Category Archives: Construction

Having a mixture of immigrants is healthy for your construction company

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United States is a place that has people coming from all walks of life and they come to this place to have a decent life. It is probably the only country in the entire world which has people coming from different countries to make their dream come true. On an annual basis, US is seeing an increase in the influx of immigrants. Some skilled, some semi-skilled and some unskilled labors constitute the total population of immigrants in this country and strangely they all are able to find a job for themselves. It seems that the construction industry also has a healthy strength of immigrant workers. Since this industry does not need a lot of skilled labor, therefore it does well with semi-skilled workforce. The only criteria that the construction companies have for them is that they should be hard working and should give their 100% to the job.

Now how the construction companies benefit when they employ immigrants in their company. There is a scarcity of labor as many consider this part of the job to be perilous and hence you will find Americans holding the top position where their job is to give instruction to the laborers and also supervise their work. In case, things are not going as per the plan the supervisor will be taken to task. But it is not that the labor workforce is only occupied by the immigrants. You will also find Americans in this club. Usually construction companies are of the opinion that just hiring immigrants as workers can be a bit problematic as they want to give equal opportunity to all and therefore feel that it is healthy to have a mixture of employees constituting your workforce.

Immigrants are paid less as compared to their American counterparts:-

It has now become an open secret that the immigrants are paid less than what the companies had to pay to the Americans. This becomes highly cost effective for the company especially during times of turbulence. The construction market is not always flourishing and there are times when things take a bad shape for the overall sector. This is when the construction companies continue doing business by paying less to the immigrants. Having said so, this does not imply that they exploit them to the core. They are provided with all the other facilities that are given to the resident but are cut short on the wages part. The company in this way is able to save a lot for the hard times.

Immigrants are ready to work beyond the working hours:-

Not every person in the United States readily works beyond his working hours. Though they are paid extra for working after their shift, people are still reluctant to do so. However, the immigrants in this case are more than happy to work and earn some extra money. They are probably without their families and are here with the sole purpose of earning more money. Anything earned in addition to the wages is an incentive. Though government has now made the visa rules quite stringent and construction companies are finding it hard to employ more immigrants. It needs to be seen how things will shape up after few years.

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Liening construction job sites

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Imagine you get a contract to work on a site. You invest good deal of money into the work. All your labors have worked hard, day and night to make sure that the work is completed in time and then once the work is completed, you get to know that the company who has given you the work can no longer afford to pay you. That will come as a lightning bolt out of a clear sky. You may wonder how all of a sudden he does not have any money to pay you and what you have now to protect your interest. To be frank, you got nothing to protect your interest. You have to pay your workers for their labor and you get nothing out of this entire deal. On the contrary, you just end up spending all you have.

Well, this is not how things work in the construction industry. When you take up a work, you make sure that you get the payment regularly. However, before that, you have your lien on the property so that in case the project owner is unable to pay you, he can’t use the property and you can sell it off to any financial institution or do whatever to claim your money back.

Now take the same example other way round. Let’s say that you have taken the contract and you sub contract it to a third party. For some unfortunate reasons, you are unable to pay the sub contractor his dues. This will result him in placing a lien on the said property. Therefore, it is believed that placing a lien on the property is perhaps the only method by which you can secure your payments.

Placing a lien can have serious implications once it is placed on any given property. The first major implication will be banks or any financial institution will lend money to refinance the property. Banks want them to be having first lien if they are giving any loan on an existing property. So if there is already a lien on the property, you cease any scope of getting loans from bank. Not only this, you credit rating also takes a beating. This has a huge impact on your borrowings.

It has also been witnessed that some contractors fraudulently place liens on a property even though they have received all the payments. This is a serious issue and is also dealt stringently by the forces. However, you have to go through lot of hassles till the time it is not proven that the money is paid to the contractor. Work at other jobsites is also stopped as contractors fear that they will not get paid for their work. It is crucial that you scan the contractors well by checking their work history and then give work.

