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Forecasting in construction is a complex task. Many hands are working on the same projects and have their own key performance indicators and data, so knowledge sharing between finance, project managers, operations, and HR is vital to a project’s success. Looking back, decisions on labor needs were often made on gut feelings that were honed by years of experience, but today we live in a data-led world. And as projects become more and more complex, under- or overstaffing can lead to huge financial implications.
Financial platforms that can connect all your systems and data to enable collaborative work are the future for construction.
We were joined by Rob Krueger, VP of Operations at Fessler & Bowman to discuss labor forecasting as a subcontractor and learn how Briq has helped Fessler & Bowman forecast with more accuracy.
Three takeaways on how to build better labor forecasts from the webinar:
Align business departments
When thinking about estimating labor needs there can be a combination of paper filled out on the field, spreadsheets that the finance team uses to do their analysis, and input from the management side about budgets. Before Briq, Fessler & Bowman didn’t have a platform that could automate and connect this information. They had to manually take and connect those data points to give a meaningful, predictive outcome.
“Finance is sitting on the sidelines sometimes, trying to piece all the madness together.” – Rob Krueger
Aligning your major business departments is important because when project management, field operations, and finance work together collaboratively, you start seeing real results.
Use data to improve communication
Rob points out that when you can accurately forecast labor needs for the next quarter—not just the next fortnight—your business will run better. Not only because you have a handle on staffing your next project, but because you can give clients an update on start dates, potential stalled projects in a timely manner.
“We started having better communication with our clients who were the ones, ultimately, that had the expectation of what we were gonna be able to perform.” – RK
Having access to trustworthy data and building projections from it means you can let a client know when you’ll be on-site eight weeks in advance. That’s much better than the alternative of calling the week before to say you’ll know for sure next week if you have the manpower to start. It brings a level of certainty and assurance to your clients and your business that didn’t exist before.
Build strategy across the whole business
Overall having a clear view on how jobs can be staffed, what the timing looks like, and how it affects budget allows for better planning across all areas of the business, not just finance and operations.
When you’re staffing a job, it’s not just the tradespeople but also the leaders of the field, like superintendents, that you’re hiring for. Rob points out that leadership roles are harder to procure, longer to hire, so having visibility on who you need and when, months before the job starts, helps your HR team as much as any other department.
Further, Rob points out that each department works in their specific spreadsheets, and only really focuses on getting their spreadsheet right. Because of this, the business can miss out on the deeper analysis that comes from combining the data and aggregating it in a useful way. And that’s what Briq could do for Fessler & Bowman, link their departments and data together so they could forecast off their collective information in a more collaborative way. Helping each department work better off more accurate information.
There was a lot more to the conversation. If you’d like to learn more, you can download the full webinar here.
