Remodeling: Slippage

Time Really Is Money: Tips for Improving On-Site Productivity

Fri, 8 Feb 2013 02:27:33 EST

Companies that have taken overhead as low as it can go but are still facing price pressure can look to improved field productivity to preserve profits.

Living History: Past Lessons Learned From Near-Bankruptcy Help During the Recession

Fri, 8 Feb 2013 10:11:48 EST

How one remodeler's brush with bankruptcy in 2003 has helped his business weather the current economic downturn.

Small Jobs Done Efficiently

Fri, 8 Feb 2013 10:07:39 EST

Keep in mind: Complexity, not size, is the determining factor when it comes to "small jobs."

Tripping Out: Reducing Lumberyard Runs Is a Matter of Planning

Fri, 8 Feb 2013 01:36:51 EST

Checkout lines may be shorter, but trips to the building materials store are still time wasted and money lost.

Re-Leading the Way: The Return of the Lead Carpenter System

Fri, 8 Feb 2013 01:36:48 EST

One of the best ways to reduce costs and increase efficiency is the lead carpenter system.

The Weekly Check: Job-Progress Meetings

Fri, 8 Feb 2013 11:52:48 EST

Weekly job status meetings help keep jobs on time and on budget and identify problems before they get out of control.

Protect Your Company Against Construction Fraud

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 10:33:19 EST

Construction fraud has worsened in the troubled economy. Here's what you can do to protect your company.

Pricing Remodeling Jobs Just Right

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 10:30:44 EST

Get back to good estimating and job costing to offer accurate pricing on your jobs.

Pinpointing Slippage

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 10:19:23 EST

By tracking the actual and budgeted costs of individual line items for each job, Creative Contracting is able to easily pinpoint slippage.

Having a complete picture of budgets projects

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 09:41:17 EST

When John Gemmi of Gemmi Construction, in Doylestown, Pa., started sharing each project's financial information with his four lead carpenters and helping them to understand their contribution to the bottom line, the leads began to actively participate in controlling costs and decreasing slippage.

Slippage, if consistent, will kill your year

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 09:12:14 EST

Any amount of slippage, if consistent, will quietly and effectively kill your year. Some slippage is just bad luck, but here are eight causes that you can control.

Mental Shift

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 08:46:52 EST

Soon after transitioning from cost-plus pricing to a fixed-price system, Art Stinson's Trace Ventures ran into trouble with slippage. Stinson says the Nashville, Tenn., company was mired in a cost-plus mentality that allowed for imprecise estimates, and unforeseen costs (if they weren't due to a Trace mistake) were being passed on to the homeowner.

Slippage in the permit process

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 08:16:15 EST

All remodelers are robbery victims. The thief is slippage, which is the amount your profit falls short of plan. The root causes of slippage are often simple — but that doesn't mean they're easy to find. And while some sources, like inconsistent labor productivity or poor change order management, can take big bites out of profits, smaller losses tied to less obvious sources can add up.

Slippage and Risk Ratio recalculations

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 07:01:44 EST

One factor affecting the numbers reported in the May issue was incomplete results. Since press time for the May issue, we've received additional data that change the slippage picture somewhat.The good news is that the median for all companies is -2.9%, meaning about half the companies performed better than Hanbury's "witch-hunt" standard.

Solving cost slippage problems

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 07:03:52 EST

Slippage occurs when something on the job causes unrecoverable costs to extend beyond the limits of the estimate. King has since refined and implemented several processes to help her company reduce slippage, most notably instituting a "post-mortem" review of costs at the completion of every job.

Big50 Averages: statistical highlights

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 07:07:04 EST

Although this year's class of Big50 remodelers displays great variety in size, business structure, target market, project focus, and geographic location, the averages tell a fairly consistent story. By this measure, small- and large-volume companies in this year's Big50 class performed about the same, with most averaging net profit of between 8% and 9%.

Reader Panel: Profit Slippage

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 07:17:58 EST

Typical profit slippage -- the difference between estimated and produced gross profit--is 5% or more according to our survey.

Accurate Job Costing

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 07:32:50 EST

If you only have one part of bookkeeping done right, it better be your progress job costs," says Mike Weiss of Weiss & Co. in Carmel, Ind. Because variances in labor costs are a major source of slippage, tracking payroll is key to accurate job costs.

Slip Sliding Away

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 07:32:56 EST

Slippage measures the difference between estimated gross profit and produced gross profit. "You have to be suspicious of an owner who's doing sales, because owners don't package well," says consultant Linda Case of Remodelers Advantage in Fulton, Md. "Bringing production into the sales and estimating process can help, but carpenters are reluctant to complain to their boss about it." As an incentive to produce more detailed estimates, many companies are switching to commissions based on produced gross profit.