Liens on property can have damaging impact even if it is fraudulently put on you. Therefore, always ensure that you pay your contractors well in time so that they do not impose a lien on the given property.

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Safety of construction workers

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Accidents have become so prone in construction zones that it seems to be almost impossible to contain it. But the fact of the matter is we can contain many accidents from happening by following few safety parameters. This means that there is a severe lack of awareness amongst the construction workers when it comes to their own safety. Moreover, the effort put by the construction companies to educate the workers about the importance of wearing safety gears is negligible making things worse for the workers. The laws of US are strict enough to curb this problem but the real issue lies with the implementation at the ground level.

Other than this, due to the kind of risk involved it turns out to be a dangerous zone for the people working in it. The workers got to be careful when they are working at heights and while on the land they needs to have an eye on the heavy equipment that wanders all around the place. Though the operator stays vigilant to avoid any eventuality but still accidents happen and therefore it is the responsibility of everybody on the site to see that people around them are safe.

The construction workers also need to follow few safety parameters which will relatively bring down the incidents of accidents to a larger extent.

Wearing of safety gears:-

Safety gears starts right from wearing a belt to putting on a jacket. It largely depends on the type of work you will be doing and the site you are put into. Wearing helmets is quite common but many do not put the strap. This will let the helmet fall every now and then so it is better that the workers should tighten the helmet by putting on the strap. When they are working on heights like cleaning the glass window of a high story building, they should wear the safety belts so that in case if they lose their balance they do not hit the ground.

Check your tools before you begin to work:-

Workers are required to use a lot of tools. Right from Scaffolds to a hammer, they got to do with everything and therefore they need to ensure that all the tools that they will be working with are in perfect order. In case if they see anything to be shaky or not in order, they should immediately reach out to the officer in charge and report it to him. Resume working only if they are offered satisfactory equipment. Most of the times, there seem to be some issue with the ladder and the workers simply underestimate the issue and get on it. They are simply putting themselves at risk.

Know where the first aid box is:-

Most of the construction workers are not even aware if there is a first aid box available in the jobsite. They get to know about it only after the accident. Well, every worker should know about the location of the first aid box and how to use it. It can save their life and also the lives of their co-workers.

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How does rain affect a construction job site

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Challenges have many faces and sometimes it comes in the face of weather. If there is a hostile weather and you have strict deadlines, it is just not possible to complete the job on time. You have to stop work as your men will have a tough time to carry on with the site operations and it also not makes any sense to risk the lives of your workers when you know that it is not going to happen. Though excuses do not work in the construction sector but this does not mean that you are going to put the lives of the workers at risk. A stormy weather or heavy monsoon can be a real spoilsport for your work. Other seasons like summer and winters can still be managed but during monsoon it just becomes unmanageable. One good thing is that it does not rain heavily all throughout the monsoon. There are few days in a month when you will not see the sky pouring water and this is perhaps the time when you should work hard to try and complete the work and be ahead of schedule.

Rain has always been a major threat to the construction business. If it rains a lot it may also affect the quality of the building. The workers have nothing to do as they are instructed not to proceed with the work for a couple of days. This makes things quite difficult for the company. The delay caused due to rains has to be compensated on other days by working for extra hours. The engineers may have their own plans to sort things out but rain can turn things away from them and not all might end up as per the plan laid by them. Heavy rains also impact the digging work. Excavation work becomes riskier as the earth becomes soft and quite unpredictable. Moreover the ground is watery and this can turn really ugly for the guys employed for digging work. No number of safety equipments can be of much use when they work in a situation like this.

Industry experts believe that nothing more can have a much greater negative impact on the construction sector other than hostile weather and specifically monsoon which has after effects too. Some companies have even experienced the worst. It took them almost 3 months to place a slab of a building which ideally does not take more than a couple of weeks. It seemed to rain every day and when it did not workers could not find it convenient to work.

Heavy rains also block the supply of materials to the jobsite. Materials are all blocked for days and it becomes tougher for the company to operate in such a situation. Now one can’t control rains and therefore need to chart out a strategy by keeping these things into consideration. Rains can cause quite a havoc in the construction industry and the companies should be prepared to take on challenges that comes along with it.

