How to Get Work In Today’s Construction Market

I honestly don’t have the patience to read any more economic doom and gloom about this country or worse yet, the construction industry.  I read some article about how construction spending is down 7.9% from this time last year.  And last year, there was more construction going on by five year olds on their first trip to the beach than by heavy machinery.  So, we’re in bad shape – nobody is going to argue with me there.  However, there are still projects out there, and companies are getting them – but how?

Well, I’ll tell you how I got the job I have now, which is a publically funded hard bid.  Basically, I not only marked sub costs up a meager 5% for overhead and profit, but I also missed about $10,000 worth of scope (by accident of course).  I was about $10,000 less than the next lowest bidder, so assuming he didn’t miss anything, it looks like you can mark sub costs up about 5% and get the job.  Of course this doesn’t leave much margin for error or even enough to pay one person full time to run the job.  It’s a cruel and brutal world out there.

But here’s a better option than giving kamikaze pricing on public projects – how about selling a service instead of a commodity.  A service with features and benefits over the competition.  Commodities are victims of the state of supply and demand while a high quality service always has a market.  But how do you do this?  Well, unfortunately the public sector has yet to catch on to the whole value added service thing, but private owners can pretty much do whatever they want.

When you hard bid a construction project, you have to put money in the bid to mitigate risk.  In a public, off the street bid, you can’t afford to put risk mitigation money in the bid because, well, you’ll lose.  And honestly, nobody wants to lose.

So to answer the initial question: How do you get work in today’s construction market?  Be better, and not just less expensive – it’s a much more pleasant way to go.