Expert Columns: Page 117

It's Time to Increase Rates

GB Financial Services, LLC

Steps to raising your rental rates and improving your bottom line and cash flow.

Increase Rates

Why Safety Programs Fail to Deliver

The truth is there are a lot of moving parts to a well-designed program and the components all need to mesh.

Invest in quality personal protective equipment (PPE), then teach your crews how to use it, how to care for it and to be conscientious about it.

Tips to Keep Employees Disciplined to Follow Systems

The Contractor's Business Coach

Four tricks to help keep employees following the systems you need to keep your business successful

If you are going to grow your business, keep it profitable, and free yourself from it, your team is going to have to stay disciplined to the best practice systems.

12 Tips to Survive Another "Nuclear Summer"

How construction companies and their workers can plan for and endure the annual "flat-iron" heat season.

What Should Your Overhead Mark-Up Include?

Construction Business Coaching

Overhead must include your annual costs for management and administrative expenses, salaries and burden/fringes, office and shop expenses and more

To make more money, you must track and keep updated accurate job costs.

A Case Study in Equipment Costing

GB Financial Services, LLC

In the first in a two-part series, we look at a real-world situation a contractor is facing and offer recommendations on how to address it.

Grooming Your Replacement

The Contractor's Business Coach

Grooming a replacement allows business owners to leave the business in the hands of someone you have spent years preparing for the responsibility

Spend time grooming and training your replacement to make the transition smoother.

Formwork Mortar Leakage

American Society of Concrete Contractors (ASCC)

A concrete contractor recently had a close-out meeting with the Owner and Construction Manager, and was be surprised by the demand for a reduction in payment based on form leakage.

Figure 1 Fins and offsets can be the result of form leakage. But fins and offsets have tolerances as described in ACI 117 and ACI 301. Fins and offsets are allowed but the height of each is controlled by the tolerances. If form leakage were prevented, there should be no tolerances. The fact that the tolerances are included in both ACI 117 and ACI 347 means that form leakage is acceptable but is limited by these ACI documents.

What You Need to Know About Plastic Shrinkage Cracking

KB Engineering LLC

Understanding the causes of plastic shrinkage cracks, monitoring jobsite conditions, and implementing precautionary measures can prevent or at least minimize these unsightly cracks from occurring.

What You Need to Know About Plastic Shrinkage Cracking

How To Make Your Employees Accountable and Responsible

Construction Business Coaching

Often workers want to be responsible but a micro-managing boss can be holding them back

Your role as a leader is less about what you do and more about what your people do; people want to follow leaders who trust them and give out accountability and responsibility.

Are You Ready to Rent?

GB Financial Services, LLC

With the recovery in motion, rental equipment is in high demand, so it pays to prepare in advance.

Make sure both the rental company and your staff know where equipment should be dropped off, who should be contacted with any questions and where it can be picked up at the end of the rental term.

How Durable Are Your Hand-Held Electric Power Tools?

Tools must work in harsh environments and take their share of hard knocks but if they are to have long, productive lives both manufacturers and users must do their part. The long life of the tool shown was probably compromised.

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