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Loyalty of employees is important in the construction industry

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It is perhaps the human resource that defines the future of any company and as far as the overall industry is concerned, human resources play a significant role in shaping it up. It is the talent that every man and woman possesses that defines the destiny of the company and simultaneously of the industry. There are people who change jobs to get a hike in their package. The other company who hires them finds their credentials suiting the needs of the company and therefore they pick them by giving a higher package. But it is certainly not a wise thing to lose your efficient men to others. They are leaving your company for a reason and it is important to understand that reason do every possible thing to retain them. Now you can’t force them to quit but you can certainly offer them something that they can’t refuse. It simply does not make any sense to lose your employees who have been in the company for the last many years.

The importance of employees is largely felt in the construction sector. Competent employees are paid real well and if one gets a chance to work for a big construction house then he can definitely expect a better package. In this entire situation, there is someone who is at a loss and it is the construction company who is losing an employee. They call it attrition. There are some construction companies whose attrition rate is really high. This means that the company is either not doing well which is why people look for other prospects or they do not take good care of the employee.

Every construction company should value their employees. The loyalty of the employees really matter and if you do not give them their worth then they will search for it at some other place. You have to understand that if an employee is there with the company for many years then he has also set some expectation and it is the duty of the employer to fulfill those expectations. Don’t take their loyalty for granted. Do not ever think that they are with you because they do not have anywhere else to go. If you think this then it will only hurt you in the long run.

Treat your employees with dignity. Try to at least offer your smile and if someone wishes you reply to him. By this you are respecting them and treating them with dignity. Make them feel that they are important to the company. They should be excited to come to work every day. The day the excitement ends, they will start looking for other options.

When you have an employee who have been with you for the many years and has now offered his resignation, you should probably sit with him and try to know the reasons why he wants to quit. If he wants to start his own business, you should probably wish him all the best but if he is intending to switch to some other construction house then you should try to know what you can do to retain his loyalty. You never know he may stay with you if you offer him something wonderful.

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Employment option for a programmer in the construction industry

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A computer programmer has a lot to do when it comes to programming software for different companies across various sectors. They are people who are in huge demand and have to cater to people of different industries keeping into consideration their varying wants. So you have a team of software programmer who has designed new software for a retail store and now they are been approached by someone who belongs to the pharmaceutical industry and who wants them to work on his specific requirements. So the same team will now focus on a different industry and will try to build software that especially suits their needs. This shows that a software developer can work across industries and is not constraint to one particular genre of business. Similarly, their services can also be used in the construction business. As a matter of fact, there are construction companies that are ready to pay software developers good sum of money but in return they want something that is nothing less exceptional.

Not all construction company can afford to hire software developer to design unique software for their company. Some companies may even find it difficult to buy expensive software. But they all have to use one and therefore there are different levels of software developers and programmers in the market. Not all are expensive. There are some newbie who have ideas but do not have relevant experience for which they are not hired by the giants. However, they can prove to be very useful for small construction companies. The small companies can check the software they have developed and if they feel that it suits their requirements they can go for it. These new guys may not charge a bomb from the companies and are also ready to provide support if in case the program stops working.

This suggests that there is ample of opportunity for software programmers in the construction industry. You will not find the employment getting dried up. Businesses will always flow in some way or the other. Most of the time it comes in the form of upgrading the existing software. You can’t keep on working with the same version for many years. Everything has an expiration date and so does software. So it is imperative for a construction company to keep the software that they are using updated. This can be done with the help of the programmers who have designed the program in the first place or some other programmer who knows about the software and how to upgrade it.

The programmers who are associated to the construction industry should first understand the various needs that a construction company can have. This will give them an idea of the possibilities that they should work on and offer the best to the industry. Many of the time, it has been observed that after doing a in-depth study of the subject, the programmers approach the construction company and place a solution to them. If the company likes the idea they will buy the design and give the contract to service them for a couple of years. It has been therefore termed to be a rewarding business.

