Category Archives: Construction

Construction phone case for durable (heavy duty) – Different types available in market

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Construction sites are always associated with possibility of danger, hazards and accidents. In such a case, not only should a person stay protected by using hard hats or by wearing reflective jackets, but also the employees, workers and visitors should use tools and equipment to keep their belongings safe. One of the most important elements that people simply cannot do without in the current era is a phone. Hence, one must use construction phone case for durable (heavy duty) performance.

Why do you need it?

In a construction site, a number of difficulties and hazardous situations might occur. One might drop a phone from a height or a heavy piece of concrete might drop on the phone. The phone can even go into liquid deposit in a site, such as concrete mix, water or liquid drums etc.

This can, not only cause damage to the phone, but also cause damage to the business. Nowadays most people use smartphones to conduct their business while on the go. As the phones are damaged, the business too will be interrupted. You will fail to stay connected with your clients and customers and also fail to conduct the technologies that help to run the construction business smoothly. Hence, it is a must that you use the best construction phone cases that make your phone highly durable.

Different types of phone cases suitable for construction sites:

There are different types of construction phone case for durable (heavy duty) performance. Here are a few of them.

  • The case mate tank:

 

If you want to protect your phone from serious shock and vibration, this is the phone case that you need to choose. It has a layer of silicone cushioned interior that can absorb any kind of shock. The polycarbonate exterior can also protect the phone from dust, rain, sand or wind. It is so tough that even if a car runs over this case, it will not break.

  • The Ballistic hard core:

 

Those, who are looking for a phone case that would give even better protection from any kind of damage possible at a construction site, this is the phone case they should choose. These are made up of a four-layer protection and the outer layer can even protect the screen from scratches.

  • iThrough waterproof case:

 

This is a phone case that is suitable for the shocks and hazards of a construction site, as well as for the threats from liquid. If you want to get a waterproof phone case for your phone, this is the one that is most suitable for you.

Buy construction suitable phone cases online:

There are many sites that sell the construction phone case for durable (heavy duty) performance online. You can buy the one that is most suitable for you. You can buy them for an affordable price, if you buy them in bulk. All that you need to do is find the one that is affordable, budget friendly and also suitable for the needs of your construction site.

Construction business needs good leaders

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We all have the fear of failure that often pulls us down and stops us from thinking big or doing something big in life. However, there are few who believe themselves more than anything else and their belief tells them that there is nothing that can stop them. No failure can be big enough to stop him from pursuing his dreams. These kinds of men eventually become leaders in their profession. Leaders are often men with a vision in their lives. They can foresee what others can’t and often has the capability to identify the hidden potential in a human. This capability of theirs can take them to greater heights as they can have all the capable men working for him and in this process he can be prove to be an exceptional business owner or an individual. The construction business like any other business is short of leaders. It needs people who not only possess self-belief but can also motivate others and help them identify their potential.

Leaders should command respect:-

Men who can command respect can eventually turn out into strong leaders. For a leader, his men mean a lot and for the men the leader should mean a lot. The relevance a strong leader can have in the construction business is he/she can ask people to work extra when they are working on strict deadlines. Construction workers normally do not work like to work extra as they normally do not have any energy left after a long days’ work. But if a person whom they look upon asks them to work for a couple of hours more they may not want to say no to him/her. This is what respect is all about. The workers will agree to work merely out of respect and nothing else can bind them to continue working after their working hours.

Have complete faith on your employee’s potential:-

A good leader is the one who has complete potential on his men. In the construction sector, you will come across many men who will be allotted for different work. It is up to the leader to bring the best out of them. He/she needs to understand and detect their hidden potential and give the guys the courage to do something phenomenal. We normally live in a shell and as long as someone realizes us about our strengths we make our own comfort zone in the shell and continue to live in it. This is where the role of a leader comes into play. He/she has to make his/her men or women realize their hidden potential and what they can do in their lives. This will mean a lot to them and they will strive harder to accomplish their goals.

