Why Manual Project Searches Are Costing Your Construction Business

On common, a mid-sized contractor usually spends 9-14 hours per week on manual searches. Primarily based on nationwide pay averages, a contractor’s totally burdened wage is roughly $60/hour. Over a 12 months, this handbook search course of prices $31,000 per worker, per 12 months. This provides as much as over $93,000 yearly for groups of three contractors which is greater than the annual charge for top-tier mission intelligence software program. 

And it’s not nearly {dollars}. Each hour you spend digging for leads is an hour you’re not bidding on new work, following up with purchasers, or managing lively initiatives. You may assume you’re saving cash by sticking to handbook strategies, however it’s really costing you huge time.

Use this calculator to check how much project search is costing your business.

The Rise of Personal Tasks

In accordance with the U.S. Census Bureau, non-public, invitation-only initiatives have grown over the previous 5 years and now signify 60% of all industrial building initiatives within the U.S.

That is in step with ConstructConnect’s Put-in-Place Construction Forecast Report. Michael Guckes, Chief Economist, stories, “Personal sector exercise is anticipated to handily outperform its public sector equal primarily based on forecasted 5-year compounded annual development charges (CAGR) by way of 2029. The 5-year CAGR for complete non-public building at 4.6% is greater than double that of its public sector equal at 2.0%.”

Contractors who nonetheless rely solely on public knowledge are lacking out on greater than half of at this time’s potential alternatives, particularly in infrastructure projects, which make up a rising share of at this time’s market.

Digital Instruments: Discover Higher Tasks, Quicker

• Earlier than: Looking throughout SAM.gov, state e-procurement, and different portals to piece collectively public info.
• After: One dashboard with every little thing you want, from IIJA-funded federal work to non-public growth. In ConstructConnect® Project Intelligence, you may filter by commerce, mission class, sector, and extra (see beneath).

2. Save Time and Keep Forward

Digital instruments lower your weekly mission search time, liberating up contractors to concentrate on methods that win bids. Matt Trewet, Mechanical Estimating Supervisor at The Waldinger Company shares his expertise

[ConstructConnect Project Intelligence] has been an enormous timesaver for us. It permits us to reply to a number of basic contractors, preserve monitor of basic contractors by way of the bid boards.”

As highlighted in Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan, AI-powered infrastructure initiatives are dashing up building with quicker permits and easier processes. Utilizing digital instruments, contractors can shortly discover and bid on these initiatives and keep forward in a fast-changing market. 

3. Make Smarter Enterprise Choices

Information-driven instruments present deeper insights into mission scopes, proprietor histories, and aggressive landscapes. These platforms ship:

• AI threat flags for high-abandonment initiatives
• Proprietor histories and low-bid ratios
• Integration with takeoff and estimating instruments

For instance, the PHX-13 project by Aligned Data Centers in Glendale, Arizona, demonstrates how non-public infrastructure initiatives are driving development. The power’s use of renewable power and superior cooling expertise aligns with sustainability traits, making it a worthwhile alternative. By leveraging these insights, contractors can concentrate on initiatives like PHX-13 which have decrease dangers and better possibilities of success.

4. See a True Return on Funding

If a platform eliminates a mean of $31,000 in annual prices for workers conducting searches for a building agency and offers entry to only one further successful mission, the funding in expertise pays for itself a number of occasions over. In comparison with the hidden value of inefficiency and missed alternatives, the selection is obvious.

Obtain our free information, The Contractor’s Guide to Finding Better Projects, Faster, to learn the way digital instruments can remodel your mission discovery course of.