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Utility Construction

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When we talk about utility construction all that we get in our mind is the people working in a construction site, or the guys who are repairing the electricity line that is running from one pole to another through the entire area. So whenever, we experience problems relating to electricity and we see these guys working in one of the poles, we can make out that they are from a utility construction company. We also often see people working in a manhole trying to fix things. Well, they also belong to the segment of “Utility Construction”. Well, as a matter of fact, Utility construction is one of the big businesses that have given employment to thousands to youths across the country. More often when a place has suffered huge losses from a storm or a hurricane, it is the people from the Utility Construction companies that come and try to restore things. This may not be a simple task as it takes a lot of time to get things back to where it was, but they do their best to bring back normalcy in the place.

One of the areas that get severely affected by storm is the communication and electricity line. Well the job of the utility construction employees is to ensure that they rebuild the line as quickly as possible so that people living in the zone do not have to suffer much. Simultaneously, during normal occasions they have to check if things are working just fine. Therefore they pay occasional visits in the different zones that have been allotted to them and check if the lines are working fine and if they see any issues, they report it to the next level and if possible try to fix it then and there. There are also into installing fiber optic and in case of emergency restore the services immediately.

The type of work actually depends from one Utility company to another. Not every utility construction company is into restoring or maintaining electricity. They take up different genre of work and ideally do not get into multiple genres as they may find difficult to manage multiple genres at the same time. However, there are few utility construction companies that are into multiple genres. This also implies the fact that those companies are quite big to take care of multiple operations at the same time. Having said this, it has also been seen that majority of the utility construction companies are into the electric segment and if possible try to take up few small projects that is not related to their core business.

The career graph of an individual joining this segment can be immense. He can start off directly after completing his electrical engineering and start working with these guys. There is a lot to learn for a person who is indeed interested to make it big in this industry and as he gains more knowledge he can expect a rise in his package. Money is definitely not a problem for the right candidate.

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Heavy equipment used to a rapid transit system

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For different kinds of construction projects, we require different types of heavy equipment. So if one has just started a construction company and is checking out for the machine he should possess to start working, quite frankly he will not find one. However, once he has been able to bag a project he can start looking for the heavy equipment using which he can start the work. One type of heavy equipment can’t be used for all kinds of work. For instance, you can’t use a loader to roll the roads. You need a roller for that purpose and if you try using other machines then you may not be able to do the work as precisely as you would have been able to by using the right sort of machine. A construction company owner should pick the machines on the basis of the kind of projects he generally wants to work.

There are some construction companies who specialize in constructing roads. So you will find all the necessary heavy equipment required for road construction at their disposal. In case if they do not have it with them they will manage to buy one or get it on rent. For companies who take the project of constructing a subway, they got to be really choosy with the kind of machines they are using. Ideally, most construction companies all around the world use Tunnel Boring Machine also known as (TBM) and other equipment that are primarily used to complement TBM’s during construction of Subways.

Tunnel Boring Machine is made of a rotating cutter-head that is located at the front of cylindrical steel shell this is pushed forward to excavate the ground. The steel shield is used to support the excavated earth until the lining of the final tunnel is constructed at the back of the shield. Hydraulic jacks are being used for propulsion that pushes against the vertical tunnel lining system. The material that the tunnel boring machine generates during this process is removed by a conveyor system and ferried away in trucks.

As the tunnel boring system gets ready to move to the next level, liners are placed behind the machine to form the tunnel. These liners are nothing but pre-case concrete tunnel segments and are carried in huge trucks to the construction site. Now while the tunnel boring machine is working all throughout the day, it causes little or no disruption to the surface above. So people walking on the surface of the road may not even know what is happening just right down under him. Once the job is done, the tunnel boring machine is broken down into parts so that it can be hauled to the next jobsite and can be restructured as per the design of the subway. So before the tunnel boring machine and the liners go to the next jobsite, the preliminary works are already done and the charge is given to the machine once it arrives at the site.