Be a good listener:-

A good leader is the one who is a good listener and not just a good speaker. You can speak on an issue when you know what the problem is and for that you need to listen to people. Always be open to listen to others so that they can talk their heart out to you and you in turn can bring some kind of solution to them.

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Construction loans are better options to borrow money for building homes

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Building a new home poses a big problem to those who do not have sufficient money and does not know whom to approach in order to get loan. They may have a piece of land with them but just because they lack sufficient funds they have to wait to build their home. But that is no longer the case now as people can now opt for loans to construct their homes and pay it off once the construction is completed. There is a vast difference between a construction loan and a home loan. In a home loan, the borrower borrows money from the lender and pledges to pay it in equal monthly installments. Ideally, the time horizon is 30 years to repay the loan but some can even take the loan with a 15 years, 20 years or 25 years’ time horizon. However, as far as the construction loans are concerned you are required to pay the entire loan amount as soon as the construction for the home is completed which means you need to pay it off on an average of 12 months period.

Construction loans are more like credit cards where you borrow money for the purpose of constructing your home and once it is done you need to pay the entire amount. You also have a draw request that is submitted by the builder. You are only required to pay the interest on the “draw request” amount and once the work is done, you need to pay the entire amount at one go. Once the house is ready and it is time to repay the lender, you can mortgage the home to the same lender or to some other lender and payoff the initial loan. Please remember, the construction loan is very different from the mortgage loan that we all know about and hence the initial loan amount was called construction loan but once the house is built and you take another loan to pay-off the initial one, you go for a mortgage loan.

The interest rate of a construction loan is also different than your auto loan or for that matter your home loan. Here you have the ability to negotiate the interest rates with the lender and they can increase or decrease the interest rates based on several factors like the equity of the project, your credit rating, your income and your financial history. So in case you manage to have a good credit rating and are earning reasonably, you have a very good chance to negotiate the interest rates with the lender.

The best part about construction loan is that it provides you with the freedom to move on to some other lender who is ready to offer you mortgage loan at a much reasonable interest rate and by not charging a bomb on the closing costs and other expenses. This means that you need not stick to the same lender who has offered you the construction loan. It is just that you need to pay them off and get along with another lender.

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Role of heavy equipment on the construction sector

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One who is a part of the construction domain clearly understands the importance of heavy equipment in this domain as well as to his business. This is perhaps the reason why many big construction companies are procuring state of the art machines for their big projects. Since they understand that the only way to get the work done faster is through the introduction of highly advanced heavy equipment that they want to have the best in their arsenal. Heavy equipment to a construction industry is what a heart or a brain is to a human being. He just can’t survive without these important organs. In the same way, it is almost unimaginable for the construction industry to move an inch of progress without the involvement and participation of heavy equipment.

We would be speaking in brief about the utilization of some heavy equipment which is most commonly seen in any jobsite.

Excavators:-

No big construction project can be completed without the participation of excavators. In order to begin the construction, one has to excavate the earth to build solid foundations. This is only possible with the help of this machine. It usually digs the earth with the help of the boom that is attached to its axle in the front. It has a cabin to the rear where the operator sits and manages his affair. This may seem to be a very common machine but has a lot of importance in the overall industry which is why heavy equipment companies are always in the process of designing hi-tech excavators that will sell as hot cakes.

Wheel Loader:-

A wheel loader is the machine that is extensively used to ferry debris from one place to another. When it comes to ferrying debris, other heavy equipment can also be utilized. However, they all have their limitations expect a wheel loader. They can carry huge pile of dirt, rocks and other debris which in many ways is not possible for other machines to perform. They are also extensively used for mining and road construction works.

Bulldozers:-

You have a permanent structure that you want to bring down you will not find anything better than a dozer. It has the capability to bring down a very solid structure into rubbles. They can also work as an alternative for excavators as the attachment can be changed and so does the work of the dozer.

Rollers:-

Rollers also form an important part of the construction industry. It is crucial to have good roads for better connectivity and also for the prosperity of the country’s economy. It is good roads that become part of better transportation of essential commodities. The pain of a bad road can’t be understood better than the driver of a truck whose spine aches while he drives every mile on it. The rollers play a significant role to smooth the road and make driving better.

