Contractors
Specialist and trade contractors design and install their package inside a programme someone else controls. The method, sequence and resources are often committed before anyone has tested which would actually be quickest or cheapest.
The decisions that set a package's margin
A package contractor's margin is largely set by a handful of decisions taken before anyone mobilises.
Where problems tend to arise
The work is planned as a list of activities, but it behaves like a flow. Drawings, materials and crews pass from one stage to the next, and wherever one stage waits on another, time and money build up. Waiting rarely shows on the programme; it shows in the outturn.
Early involvement is where a package contractor's know-how counts most: the people who know how the thing gets made, in the room while the design can still change. It is also where that involvement most often drifts, from reducing risk into pricing it.
What makes early involvement work
- A clear purpose: the decisions, design developments and risk reductions the phase has to deliver
- Success criteria set from day one, for design maturity, programme, cost logic and risk
- Evidence in place of assertion: options tested through scenarios and programme logic checked
Our insight Early Involvement That Actually Works sets out ten ways to make it deliver.
How we help
We map how the work moves from design release to installation, find where it waits, and then compare the alternatives.
Production and supply chain flow sets each stage from design release to installation against time spent working and time spent waiting, and names the stage that sets the pace. Method choices such as slab system, core method, mix, shifts, cranes and falsework can be compared before the price is fixed. Where the issue is consistency, process and organisational improvement draws out how your business turns an order into installed work, step by step with its controls, and makes it repeatable, using your process or a standard one.
The aim is evidence you can put in front of a client during early involvement: methods compared and the binding constraint named before the price is fixed.
Worked examples
Questions
We design and install a package. Is this for us?
Yes. Our production and supply chain flow work suits anyone whose programme depends on what happens between the factory and the site, including specialist and trade contractors, manufacturers and the clients who rely on them. The worked examples are built around a concrete frame contractor's operation.
Do we need clean data before we start?
No. The information you need usually exists already, across the systems you use for estimating, planning, resourcing and finance, and in your people's experience. Where records are thin, the models are built so each rate and assumption is visible and can be replaced as better figures come in.
Can the frame analyser use our own rates?
Yes. It uses generic rates, and every rate can be overwritten with your own, so the results can be checked against a real estimate. The concrete frames worked example shows what it compares and what it finds.
How do we start?
With one part of your work, such as a frame package, a sequence that keeps causing trouble or a process your teams don't follow the same way. From there we agree the question, who knows that part of the work best and how far the analysis needs to go.
Talk to us about a package
Or the sequence, or the method decision you are weighing up. Any of them is a good place to start.
Start a conversation