All posts by SEO Team

May 9, 2023

Top 10 Reasons for Construction Project Delays

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 potential causes of construction project delays are many and varied. This article highlights ten of the most common or problematic causes and provides some ideas for preventing them. 1. Inaccurate Budgets Mistakes made when budgeting can cause cash flow crunches that result in project delays. Problems are most likely to occur when data is not reported between the field and office on a timely basis, so job progress and billings do not match project costs. The best solution is to use cloud-based integrated construction management software that gives field and office staff access to real time data. 2. Inadequate Planning Construction projects are all about planning. There are plans at every phase of every project. When viewed as a whole, the plans for a given project are all about managing the human and other resources that serve as inputs to the process to produce the optimal project outcome. Failing to involve the right people who possess the necessary...

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May 9, 2023

10 Tips to Manage a Construction Backlog

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 a Backlog in the Construction Industry? A construction backlog exists when a contractor has been awarded contracts that have not yet been initiated. A backlog typically is measured in terms of the number or the aggregate value of all projects in the pipeline but not started. It can also be described in terms of how far out into the future that projects are already scheduled. It’s good to have some amount of backlog because it ensures you will have money coming in for a certain foreseeable period. With no backlog, you would be worrying about where and when you will find your next job. Too much backlog could mean you’re underbidding to win contracts, which could leave you with an inadequate profit margin or even cause you to lose money on a project. And it could make potential clients question your project management skills and experience. This article presents 10 proven ways to help you find the...

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May 9, 2023

Qcells to Build $2.5B U.S. Plant

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 Demand for U.S. Energy Independence The Solar Energy Manufacturing for America Coalition (SEMA), a group of top U.S. solar companies, was formed in early 2021 in recognition of the growing demand for renewable energy. A key aspect of SEMA’s mission was, and remains, to lobby and advocate for a domestic solar energy supply chain and the creation of incentives for domestic solar panel manufacturing. (In 2022, less than 20% of the solar panels installed in the United States were made in the U.S.) A stable domestic supply chain is essential to reducing or eliminating our reliance on China for key materials (particularly polysilicon and glass), components, and finished solar panels. SEMA’s inputs helped shape the clean energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed into law on August 16, 2022, by President Biden. The White House has described the IRA as the most significant action Congress has taken on clean energy and climate change in the nation’s...

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May 9, 2023

Predicting Asphalt Pricing in Construction: The New App

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 Problem One of the most difficult aspects of running a construction contracting business is estimating costs with enough accuracy to submit a winning bid that provides a comfortable profit margin. The challenge is that the prices of building materials are dynamic, often changing in ways that are difficult to predict. The price of asphalt is one such moving target. It’s easy enough to figure out how much the asphalt for a certain project will cost at the time a bid is submitted. But months can go by between the time a winning bidder is chosen and the time the project breaks ground. And during those intervening months, the price the contractor must pay for asphalt may have changed significantly. The Solution One person with more than 30 years of experience in highway and heavy construction decided to do something to make it easier to predict the price of asphalt. Brian Lawrence recognized the inherent difficulty of predicting what...

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April 27, 2023

The Growing Need for ESG Reporting 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 ESG? ESG stands for “environmental, social, and governance,” specifically corporate governance. The abbreviation refers to the standards that enable organizations of all kinds to measure and track progress toward ESG-related internal and external initiatives, such as net-zero carbon goals. Today, ESG standards are most commonly used by investors looking for socially conscious companies to invest in. ESG standards help them determine a company’s: Commitment to safeguarding the environment and preserving the natural world Consideration of people and their interdependencies, including treatment of employees, management of supplier relationships, and impact on the communities within which they operate Logistics and process for operating the business, such as leadership practices, executive compensation, financial transparency, and shareholder rights Taken together, these factors reflect a company’s commitment to sustainability and accountability, which are growing concerns for all organizations, including those in the construction industry. Why Is ESG an Issue in Construction? Project owners, investors, lenders, developers, and building contractors all have good...

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April 27, 2023

HUBZone Contractors: Advantages and Federal Opportunities

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 the HUBZone Program? The Small Business Administration (SBA) operates the HUBZone program, which was created to enable qualified small businesses to compete for set-aside contracts and receive preferential consideration in competitive, open contract bidding. What is a HUBZone? HUBZones are historically underutilized business zones. The SBA designated them as such based on the most recent census data. HUBZone designations are re-evaluated and updated every five years. The previous review was in 2018, and the newly revised map will be released on July 1, 2023. The next review will take place in 2028. What Are the Qualification Criteria for the HUBZone Program? To become certified for the HUBZone program, your business must meet the SBA’s definition of a small business. It must also be at least 51% owned and controlled by U.S. citizens, a community development corporation, agricultural coop, Alaskan Native corporation, Native Hawaiian organization, or Native American tribe. Your principal office must be located within a HUBZone,...

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April 27, 2023

Guide to Bidding on Government Work

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. Government Contracting Government construction contracting can be rewarding. Many of the largest construction companies regard it as a mainstay of their business. Public works projects are available at all levels of government, from towns, cities, and counties, to state agencies, to the federal government. But when you’re first starting out, even if you have significant experience in private construction contracting, moving into this new territory can seem a little daunting. And to be honest, it can take a little effort to get your head wrapped around the ins and outs of bidding on government construction projects. Government contracting can be a complicated matter due to its highly regulated nature, particularly at the federal level, and some states have a comparably complex procurement process. The high degree of regulation, however, helps ensure the fairness of the bidding process and minimizes the risks to the taxpayer dollars that fund public works projects. It also requires contractors new to the government construction...

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April 17, 2023

What Contractors Need to Do to Bid on Larger Projects

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. Are You Ready to Make the Move? To land bigger projects, you have to get bigger. That’s a simplistic way to say that you must demonstrate the capacity to successfully execute any project you bid on. If you’re hoping to grow your business by winning bids on bigger jobs, you’ll need to prove that you have sufficient capital, equipment, workers, construction industry experience, administrative and management talent, credit, bonding capacity, and whatever else it will take to convince project owners that you have what it takes to run with the big dogs. You’ll also need to have subcontractors and suppliers with the capacity to meet your needs. If the ones you’ve been working with can’t scale up to support you on larger projects, you may have to expand your network. Cash Flow Considerations The bigger the project, the more important it is to be able to estimate and track costs accurately. That can be significantly more difficult for larger...

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April 17, 2023

How Emerging Contractors Can Master the Bidding Process

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 Procurement Process Different project owners go about hiring contractors in different ways. The federal process is formal and highly regulated to ensure that it is fair for all parties while minimizing the risk to the government. The same is generally true of the process used to hire contractors to execute state-funded and municipal-funded public works projects. New contractors need to thoroughly understand the process to be used for a particular project before preparing and submitting a bid. All of the time, effort, and money that goes into preparing a bid is wasted if the contractor is disqualified for not following the correct process. Bid Solicitations Not all bids are advertised publicly for open bidding by any contractor. While government-funded projects typically are, some project owners, especially private ones, only advertise bids to contractors who previously went through a vetting process to be on a list of prequalified bidders. Open bidding, also known as open tendering, is an “equal...

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