There are many more machines that plays an instrumental role when it comes to making the future of the construction sector.

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Knowledge transfer is a must in the construction domain

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Keeping your experience with you and not sharing it with anybody does not make sense in any form of industry. When you learn something new, you should let others know about it and this is how others will get to know about your experience and derive a conclusion from it. Your experience must be a good one or a bad one but it always has a message for the people who hear it. This is one of the way by which you transfer your knowledge to the people around you and help them learn through your experience. You be a part of whatever industry, you learn most of the things from the experiences of others. Our lives are too short to experience everything and therefore we hear out stories of others and take lessons from it. This phenomenon is known as transfer of knowledge.

Knowledge transfer is a must in every industry and especially when it comes to the construction sector, it becomes all the more important. The reason why we consider knowledge transfer to be so important in the construction domain is because this industry is quite vast and it is virtually not possible for anybody to work in all the spheres and learn everything from it. You need men who specialize in one particular stream to inform you about how things function in his line of business.

For instance, a welder can at times know more about a machine than an operator who has been constantly working on it. It is because the welder or the mechanic for that matter fixes the machine whenever it breaks down and thus can inform the operator of some specific issues with the machine and ask him to be cautious while operating it. This is also one form of knowledge transfer where the mechanic is transferring the knowledge about the machine to the next person so that the equipment will be dealt in the right manner.

In a nutshell, the entire construction site primarily works on knowledge transfer. Here the site engineer needs to pass on the information to the next guy who will arrange for the things the engineer has asked for and once it is there in place, it will move to the next person with the specific instruction on what he needs to do. When we have new recruits joining the company, the importance of knowledge transfer is felt the most. The new guys do not know anything about how things work in the company and they need to be informed about every minute activity. So the message passes from the veterans to the newbie.

Another form of knowledge transfer is through articles and blogs. In this scenario, the writer who is pretty experienced and an expert on the subject writes about heavy equipment and gives an insight to the people at large. It indeed helps people to take informed decisions about their heavy equipment. Internet is a powerful tool and its use to transfer knowledge across various domains in widely appreciated by everybody.

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Get the best land clearing equipment to get optimum results

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Clearing huge stocks of debris can be a big pain for a construction company who has taken the project to build something in a place. First you got to invest good deal of time to break down the existing stuff that is standing and then once it is fallen, you got to invest another good number of days to clear the land and just in case if you do not have a state of the art heavy equipment, you find yourself into deeper problem. In this age where we seek all our work to be done in the click of a button, we can’t expect to give days to clear a stock of pile. We definitely need something that is quick and can get the work done in a day or two and should not take long. Therefore, one should always depend on the heavy equipment that can get optimum results when it comes to clearing debris from the land.

There are many heavy equipment manufacturing companies that are coming up with machines that can play wonders when put to use. But such machines are quite expensive and can cause a big hole in your pocket. Right from Caterpillar to Tigercat, they all are into producing equipment that can clear land in a day or two which would otherwise have taken a week if not less than that. Tigercat is a company that specializes in producing equipment used to clear lands in the forest areas. Land in the forest areas is very rigid and it is very arduous to clear them off. Tigercat has earned the goodwill to complete this kind of work in comparatively lesser days than any other equipment had taken. The sad part of the story is that you won’t find Tigercat throughout US. They have kept themselves small but have plans to expand and are probably on their way to enlarge their business. But for the time being if anyone wants to buy their machines, they can’t get it from a showroom in their city and have to book the stuff on the net.

Tigercat may not have all the parts of the machine indigenously built in their workshops but they rather assemble the parts from other companies and make the best equipment. The M760 mulcher is a 425 hp machine and has a CAT C-12 engine in it. While they have used CAT’s engine, they also installed their own cooling system. Thus they gave the land clearing equipment the most desirable thing that it always wants: tons of horsepower and in order to cool off the engine, a dependable cooling system. Other than that, it has all the features that are required in any land clearing equipment thus making the work of the operator simpler. The operator will not feel that the machine is new functions and finds hard to understand them. On the contrary, he will feel like he is working on a machine that’s quite familiar to him and that will make him work in comfort.

