10/25/2021—A successful construction job requires detailed planning. Budgeting estimates are essential to providing clients with an ideal outlook of length and cost per job. While there may be unforeseen costs, due to everything from broken machinery to wasted materials, thanks to innovative new technology, many costs and budget mistakes can be avoided or planned for ahead to prevent loss of production and excessive budgets.
A detailed production plan gives clients and construction companies a timeline to follow, to stay on track with expected completion. A common misstep is setting unrealistic expectations or not aligning timelines with your company’s production capabilities. With CoRe Connected Resources, our smart badge technology tracks everything in a project, including worker productivity, instances of injury, wasted materials and machinery limitations, which can be used retroactively to plan for future projects and improve productivity. During a project, you can track worker productivity with BLE-enabled smart badges that give real-time visibility to admins of how quickly workers are completing tasks. If an issue is spotted, workers can be trained or incentivized to pick up speed and meet project deadlines.
When planning a project, one method utilized is planning for downtime costs of machinery, however this estimate can fluctuate greatly,1 leaving unhappy investors and slowed production. Downed machinery can cause delays and higher costs, as it creates wasted man hours, pushes back deadlines, and creates unforeseen maintenance costs. “It’s the collateral damage that really costs you money,” says Dan Corbett, equipment manager at Lancaster Development. “Not so much the repair of a downed piece of equipment, but how that impacts the job.1” The leading cause of machinery downtime is failure to keep up with preventative maintenance.1 That is where advanced technology, like that of CoRe Connect Resources, can help. With an easy-to-use interface and reliable data, CoRe can track machinery, letting administrators know when regular maintenance is needed based on usage time. “
Materials are a major factor of a construction budget, and an error planners can make is overestimating material costs. Overestimations are often made to account for material losses on site. Material loss can be caused by poor or multiple handling, poor site control, over-ordering of material, bad stock control, and lack of training.3 However, with proper site management and dependable technology, budget planners can provide a more precise cost estimation and monitor material usage throughout production, to eliminate waste. Utilizing CoRe, you can track materials onsite, which materials have been issued to which workers, and in instances where there is misuse, provide proper training or remove an employee from a certain task.
A difficult issue to plan for in a construction budget is injury and accidents on site, as they can slow or halt production and raise contractor costs due to medical bills and sick leave. In 2019 the cost of work injuries alone was $171.0 billion, including wage and productivity losses of $53.9 billion, medical expenses of $35.5 billion, and administrative expenses of $59.7 billion.4 A mistake planners can make is not preplanning for safety issues, based on the job at hand.
Preplanning involves evaluating the job requirements and associated risks, then setting up safety prevention measures accordingly.5 It’s essential for construction companies to preplan for any job by investing in proper and dependable safety materials, such as smart badges by CoRe. Independent studies have shown that for every dollar invested in safety programs, contractors can get a payback of $4 to $6 in reduced costs.6 Whether incorporating into your current project budget, or as a contingency plan for all future projects, safety should be a top priority to avoid preventable costs and project delays.
With safety in mind, CoRe’s smart badge technology has you covered. Each smart badge assigns a worker their own safety profile, which notifies management anytime an assigned task is not compatible with a worker’s profile. Employers can then reassign workers, or train them accordingly, to ensure tasks are performed with the utmost safety. CoRe also provides unauthorized zone entry alerts, which notify administrators if employees are in job site areas where they are not authorized to be. Other safety features of CoRe badges include SOS-button alerts, allowing employees to notify when help is needed, location tracking, and productivity tools such as time spent on specific jobs, time spent out of work zones, or any lost downtime that can push back project deadlines.
Thanks to technology like that of CoRe, budget planners can eliminate human error in data tracking, and use trustworthy and precise data analyses to make decisions, along with AI-enabled algorithms to forecast costs, based on facts and trends. Streamline any budgetary planning, and site safety management, with CoRe’s plug-and-play solution, limiting budget overages and keeping your company and its workforce safe.
Contact us today to learn more.
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1 The cost of downtime. Construction Equipment. (2020, June 23). Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://www.constructionequipment.com/cost-downtime.
2 The True Cost of Unplanned Equipment Downtime. (n.d.). Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://www.forconstructionpros.com/equipment-management/article/21104195/the-true-cost-of-unplanned-equipment-downtime.
3 Steps to reduce waste and loss of materials on construction sites. The Best TMT Bars for Constructions – TIGER TMT Iron Rods. (n.d.). Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://tigertmt.com/blog/steps-to-reduce-waste-and-loss-of-materials-on-construction-sites.php.
4 Work injury costs. Injury Facts. (2021, January 27). Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/work/costs/work-injury-costs/.
5 Managing construction risk through pre-operational planning. Managing Construction Risk through Pre-Operational Planning | Expert Commentary | IRMI.com. (n.d.). Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://www.irmi.com/articles/expert-commentary/managing-construction-risk-through-pre-operational-planning.
6 Budgeting for safety shouldn’t be an afterthought. Safety Management Group. (2012, October 1). Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://safetymanagementgroup.com/budgeting-for-safety-shouldnt-be-an-afterthought/.
