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Contractors operating in multiple counties and/or jurisdictions in Alberta encounter more requirements for doing business than their counterparts working in only one county/jurisdiction. This is especially true when it comes to figuring payroll taxes.

Heavy construction occurring in the Alberta oil and gas fields can be characterized as challenging, given the sometimes harsh conditions and demands on both equipment and workers. Consequently, the trials of heavy construction project management are many.

As we’ve said, companies relying on spreadsheets, documents, or email threads to track things like equipment rentals, purchase orders, inventory shipments, and invoices are dealing with inaccurate, incomplete, and/or duplicated information. This is the cause of many problems, including loss of profits as a project gets stuck in downtime waiting for a part they didn’t know was out of stock.

It’s a common problem for engineers and project managers: the search for the right equipment to match a customer’s needs. Almost no problem is as challenging for energy professionals as engineering the right indoor climate system to provide maximum efficiency and energy savings. To make it even more challenging, the engineers/project managers must ensure that the HVAC specifications received match the proposed system size and output, among other things that must be matched.

As such, RFI tracking for HVAC companies is a crucial part of keeping vendors and manufacturers competitive. Without RFI tracking, most businesses would fall back on legacy methods like written data or spreadsheets, which can mean perpetuating a system of inaccurate and isolated information.

Many factors can be attributed to the rise of the oil equipment rental market, including the rising expense of unconventional practices like shale and simply not throwing capital to buy equipment, maintain it, and keep a parts inventory up and running.

Do you remember when filing cabinets were a staple in the office? And then, even when technology started taking off, maybe you weren’t quite adverse to the idea of using technology, but still – certain types of critical information, like client contracts, lead developments, and all that project documentation just seemed safer physically within arm’s reach.

Now that you’ve expanded your business, however, there are several issues you might be having. One being that with so much new business, you and your staff are spending all of your time thumbing through what seems like a million client folders to find the right document. Another being that maybe you’ve expanded so much that you have more than one location and/or the need to work both on location and out of the office. In that situation, you don’t even have access to client or contract information because your filing cabinet isn’t anywhere near you.

When your business grows, it grows everywhere – including in sales tax requirements. When this happens, you appear to have only two choices: to sink time and energy into sales tax management, which doesn’t make you money, or carry the risk of being non-compliant, which could cost you money.

Or is there a better way?

The success of heavy construction project management is in the details.

And the best way to manage details is with good software. Many business owners are still relying on old methods for managing their projects, their paperwork, and their people. Consequently, the profitability of a project can be put at risk simply because of a lack of the right technology tool: Sage 300 ERP.

As the owner of a construction company, you’re used to wearing many hats in the office and out in the field. What’s crucial to the profitability of your projects is knowing where budgets stand and making sure payment is on time for employees, vendors, and other third-party suppliers.

With the growth of your business, you find yourself away from your home office more and more. Consequently, you can’t initiate the payment process in a timely manner like you could before your expansion took place.

Every business must make decisions that impact efficiency and, ultimately, their bottom line. These decisions must be made while also attempting to grow – opening a new branch office, hiring more employees, etc.

Old methods of handling workloads and scheduling via emails, phone calls, and playing phone tag with voice mail remove your business from the competitive arena. To stay on top in the current economy means that you must be able to communicate with your employees at all times. Simply having an office with a secretary to take messages no longer cuts it.

Read more about Sage here: 

A common approach in the construction business for measuring productivity is to calculate the firm’s output in dollars and divide it by the total number of hours assigned to the labor behind it.

Often, although it’s crucial to include rental hours to gauge an accurate productivity outcomes, the operational costs of machinery and equipment are overlooked, making the productivity measurement inaccurate.