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Set up business models that can be achieved

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Construction business may seem to be a rewarding one but in order to set your foot strong in this business; one has to go through enormous planning and determination to execute them with precision. Firstly it is very important for them to establish a sound business plan and once that is in place follow the plan stringently so that you can achieve things in a phased manner. Now having a construction company, you have entered a dynamic industry which has no set rules of its own. Things that are found to be merrier now may turn into something drastic and therefore just having one set of plan with no flexibility can only harm your growth prospect. Therefore it is crucial that you analyze things, try to foresee them and be ready to revamp your strategy when the need arises or else you may find yourself in an unwanted and complicated zone.

Take baby steps in the beginning:-

If you have just started your construction company, avoid taking big leaps as there are chances that you may hurt yourself in this process. Dreaming big is not a problem but giving not much time to fulfill those dreams could be harmful and dangerous for the prospect of your company. So during the initial phase, you take small steps towards achieving your goals and once you start seeing things working out for you, you may then speed it up a bit. However, do not be in a hurry. Have patience and give some time for your business to grow. It takes a lot of time to form a concrete construction company. During this while you should enjoy your work and learn from it.

Your strategies should be realistic:-

When you are setting up strategies for your company, make sure that they are realistic and achievable. Strategies should always be formed keeping into consideration your business goals and the time by which you want them to be fulfilled. Keeping unrealistic goals can have drastic impact on the financial health of the company as well as on the morale of the employees. It is prudent that you consider all the facts well before you frame business plans.

Review your plans at regular intervals:-

Plans once framed should be reviewed at regular intervals. You should give a gap of 3 or 6 months and then review the ground figure. Take into account all the people from the senior management and review your plans with them. Give clear instructions on how you want the review to be. Reviews that are simple can be better understood by everyone. If you find one particular department not being able to perform up to its merit, you go to handle the situation delicately rather than exerting pressure on the team. First and foremost, try to evaluate the reason of underperformance and once you have earthed that check if they need any help from you to get it fixed. You should be ready to provide any assistance to improve your team’s performance. Once these things are taken care of, rest all will fall in place.

Keep yourself open to suggestions, it will help you grow

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While starting any new project, the company or any organization generally holds discussion to obtain views of its professionals and managers before it is executed. The senior management give suggestions to modify or improve the project in order to make it successful. Suggestions are always important so that the projects/tasks get executed in a planned manner and yield benefits. It is type of ‘caution’ taken before taking a major decision..

 

While embarking on any major task/project a person has to think analytically and plan well to execute it properly. A person can do it all on his own and many times suffer from failures. This is due to the ego and rigidity of one’s ideas leads to short-sightedness which fail to see the shortcomings in a project leading to failures. In case of failures of large projects, it causes permanent destruction of that organization.

 

In order to avoid this difficult situation, it is good if a person (or a company) takes suggestions for a project or task from trusted colleagues, mentors, seniors or hire a consultant. They may guide in proceeding of the project by giving their suggestions:

  1. Check if the aim and objectives of a project are clear. If they are not clear then will suggest how modify the aims so that the objectives are achieved
  2. Check for the loopholes/shortcomings of a project and suggest how to overcome them.
  3. May indicate whether the project is feasible or not. If not feasible then suggest to not go ahead
  4. May indicate about the investment to be done and if it is possible. If it is a huge investment and difficult to manage then suggest for decreasing the size of project.
  5. May show the underlying problems of a project and suggest desirable changes to be made to face or overcome those problems.
  6. May indicate the chances of success and failures of a project. To avoid failures some alternatives may be suggested.
  7. They may give strategies for proper planning and execution of projects/tasks

 

Many a time suggestions are not taken seriously due to ego problems. The person may not be confident that the suggestions will help and may yield any benefits. Although this being a case in 90% cases taking suggestions from experienced people has proved beneficial for the project work and made it successful. This ultimately has boosted one’s self confidence to perform better for the next projects. Further it leads to personal and professional growth of an individual.

