractors buyout the project for a smooth, seamless pre-construction workflow.
Your Collaborative Project Management Superpower
Imagine it’s Thursday afternoon, 3:45 pm, and the clock is ticking.
Your firm just landed the ‘Big One:’ A 674,000 square foot manufacturing facility for a popular consumer brand.
This is an important, high-exposure project for your firm and a huge stepping stone for your career.
And you’re ready.
Because you have the power of an open API, collaborative project management solution right at your fingertips. And you know how to use it.
Get a free demonstration of what real collaborative power can do for your next construction project.
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