Any type of construction project requires a budget in order to be efficient, but in the rush and excitement of starting a new project, it can be easy to overlook the process of working your materials costs into your budget. This can be a real problem as materials make up a sizable portion of most construction project estimates.
If you’re having a difficult time working materials into your budget while staying within deadlines, below are some tips:
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Seek Out A Quote Instead Of Placing A Direct Order
It’s often better to request a quote for materials like domestic timber bolts or galvanized timber bolts when you need to order a large supply. Having a quote available provides you with the ability to fit your materials order into your budget since you’ll know what to expect despite market fluctuations in price and availability. If you wait until you need items like HDG timber bolts to place an order, you may find that you end up paying more due to whatever market conditions are affecting supply at that moment in time.
Quotes are also good for comparing the cost of materials. With multiple quotes, you can narrow down your spend on materials to help costs align more closely with your project’s budget. If you purchase direct as your project progresses, you might run into increasing costs, and this isn’t going to make the customer happy at all.
Overestimate Within Reason
You should also consider overestimating materials costs, but do so within reason to stay within your budget. Having an additional percentage of construction materials available can be a real lifesaver in the event that materials get lost, damaged, stolen or need to be reinstalled. By building this cost into your budget, you won’t get caught off-guard by falling short of the materials required and end up needing to spend unexpectedly.
One of the big benefits of taking this approach is that you can hold onto additional materials for future projects. This allows your company to build a surplus of materials, and in the future, you may be able to provide competitive discounts by offloading your surplus materials onto a project.
Look For Wholesale Distributors
If your construction company works on many large projects each year, it may be time to look for a wholesale distributor with which to partner. Wholesale prices are generally less expensive compared to retail, but keep in mind that you’ll want to actually have a genuine need for the amount of materials required for most wholesale orders. Wholesale distributors in the construction industry often have a minimum order that must be placed, and if you don’t have a need for so many materials, you may end up hurting your budgeting efforts instead of helping them.
Divide Materials Costs
Depending on the job, it might also be worth dividing your materials costs into categories based on the different phases of a project. For example, if a job is going to require a lot of site prep work, create a separate budget for that phase in particular.
You can then create a materials budget for the actual project itself and then another for any post-project work. Taking this approach can help you to get a better idea of how your materials costs break down, and it can also make it easier to plan out your budget. If you try to include the entire cost of the project’s materials into your budget from the start, you may find yourself needing to delay certain aspects of the work, and this can cause a chain reaction of delays down the line.
