Three Things from the Pandemic to Hold On to
This sounds a little nuts, doesn’t it? As we have eased back into the new normal, most of us simply want to put the disruption and uncertainties of the pandemic behinds us. Dennis, however, has a very different and worthwhile take on some of the lessons learned during that period.
Please tune in this week as Dennis outlines three construction innovations that the pandemic inspired (required?) and the valid reasons smart contractors ought to hold on to them. What innovative behaviors did the pandemic or other “black swan events” create at your business? Please share with us in the comments.
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Good morning, everybody. Dennis Engelbrecht, Digging Deeper.
Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about three things from our recent era, maybe call it the pandemic era, that we should
hold onto as we go forward in, I guess a more normalized world, if we've actually made it there yet. I'm not sure. But as
we came into that era, obviously several things went wrong. Not only did projects get moved and all of that, but we had
the supply chain difficulties, we had labor difficulties, and then we had hyperinflation. All of those things put pressure on
construction companies and construction professionals to come up with solutions.
As I looked at some of the things we did, with the supply chain issues that were out there, many of our companies went
into sort of an uber planning mode where they really looked forward at all the parts and pieces, the entire supply chain.
What could interrupt us here, came up with a lot of great contingency plans, sometimes even change outs of materials
that they were going to use. All kinds of good, creative solutions and excellent planning because they had to have it. We
had to have that planning against that kind of disruption that was going on.
Well, as I thought back to some of the most successful construction professionals that I've known in the past, they were
all uber planners, and they already were looking down the supply chain that extra step to make sure that they didn't get
surprised and that the flow of the project moved on like it was supposed to.
So even though the extent of the problem was new, the solutions shouldn't be, and some of those great solutions that
many of your companies came up with, different forms and different processes and things like that, those very well may
be things that you want to keep. Processes that you want to keep in your business to be a better construction company
going forward, better than you were in the past with hopefully less of the hiccups than we had during the pandemic era.
Number two, I think I've never seen in my career an era where there was more collaboration. Again, the price issues, the
supply chain issues, moving projects, all of those things caused a great deal of collaboration, both to make projects happen,
but to make them happen on budget and in a timeframe that they wanted.
So, what happened there is owners came together with designers, contractors, trade contractors altogether during the
design phase to overcome the issues that were out there. I think this collaboration really is a better way to do construction.
So, one of the things I hope we don't lose going forward is the great collaboration that occurred. Coming out of that was
a staged release sometimes of components of the construction, early release to get some products bought out before the
prices might change, or to make sure that we had a reserved space in the production of certain items that were out there.
To make sure that everything was going to happen on time in the project again, and that the project could go forward. So,
if we could keep that collaboration again with fewer problems out in our universe of construction, again, we can have a
better brand of construction going forward.
The third thing that I think we all did during the pandemic era is because of the hyperinflation, we had to really work hard
to eliminate or reduce purchase risk exposure. Again, I think this is something that we can maintain and take into the
future and be better for. Among that is, I know several folks have called me and said, "How do we track the baseline cost?
Because if we have this change down the road, we got to go back to something to figure out, well, how much did this cost
escalate?" But learning to track those baseline costs and have baseline costs, and have your contracts set up so that the
exposure to these price changes goes to the proper place.
Then finally, making sure that buyout occurs on a timely basis and that the items that may change in price, we get those
things solid and get them solid all the way down the supply chain so that we don't get the surprises later and the potential
losses later.
So, bringing that together again in summary, three things from the pandemic era to make you a better construction
company going forward. Uber planning and supply chain management, keep the design collaboration, keep the doors
open to that and keep continuing, at least from your position, to get as much of that as you can, and making sure you
eliminate and reduce that purchase exposure going forward.
Dennis Engelbrecht Family Business Institute Digging Deeper.