 

 

Construction in the Housing Market

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There has always been a huge demand for houses all across the United States. However, it has been seen that the construction company is finding itself short of workers and this is why the end users have to wait for longer than they were told. The construction workers are of the opinion that the housing market is to a larger extent quite unpredictable and a major blow can come at any given point in time. This will lead to job loss and they have to look for other means to continue their livelihood.

They no longer want to be a part of the construction industry that is pertaining to the housing market. Well, the construction workers should understand that ups and downs are part of any industry and one should not just return because it is uncertain. On the contrary, they can make full use of the opportunity where they can demand more money for their work. As the construction company is already running late in giving possession of the house, they will not mind a slight increase in the wages to the workers.

If we go as per the statistics, we will find out that the job opportunities of a construction worker in the housing market is the highest since 2007 and they should waste no time in grabbing this opportunity. The work of a construction worker can’t be supplemented by any other person and therefore the need of the workers can really give them a good jump in their wages. As per the Home Builders Institute that prepares construction workers and train those in constructing houses believe that the shortage of labor is getting worse as there is a huge increase in their demand.

The repercussion of this has been felt on the US economy as well as it is struggling hard to get through with the problem of scarcity of construction workers in the housing segment. The most cases the industry runs through a sluggish state due to scarcity of demand but in this case it is almost the opposite. It becomes quite important to win back the confidence of the construction workers because once that is done and workers start flocking in, they will build homes and the construction companies will start meeting their deadlines. The shortage of workers has been mostly felt in hot residential zones where people have money but they do not have houses as the construction companies are unable to give possession at the stated timeframe. The construction companies in such location are seeking for extension in deadlines so that they can arrange workers by paying those more and can get the work done.

Other than this, construction companies also want to make the most during this troubled times. They are not paying heed to small housing segments and are more focused on expensive markets. So the starter homes are going through a rough phase. However, it also seems to be a good opportunity for new construction companies to make their presence felt. They do not have to look to get big projects and can work on building homes. All they need to do is manage the construction workers well and can make it big in this segment of the industry.

 

Water crisis can have serious impact on the construction industry

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This summer has dried up many lakes and water bodies in many parts of the country. Not only US but many countries all around the world are facing severe water shortage and are finding it difficult to sustain. Agriculture sector that depends primarily on rain water is not doing well because of acute deficiency and most likely the prices of agricultural products will shoot up considerably in the coming days. So is it only affecting the agricultural sector in a major way or are there any other industry as well that is being hit hard by this issue. Water which is such an important component in our day to day lives, scarcity of it can affect many industries and some of the most profitable industries can take a backseat as far as their businesses are concerned. One such industry is the construction industry can is currently facing the brunt of water shortage.

Water is required in immense quantity in a construction site. Not just for keeping the employees hydrated but also for other purposes like mixing cement with sand, spraying water on the ground to restrict the flow of dust on the site etc. It is also required to clean heavy equipment and lot of water is required for that purpose. Fluctuation in the price of fuel has a big impact on this industry but shortage of water can have ever lasting impact on many big construction companies. You need fuel to run heavy equipment but you need water to meet every small need of yours which can’t be compensated by any other component. Countries in the gulf are paying a heavy price to port water from their sources to the construction site which is why the prices of the final product is relatively higher.

A big construction company has to spend a lot on aqua and if it is in crisis then they may even experience shutting down of projects. His workforce will need water to drink and if he can’t even provide that basic necessity he will soon find people leaving his company. But the fact is drinking water has never been such a big issue in this country. The construction labors are able to get drinking water while they are at the jobsite. The problem is with water that is needed for construction purpose. There they might feel the pinch and it will definitely pain a lot.

Many parts of Asia and South America, the construction sector has already taken a backseat due to scarcity of water. The government in some countries has curtailed the use of water for construction purposes which had a big impact on the overall sector. Though they understand that the crisis is not going to be forever and till the time it does not rain, the problem might remain. However, once it starts raining, things might come back to normal. But the important part is to sustain till the time it is not monsoon.

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