The COVID-19 Delta variant continues to negatively impact the construction industry. From his reading of a Construction Dive article on the impact of the virus, Russ (Billd's VP of Sales) identified four main areas of concern:

1) A continuing shortage of skilled labor

Listen along for Russ's breakdown - including his expectations for 2022.

Ineffectively tracking your labor productivity can have massive effects on your company's bottom line. Zach Sheel, Co-founder and CEO of Rhumbix, experienced this issue first hand.

In this episode, we discuss what labor tracking has looked like historically, where it stands today, and how it will improve in the future.

For example: Rhumbix is standardizing the collection of labor data to allow for more accurate reporting.

Amazon and Affirm have partnered to offer customers the option to buy now, pay later. In recent years, this buying option has taken over the e-commerce world.

So - what exactly is buy now, pay later? In the same way that a mortgage allows you to buy a house now and pay it off over time, buy now, pay later lets you do the same for common goods.

In construction, this applies to everything from new equipment, to company vehicles, and even materials, through the emergence of material financing.

You should be investing in construction technology early. Doing so positions your business to see a return on this investment, rather than using the same tech later as a bandage for some problem or broken process.

This Construction Dive article dives into the "why" behind the need to implement construction tech. In this episode, we're going to cover the "how."

Start by taking small steps that allow your team to adapt to the changes.

If you could use someone else's money to grow your business, you would do it, right?

That's exactly what you're doing when you leverage financing. Whether it's material financing, a line of credit from the bank, or supplier terms, you're creating the opportunity to use the capital you already have on hand to grow your business.

This is exactly how smart, large business are able to grow, and how you can do the same.

Stan Marek recently wrote an article in Construction Citizen titled "Workers Have Fled the Construction Trades. Here’s How We Get Them Back"

Today we're diving into our top 3 reasons why construction is facing a labor shortage, and what we need to do to fix this issue.

Here's the twist: it all started much earlier than you probably expect.

Let's talk about change orders - and the hidden costs they present.

It's no secret that it can take a long time to get paid for additional work resulting from changes in scope. This pay gap means that subs effectively finance large portions of most projects.

Cameron Page, Founder & CEO of Extracker, joined us to discuss how his company is modernizing the change order process to speed up processing times, increase profits, and help contractors maintain better customer relationships.

Establish lines credit for your business when you don't need them. If you wait until you need credit to apply, you won't be able to secure what your business needs.

Whether this credit comes in the form of a bank line, a business credit card, or material financing, establishing it now sets you up for success later.

Additionally, establishing credit now will help you build your business credit score, making it easier to obtain larger lines in the future when you do eventually need them.

The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill includes $100 million, to be disbursed over five years, for the purpose of accelerating the deployment of digital technology in construction.

What does this mean for us?

Times - and technology - are changing. Your business needs to be ready to adopt and implement these changes, or you risk falling behind your competition.

"Cash isn't king" is a bold statement. But it's true.

Capital is the total accumulation of assets available to your business. Cash is included in capital, of course, but so are credit cards, bank lines, and material financing.

When it comes to growing your business, using cash alone just won't cut it. Project owners don't pay for high rises in cash - they leverage debt. GCs do the same to scale their businesses and take on more, larger projects.

That's what you should be doing too.