All posts by SEO Team

July 3, 2023

8 Best Ways to Minimize Profit Fade in Construction

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. What Is Profit Fade? No contractor wants to discover that they aren’t going to make as much profit on a project as initially estimated. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to find that the profit margin for a given construction project shrinks or even disappears by the time work is completed. It’s even more unfortunate that sometimes, that “profit fade” doesn’t become apparent until it’s too late to do much about it.  Project owners and surety bond providers typically require periodic financial reports showing the percentage of project completion and the profit recognized as of each reporting date. In a perfect world, those percentages match—when 50% of a project has been completed, 50% of the total estimated profit has been recognized, and so on. At the end of the project, when 100% of the work has been completed, and 100% of the estimated profit has been recognized. It’s when 100% of the profit has been recognized before 100% of the work...

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July 3, 2023

New Construction Innovation from CES

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. Technology Drives Progress Every January, people from all over the world with interest in technology flock to Nevada for the annual CES trade show sponsored by the Consumer Technology Association. CES features every sector’s latest and greatest technological developments, including construction. In 2023, more than 115,000 people, over 40,000 of them from other countries, attended. Some of the innovations highlighted at CES are already available commercially, while others are still in the conceptual or prototype stage. In either case, contractors can find inspiration and new options for improvement in every phase of the construction process, from design and engineering to field operations. Long-term growth comes from understanding that what seems futuristic today very quickly can become tomorrow’s best practices. The theme of CES in 2023, which featured over 3200 exhibitors, including 1000 startups, focused on Human Security for All (HS4A). The intent was to show how technology could address humanity’s greatest challenges. According to Gary Shapiro, CTA’s president, and CEO,...

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July 3, 2023

How Big Data Improves Construction

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. What Is Big Data? Oracle defines “big data” as larger, more complex data sets that are so voluminous that traditional data processing software can’t manage them. Big data provides the basis for addressing business problems previously too difficult to tackle.  The “three V’s” help explain the challenges inherent in working with big data. Volume refers to the enormous amount of data—for example, in databases containing BIM and 3-D modeling files and from continuous collection of data from sensor-equipped equipment and PPE. Some organizations are dealing with terabytes of data, while for others, it may be hundreds of petabytes.  Velocity describes the speed at which data are created and collected and perhaps acted upon, potentially in real-time.  Variety is all about the different kinds of data points involved—traditionally structured data in a relational database and, increasingly, new unstructured and semi-structured data that require additional processing to derive meaningful insights. Since these three V’s were delineated, three more V’s have emerged:...

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July 3, 2023

Fintech Trends for Construction Finance in 2023

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. What Is Fintech? Fintech (short for financial technology) is defined as technology that seeks to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services. It has expanded from its origins in automating the “back office” operations of banks and other large financial institutions. It is now used by companies in many sectors to manage their financial operations and processes. In recent years Fintech has been gaining traction in the construction sector. Key Financial Services for Construction There are three key financial services in construction in which value is estimated and exchanged—payments, lending, and insurance. All three involve significant pain points for construction contractors and other stakeholders. Contractors, suppliers, workers, project owners, investors, and lenders all want the same outcome: on-time completion. But at the same time, certain conflicts of interest that are baked into the process can prevent them from achieving that shared goal.  Conflicts of Interest For example, contractors want to be paid based on tasks completed...

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July 3, 2023

Contech Trends in 2023

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. Technology Drives Progress In every field of human endeavor, technology drives progress. It’s hard to think of any new development in construction technology that has failed to increase efficiency, productivity, and/or quality. It may, however, take some time for construction businesses to embrace and adopt new technology. The benefits of doing so must be clear enough for companies to make the necessary investment in new technology and reap the rewards. And sometimes, it takes a major challenge for the benefits of investing in construction technology to become readily apparent. Challenges Driving Technology Adoption in Construction For many construction firms, the global Covid-19 pandemic was probably the greatest such challenge to arise in recent years. The shortage of skilled construction workers has been and remains a major challenge. Other key challenges, some directly linked to the pandemic, include: the need to compete against construction companies with a high rate of technology adoption,  supply chain disruptions and the resulting materials shortages...

