By Steve Rizer
During WPL Publishing’s recent “Pricing, Preparation, Support and Analysis of Lost Productivity Claims” webinar, presenter R. Brent McSwain of Sage Consulting Group reported that “some of the biggest problems we see from contractors is [that] when they price change orders, they’re pricing change orders based on productivity rates that they carried in their estimates.”
McSwain, who co-presented the webinar with fellow Sage Senior Consultant Jim Giles, then informed attendees, “What we don’t want to see is a condition that we often see, [which] is that we’re losing man-hours on a weekly basis because we’re being inefficient and then we’re pricing millions of dollars’ worth of change-order work using the wrong rates and also incurring huge losses performing change-order work. We’re losing on base-contract work, and we’re losing on change-order work. So, understanding the actual productivity rates that you’re incurring is going to go a long way in helping you achieve your project margins that you expect at the end of the job.”
During the program’s question-and-answer period, Giles commented that a major problem he sees across the industry is that most contractors “don’t track their installed units. Most contractors claim that it’s way too hard to get the guys to do that.”
Also during the webinar, McSwain and Giles discussed the quantification of overruns and underruns, cost analysis and control, causation, excessive changes, the types of disruption affecting labor productivity, and other topics.
To purchase a recording of the webinar, click here.