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Being in the company of good people is crucial in construction industry

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We generally meet all kinds of people when we are associated with an industry like construction. Generally people are tends to be good but some may not have that good intention. Hence, it is very crucial that you pick the people whom you feel that you can be compatible with. This does not mean that you will not have any relation with guys whom you feel does not fall in your compatibility zone. You will maintain your relationship with everyone but will restrict yourself to few people rather than getting open to everyone. If you make yourself available to everyone, there are chances that people might take undue advantage which will not be in anyway healthy for you. However, if you are in the company of people whom you trust, there are lesser chances that they will ever cheat on you.

Threat of losing project/client:-

If you get yourself in the company of wrong guys who may pose well to you, they might try to get info of your work and you never know when they will snatch away your project and start working on it. There have been numerous such cases where contractors have lost their project after they came into contact with someone they hardly knew and gave too much space to them. They on the other hand took as much info as they can to snatch away the project or just the client. They established their contact with the clients and ensured that the future projects are given to them. By the time the contractor came to know about this, he has already lost the client.

You will grow in the company of good people:-

Construction sector can often show you turbulent times. This being a dynamic industry, we can face any sort of threat from any corner. Therefore, it is important that you be in the company of people you know and whom you can trust. They might come for your help during your bad phase and bail you out. Alternatively, they can also give you valuable advice that you may hardly get from people in this circle. At times, this advice helps you a great deal. You might have taken a stand on the basis of certain information which may or may not be correct. However, you have a slight confusion on this and want to take a second opinion. Therefore, you decide to discuss it with your guys and you get to know more insights that you were complete unaware of. This eventually clears your thoughts and you are able to take a wise decision thus having a positive impact on your company.

Be in touch with them even if they are not your employees:-

We feel sad when we lose men who served our company for years and now want to retire. Even if they retire, they are very much a part of the company as they have served it for years. Therefore, being in touch with such people can always be beneficial for the company. They can guide you in difficult times and help you come out of a crooked situation.

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Placing a lien when you are already paid can be a serious problem

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There was a time when construction companies once having taken a project will complete the entire project on their own. They will not like the involvement of any other party in the work. However, the dynamics have changed completely. Now big construction companies only take up projects and let it to other construction companies who further sub-let it to small construction companies or contractors. So one big project is worked by many different companies and the main company who initially took the work has to ensure that all the parties involved in this work are paid in full because if either of the party is not paid then it can have serious repercussion on the project.

The parties who are unpaid can place a lien on the project which means that only when they are paid first that the owner of the project will be able to sell anything to anybody. It also means that the parties who are unpaid and have placed a lien are in a way the actual holders of the property. However, once they are paid in full they will withdraw their lien and then it becomes lien free. As a lien on a project can have serious impact on the project owner in the same fashion if someone has wrongfully placed a lien to harass the project owner, it can again have serious impact on the person for taking incorrect advantage of the lien. Contractors and sub-contractors are allowed to place lien so that they can safeguard their interest if they are not paid by the project owner. But this should not be in any way misused or else the entire purpose of having a mechanism like this goes for a toss.

The law in the United States is strict enough to weed out any menace like this. People who take place wrong liens are punished once they are proven guilty. However, an equal opportunity is given to both the project owner and the contractor to prove their point and if it is found that the project giver has paid in full but it was because of some kind of confusion the contractor did not receive the money and placed a lien, then the court tries to clear out the confusion and at times also gives the contractor a warning to check things first before placing a lien.

Ideally, a lien is supposed to be placed after a series of discussion between the project owner and the contractor and nothing has come out of it. One can’t just go and place a lien when things can be solved via discussion. Placing a lien should be the last option. Therefore, it is suggested that the contractor gives ample of time to the project owner to pay him for his work. If he places a lien without giving sufficient time, it may back-fire him. By no means should the contractor do anything that will place him into problems. If proven guilty he may end up paying good chunk of money as penalty and may also have to be behind bars for few months.

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