Contractor's Business Management Report delivers practical, relevant, and insightful business management guidance to contractors, subcontractors and their consultants each month.
Typical coverage includes analyses and updates on relevant topics directly affecting your day-to -day construction business, including: controlling costs; remaining in compliance with regulatory (including tax and accounting) changes; reviewing and addressing insurance and risk- management issues; handling contract and legal issues (including liens and enforcement actions); addressing OSHA-related safety and inspection practices; preparing for BIM and other developing technologies; and, handling immigration and other labor-related issues.
CBMR covers all the top industry association events, including AGC, IRMI, CFMA and Vendome Group-sponsored conferences, and reports on the top, hot-button issues and challenges that contractors, subcontractors and their consultants face on a day-to-day basis. Newsletter content is synthesized and presented in an easy-to-use, easy-to-digest format.
The Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act includes two new tax benefits for employers who hire workers that were previously unemployed or only working part time.
CBMR attended the Associated General Contractors of America’s IT Forum, hosted by the AGC’s Electronic Information Systems Committee in Chicago. The forum consisted of approximately 100 IT professionals across several size contractors engaging in discussions about technology problems they are encountering and how they are solving them. What developed at the forum was a dialog among participants of solutions they found, their test results for various solutions (successful and unsuccessful), and problems looming on the…
One of the better trends that I am seeing is the willingness of courts to look closer at arbitration awards and throw out awards that are really bad. In the world of judges and courts this is progress. It used to be that awards rendered by arbitrators were almost sacrosanct. Normally the courts kept a hands-off approach. Evidence that an arbitrator’s award did not have merit, or was not supported by the proof usually was not enough. Judges were fond of saying, in essence—“you chose arbitration as the way to resolve your disputes so live by it. Just because a court may have ruled differently or come to a different result than the arbitrator is not enough to throw out the award.”
As contractors try to improve their business models to ensure their company’s long-term survival, Robert Davidson, CPA, partner in Davidson, Golden & Lundy, suggests it is time to start looking in new places and re-evaluating old positions to make survival a reality. Davidson, whose firm provides accounting and consulting services to contractors, described an old IBM commercial. The commercial showed a hot air balloon sinking , in order for it to stay aloft, the pilot was advised, after he had thrown all the moveable objects overboard, that he needed to look at tossing overboard things that were bolted down. Davidson presented several of his ideas and noteable industry trends at this year’s Construction Financial Management Association conference in a session for financial managers of construction firms.
The federal government has gotten serious about contractor ethics violations in the last several years and has recently increased the scope of its ethics rules. The penalties for ethics violations are severe and encompass a significant array of possibilities including debarment, claim forfeiture, treble damages, and criminal liability for individuals. Contractors doing state and municipal work are likely not exempt from these federal rules if their projects are funded by stimulus funds. …
Acoustical problems in “green,” energy efficient and sustainable buildings have become so significant that the construction and design industry is now directly focused on new designs and new products to help alleviate the noise problems. The new designs and new products will, in turn, have an effect on contractors in many aspects of work. These can involve basic issues, including value engineering and making substitutions of materials which you recommend as “equals.” In addition, the new designs and new products can involve more complex construction issues, including revised LEED and related product ratings and project certifications and delays involved in making changes needed to address new acoustical designs and materials.
Contractor's Business Management Report is part of...
Design Firm Management