Every Friday, we select a few articles from the week that we think are worth your time as a construction financial manager (CFM). We look for compelling articles not only about financial topics, but about business, technology, and life, that challenges you to think about your role as a CFM in different ways. We’d love to hear from you about how we’re doing, and to have you join our community by subscribing to receive this weekly post by email. Follow #CFMReview.
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What it Will Take to Fix America’s Infrastructure
from HBR.org
Today marks the close of National Infrastructure Week, but “don’t get out the party hats,” says Rosabeth Moss Kanter at hbr.org. “It’s not a celebration, it’s more like a cry for help,” writes Kanter, who lists a litany of issues, from overcrowded ports and delayed flights, to deteriorating roads and bridges, and issues with the rail system. Of course, the sad news of the Amtrak crash this week has brought to the forefront conversations about infrastructure spending.
“Once the model for the world’s most modern transportation innovations,” the United States falls behind many other countries nowadays. Take these statistics on traffic from Kanter’s article: The average American sits in 38 hours of traffic each year, which totals to roughly 5.5 billion hours lost in productivity and $15 billion in public health costs.
Regardless of who you blame for these problems, Kanter says it all in her closing line: “It’s time to move.”
Learn What it Will Take to Fix America’s Infrastructure
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Three Steps to Utilizing Technology in Construction
from ENR.com
Over the last 40 years, productivity in construction has hardly changed, writes Ben F. Bigelow for enr.com. The problem isn’t that construction businesses aren’t adopting technology — they are, albeit slowly — it’s that they aren’t doing it the right way. In order to “take advantage of all the ‘horsepower’” technology makes available, companies must do three things: adopt, embrace, and invest. While companies have begun to adopt technology, they aren’t embracing or (re)investing.
Consider this account of an executive at a GC firm, from Bigelow’s article. The executive was having difficulty getting older employees to use newly-adopted technology. He claimed it was cheaper to hire younger, more tech-savvy employees “to follow his older guys around and use the technology for them, than to allow the job to be done without it.”
I have two gut reactions to hearing that. First, wow! Could you imagine hiring a second employee for every person who refused to use a tool that your business invested in? That would add up quickly. Second, wow! If it’s worth it for the GC firm to hire those additional employees, think of all the value that technology must be adding.
> Get statistics on technology in the construction industry
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