Improve Performance by Managing Your Jobsite

This might sound like a no-brainer, but proper jobsite management can greatly improve your profitability and time-to-completion of your part of the construction project.

It is important to make sure that you have room on your project site to store your material. A lot of times projects are tight as far as workspace and you can’t handle more than one load at a time. If you’re lucky, you can handle two or three loads. It may be important to strategically order your material in phases, as you need it to optimize your delivery charges.
 
Proper material placement is up to the foreman on the project. He has to be conservative about where he is going to put his materials and where he can hold the most materials. It needs to be strategically placed so that it is easy to get to, with easy access in and out.
 
One of the worst things you can do is stockpile your materials and then find out a few days later that it is in the way. You end up having to move it, wasting labor, wasting equipment, and wasting fuel. These people working for you could be doing other things to move the project forward, but now they have to move materials because you didn’t think it through and put it in the wrong spot.
 
In my opinion, I would say that stone is one of the most wasted materials on a job site. The key to making good use of your stone is to be proactive in conserving materials. Before you order the first load of stone, you need to figure out exactly where you want to put it. Tell your loader, “Hey, we need to get an area cleaned off. We need to have a good smooth surface to stockpile this stone.”
 
I have seen it happen too many times. Stone shows up and nobody is ready for it. You put it in a wet, muddy spot because it is open. But you also lose 10% or even 15% of your stone in the process – every time you do it. Maybe the spot is full of ruts. You can never get that stone back out of those ruts.
 
You also want to think about ease of access. When you pick the spot where you want to stockpile stone, you don’t want to put it in the furthest corner away if you can help it.  You don’t want your loader man to be wasting time driving across site to pick up stone when you could have had a central location for easy access from all points of the job.

So managing your jobsite will make you more money and keep everybody else on the jobsite, including the General Contractor, happy.

You can listen to the webinar on which this article is based by clicking the link below:

7 Secrets to Success in the Construction Industry webinar replay