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July 3, 2023

Form Energy Building Battery Plant in West Virginia

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. The Form Energy Battery Plant Project Construction is scheduled to begin in 2023 on Massachusetts-based Form Energy’s new iron-air battery plant in Weirton, West Virginia, with battery production slated to begin in 2024. Weirton, a former steel town, was chosen as the plant’s location largely due to the financial incentive package offered by the state of West Virginia.  The $75 million allocated by the West Virginia Economic Development Authority to purchase the land, the site of a former steel plant, gave the state a major advantage against 15 other states competing for the project and 750 promised new manufacturing jobs. An additional $215 million in state and federal funds brings the total financial incentive package to $290 million. Advantages of Iron-air Batteries Form Energy describes iron-air batteries as longer-lasting, able to store electricity for up to 100 hours. Iron-air batteries also are reported as cheaper and more sustainably scalable than lithium-ion batteries. These qualities are essential to making renewable...

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June 6, 2023

Bitcoin Money Transmitter vs. Money Transmitter: What’s the Difference?

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your surety bond needs. What Is a Money Transmitter? The U.S. government has identified the following as money services businesses: Currency dealer or exchanger Check casher Issuer of traveler’s checks, money orders, or stored value Seller or redeemer of traveler’s checks, money orders, or stored value Money transmitter For every entity on this list other than money transmitters, there is an activity threshold of $1,000 per day in one or more transactions to be considered a money services business. There is no activity threshold for money transmitters. Anyone engaging as a business in transferring funds in any amount as an intermediary between two parties is a money transmitter. Money transmitters must be registered with the Department of Treasury and licensed in every state in which they operate. The question is whether transferring Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is considered to be transmitting “money” and therefore subject to regulation as a money transmitter. How Is Cryptocurrency Money Transmission Defined? Initially, cryptocurrency existed in a gray...

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June 6, 2023

Does Your Business Need a Cryptocurrency License?

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your surety bond needs. What Is Cryptocurrency? A cryptocurrency is an encrypted data string that denotes a unit of currency. It is monitored and organized by a peer-to-peer network called a blockchain, which also serves as a secure ledger of transactions (e.g., buying, selling, and transferring). There are a number of different cryptocurrencies, of which Bitcoin is the most widely traded. How Is Cryptocurrency Regulated? In the United States, businesses that want to trade in cryptocurrency must obtain a crypto license from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) before they can operate a cryptocurrency exchange or trading platform. Other countries have their own regulatory requirements for businesses trading in cryptocurrency. Certain states also have state-level regulations governing trading in cryptocurrencies, which require businesses to obtain a state license as a condition for operating a cryptocurrency exchange or trading platform. New York’s regulatory framework is called BitLicense. Some states exempt individuals and small cryptocurrency exchanges from crypto licensing. And some states have not yet...

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June 6, 2023

U.S. Money Transmitter and Cryptocurrency Transmitter Laws

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your surety bond needs. Federal Registration of Money Transmitters In the United States, money transmission is heavily regulated at the federal level because of the risk of fraud and other criminal activity. The federal regulations governing money transmission apply to all money transmitters, whether actual or virtual funds being exchanged. All money transmitters must register with the U.S. Department of Treasury using the BSA E-Filing System. Specifically, they must file an electronic Registration of Money Service Business (RMSB) using FinCEN Form 107. A copy of the filed registration form must be retained in a U.S. location for five years, with annual updates to the estimate of business volume, ownership information, and a list of the business’s agents. Federal law also requires that money transmitters obtain any necessary state licenses. State Licensing of Money Transmitters Under federal law, money transmitters must be licensed in every state where they operate. Only one state, Montana, does not license money transmitters at all. However, some states with...

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