Construction

A contractor running project margin below 15% on hard-bid work is one bad month from feeding the company out of reserves. The work is there, the crews are busy, and the bank account still shrinks. Job costing that arrives 60 days late explains why nobody saw it coming. Most of the loss hides in labor productivity, not material prices.

The work-in-progress schedule is the report that separates builders from gamblers. It catches overbilling and underbilling before either one distorts the quarter. Owners who review it monthly catch fading jobs while there is still time to act. It also keeps the bonding company calm, which protects future capacity.

Change orders are where margin goes to die quietly. Field crews do the extra work on a handshake, and the paperwork follows weeks later. Work performed before approval gets discounted, disputed, or donated at billing time. Signed authorization before mobilization is the only version that counts.

Subcontractor management follows the same unforgiving economic law. The cheapest bid becomes the most expensive line item when coordination fails. Preconstruction scopes, clear schedules, and payment discipline attract the subs who show up ready, and they are the ones worth keeping. Paying reliable subs a few days early buys scheduling priority when the market tightens.

Backlog quality matters far more than backlog size ever will. Twelve months of low-margin work is a slower way to fail than six months of good work. Kamyar Shah has reviewed contractors from custom builders to mid-market general contractors, and the survivors share one habit: weekly job-cost reviews with teeth. The articles below cover estimating discipline, job-cost cadence, and scope control in plain terms.

Building a construction company? Book a 30-min ops review on project margin, subcontractor management, and scaling.