The construction stats you should be tracking on new projects

Starting and managing a new residential construction project is a hectic process with job sites often feeling like barely organized chaos. The rise in material prices, supply chain constraints and labor shortages make the stakes even higher for contractors to avoid costly mistakes and protect their profit margins. To prevent this from happening, it’s crucial to track the following four construction stats across projects.

1. Construction time tracking

When it comes to construction stats, time is money…literally.

No matter how large or small a job, it’s necessary to track the time of your team members and subcontractors to keep an eye on your project costs and schedule. If framing is taking longer than expected or if you need to bring additional team members to a job site, your overall project costs will be affected.

Understanding your construction costs through time tracking is critical to ensuring project profitability. Buildertrend’s Time Clock feature enables businesses to easily track employee time and understand where your project financials currently stand.

2. Construction cost tracking

New construction projects can be sunk by unexpected cost overruns. Although the homeowner may be ultimately responsible for the additional costs, financial constraints can impact the overall timeline and have a negative impact on the relationship between a builder and buyer.

Using construction forecasting tools like takeoff software and estimating can help prevent these overruns for both labor and materials costs. While some variation is inevitable, planning ahead and staying up to date with ongoing costs will help prevent large deviations.

Maintain excellent accounting records to see at a glance if an overrun is likely, and be sure to open a dialogue with the owner right away if numbers seem off. Buildertrend’s construction cost tracking tools include a budget to track finances in real time and the ability to compare estimated and actual costs.

3. Construction safety tracking

Construction site safety is heavily regulated, and skirting the rules could result in significant fines or penalties. Should an accident occur onsite, you may be on the hook for medical bills and property damage … not to mention a potentially significant loss of business reputation.

To mitigate this from happening and increase your construction job site safety, conduct regular safety training sessions, safety audits and compliance audits throughout the entire lifecycle of the project.

4. Construction quality tracking

In residential construction, a company is only as good as the quality of its last project. Even so, it’s hard for businesses to ignore the constant push and pressure of schedules and budgets to ensure that their quality is up to par. To help alleviate these concerns and ensure job site quality, customers should receive regular updates. Project managers should conduct frequent onsite inspections, and larger projects should consider hiring an independent quality control firm.

Once new construction projects get going, it’s difficult to see the big picture. That’s why software that can help track crucial construction stats like hours worked, costs, safety and quality are vital to businesses having successful builds.

See how Buildertrend has helped other builders and remodelers stay on top of their business.

About The Author

Sean Robinson Sean Robinson is a senior content marketing specialist at Buildertrend